Sockeye Salmon (Spring Catch)

NOTE: IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO PREORDER FROM MULTIPLE SEASONAL CATCHES, PLEASE PLACE THOSE ORDERS SEPARATELY. FOR EXAMPLE, IF YOU'D LIKE BOTH THE SUMMER & SPRING CATCH, CREATE YOUR SUMMER ORDER THEN CHECK OUT & PAY. THEN SELECT YOUR SPRING SPECIES, CHECK OUT & PAY.

Sockeye salmon is the most beautiful of the 5 wild Alaskan salmon species with brilliant ruby red flesh and chrome-bright skin. The firm flesh has an amazing wild taste and is the most “salmony” of the 5 species. If you love the flavor of salmon, my sockeye is your fish.

Preorder Preorder Period:
Jan. 1 - May 9, 2022

Shipping:
Your seafood will ship to you via FedEx May 16 & 17, 2022. It will arrive a few days later. This page details shipping rates: https://salmonandsable.com/pages/shipping. Orders to the eastern half of the country go FedEx and orders to the western half of the country go 2-day FedEx.

Cut:
I offer my sockeye in several cuts:

• Portion - Portions are a fillet cut in half, sometimes in thirds. Portions are generally about 0.75 lbs. but can be as small as 0.50 lbs. or as large as 1 lb. each.
• Fillet - A fillets is the whole "side" of the fish, trimmed and cut to aesthetic perfection. Fillets generally weight about 1.25-2 lbs. each and are the ideal cut for families.
• Butterfly - The butterfly cut is a portion sliced then folded skin side to skin side. It's a beautiful cut and perfect for quick and easy grilling.

For more information on cuts and bones, have a look here: https://salmonandsable.com/pages/bones-cuts

Bones:
I offer my sockeye salmon with or without pin bones. Pin bones are the the small (but not dangerous) bones running down the middle of a salmon fillet. My deboned coho is generally 90-100% boneless with one or two pin bones sometimes remaining in the collar area of the fillet. The tail portion is naturally mostly boneless.

Packaging:
I vacuum seal my salmon in heavy 5mm bags to avoid broken seals and freezer burn. Virtually all other seafood is vacuum sealed in 4mm or lighter bags. Your fresh-frozen seafood will keep in your freezer in pristine condition for 12 months or more.

Who, Where, When, & How:

After commercial fishing Alaska's waters for 25 years, I am starting to focus more on turning out stunning fillets for your dinner table and less on sloshing around in my boat fishing. Although I am sometimes fishing, more often I am jumping on a friend's skiff to get their best fish before taking them ashore and filleting them in my beach-front fillet cabin. The art and craft of turning out beautiful fillets is more and more where my heart is these days. I call it salmon craft.

All my sockeye is hand-caught, filleted, and pin boned in a fillet cabin on the banks of the Ugashik River in remote western Alaska. Bristol Bay is the biggest salmon run on earth. Sometimes there are more than 65 million sockeye returning to spawn! Although we do catch quite a bit of king on the Ugashik River, I also source some from friends who are involved in the troll-caught fishery of Southeast Alaska. These are stunning fish caught one at a time by hook in their prime in the open ocean.

When it comes to the white fish I sell, both species, halibut and sablefish, are sourced from friends in Kodiak and Southeast, Alaska. Although I commercially fished halibut for years in my youth, it's something I now leave to my tougher friends.

My smoked salmon comes from a dear friend in Southeast, Alaska who has smoked for me for years. His smoked salmon isn't available anywhere else and is out of this world.

Interesting sockeye info:

• Sockeye the superfood – If we're splitting hairs, of the 5 species of wild Alaskan salmon, sockeye is the healthiest. Why? Because sockeye eat from the very bottom of the food chain. They eat zoo plankton and krill, and those little guys eat phytoplankton, which eat sunlight.
• The color of sockeye – Sockeye salmon has the brightest flesh of the 5 species. Sockeye flesh is brilliant ruby red and tastes deliciously wild and salmony. Where does that color come from? Because of their diet. The plankton and krill they gobble up while at sea are tiny, sometimes microscopic creatures with shrimp-like exoskeletons that are often pink or orange. Sockeye absorb that color and make it their own.