Ports Seafood

Right when I was going to start gushing about California King Salmon, they stopped showing up.  It got a little windy last week and that often serves to disperse the schools for a little while, so here we sit, all dispersed, eating expensive Canadian Kings.  These fish have been damn good really, better than the average Canadian fish, and if I squint real hard, the word “Canada” almost looks like “California”.   But it still ain’t.  To me summer is California King Salmon, Albacore Tuna, Local Halibut, Brentwood corn, blueberries, figs, and later on tomatoes.  Oh yeah, and nectarines.  God, I love those white nectarines. A real season marked by real food.  That shit gets me exited.  All seasons have their twists, but nothing shouts louder than summer.  You have to look a little harder in January but the shifts are constantly happening.  I don’t mind digging through the perma-frost for a seasonal jewel.  So anyhow, the King Salmon season is not over, it’s just experiencing what in a “normal” year would be a mid-season lull.  Unfortunately that lull occurred over the same four days that made up the last of “our season” below Point Arena.  But not to worry, at least too much, as California is open from Horse Mountain down to Point Arena from July 15 until July 29, and then re-opens for the month of August in the same area with whatever quota that went uncaught in July rolling over into August.  Confused yet?  Don’t know where the fuck Horse Mountain is?  Or Point Arena?  Well, leave it to the trained experts (that’s us) to break it down for you:  Horse Mountain is just north of Shelter Cove and Point Arena is just south of Fort Bragg.  This translates to the Mendocino County Coast, as well as smallish portions of Sonoma and Humboldt Counties.  All fish landed will pretty much have to be offloaded in Fort Bragg.  That’s just the way it be, but at least we should see some fish between now and the end of August.  In the meantime, why not use the Alaskan Sockeye Salmon?  These fish are really nice.  They have great meat color and a reasonably good fat content.  I know that you size queens out there are all pissy about a 5-7 lb. fish, but get over it.  They are beautiful, available, and reasonably priced.  For Christ sakes, use what nature offers up in season instead of whining about 20 lb. Kings of yore.  They possibly represent the best value in a wild salmon.  Also, anytime now we will be seeing Cohos arrive on the market and these should also be a reasonable alternative to Kings.  The Coho stocks appear to be very healthy as a result of some uncharacteristic good management practices.

It’s not just California King Salmon that tightened up, but damn near everything fished on the west coast.  California White Bass and Yellowtail both have slowed down considerably and the prices reflect that.  Once again, I think this is just a seasonal lull and we could possibly expect another deluge of fish once the weather cooperates a bit.  And Petrale, holy shit!  Every summer we have to re-experience the pain when the shallower waters are shut and they have to go deeper for the fish.  This year, there is an added wrinkle in that they cut the remaining quotas by 50% for what amounts to the rest of the year.  This has kind of left people in the industry scratching their heads as there has been no decline in landings; in fact, they have risen slightly.  This all based on computer models by fucking bureaucrats punching in worst case scenario data despite evidence to the contrary.  It’s what happens when science is replaced by politics as a primary management tool.  What we were seeing in the thousands of lbs. a few weeks ago, now is in the hundreds. But we will embrace the change.  Let the fish spawn in peace.  We will, of course, be offering up alternatives, none of which you will like much.  And like the swallows to San Juan Capistrano and the buzzards to Hinkley, the Petrale will return in the winter. 

Alaskan Halibut shows no signs of weakening.  They started the season with reduced quotas and high prices and here we are mid season with even higher prices.  I’d like to tell you that this just another seasonal lull, but I would be lying.  Not that I am particularly bothered by that, but I am just too lazy to build a case for the lie.  You know, sometimes there’s lots of fish and it’s cheaper, and sometimes there’s less fish and it’s more expensive.  Spin the big wheel.

Now for some really good news:  I am hearing that it should be a good August for Soft Shell Crabs.  Usually, by the 4^th of July, we are putting those things behind us for another year.  Often they make a minor comeback in late summer that we try to ignore.  This year, if they get reasonable enough, we will re-visit them, albeit reluctantly.  You already know how I feel about them, so it’s probably best if you don’t bring it up.

Good news, bad news.  We get our 4 days of California King Salmon. They can fish from July 1 through July 4^th.   Sharp-eyed industry veterans like myself note that this is one fucked up time to be offering another expensive salmon.  July 4^th just might rival Thanksgiving for the title of “least likely to eat seafood” holiday.  Take light demand and couple it with ideal fishing weather along the entire west coast and you have a recipe for “so what?”    By the end of the week, quality troll King Salmon from British Columbia down to Oregon will likely be at prices not seen since last summer.  Like most fishermen, ours are optimists.  If they weren’t, they probably couldn’t get out of bed in the morning.  But I have heard some downright delusional optimistic price fantasies regarding these four days of fishing.  Let me just ask you, the consumer:  Would you pay $14/lb. for Local King Salmon when troll kings from everywhere else are available for $8?  Before everyone starts raising their pitch forks and calling for my unceremonious removal, you need to know that I think California King Salmon are special.  I really do.  I would rather eat that particular fish caught by my favorite fisher-people than just about anything else.  But we are not talking about what I like.  We are talking about what we can sell.  Part of the sustainability equation requires that we (you and I) stay in business another day.  One thing’s for sure, there is nothing like a fisherman having 800 lbs. of fish he/she can’t sell to pummel them into reasonableness.

But wait, I’m not done yet.  In an almost unprecedented act of stupidity, the Monterey Bay Aquarium gendarme has put California and Oregon Troll King Salmon on their “avoid” list.  This shit is crazy.  I mean crazy.  The season has been closed for 2 years and now we get a few days of fishing and we’re supposed to blindly “avoid” these fish?  Because of low numbers and by catch?  Fuck yeah, the numbers are low.  They haven’t fished in 2 years.  The numbers are zero.  Zero.  Nada.  And by-catch?  I have absolutely no idea what by-catch they could be referring to.  I have in front of me the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s handy little “let me think for you” card from 2007 which lists wild-caught salmon from California and Oregon as a “good alternative”. 2007 was the last time we had anything close to a regular salmon season.  This is not unlike Goldman Saks having a “buy” rating on Washington Mutual at $40/share, and then downgrading it to sell when it hit 13 cents.  Come to think of it, maybe I will pay whatever the fishermen ask as a “fuck you” to our friends in Monterey.  Over the years, I have not always agreed with these guys, but have always respected their mission.  I have put them in the category of “it’s better to approximately right then precisely wrong”.  Well, they just crossed over to precisely wrong.

An associate of mine and I were musing the other day about the salmon hatcheries on the west coast.  The irony being that depending on what fishery and what estimate you like, anywhere from 50 to 90% of the “wild” salmon caught actually originate from a hatchery.   I don’t want to start any trouble or anything but does anyone else think it’s funny that our west coast symbol of wild-caught fish, the King Salmon, is dependant on aquaculture?  And this is nothing new.  It’s been going on for years as a feeble substitute for actual resource management.  Dam the rivers, divert the water, who cares?  We will just release more salmon smolt from the farms, uh, I mean hatcheries.  I just love the semantic double-speak.  In Alaska, aquaculture for human consumption is against the law, but hatcheries are not.  I will let you have your own fun with that.  I’m getting cranky. 

Lastly, did any of you catch the New York Times article this past Sunday titled “Tuna’s End” by Paul Greenberg?  It’s not news here that we really shouldn’t be eating Atlantic Bluefin Tuna.  Really, I can’t think of any defense for the harvesting of these either for immediate consumption or the juveniles to stock the ranches.  I particularly enjoyed the de-bunking of the tradition/cultural defense for Japanese consumption.  But that’s not why I bring this up.  The most interesting part of the article to me was about half way through it when he talks about Kona Kampachi.  Kona Kampachi, while a great fish in it’s own right, isn’t really a fish so much as a brand.  It’s an open ocean farmed Jack related to Hamachi that is damn good, but a brand none the less.  I know those guys, and they have struggled mightily with their marketing, from a Montgomery Street address to an army of well dressed nationwide salespeople, and they have hit wall after wall.  Until Sunday, that is.  I am not implying that anything nefarious occurred, but I will say that all their efforts at marketing their product pale to a cover story in the Sunday Times magazine that mentions them by name.  Damn, I’m jealous.  But they still won’t have any fish to sell until August.  Maybe.  And I bet they will cost more now. 

Happy 4^th of July.  We will be closed on Monday July 5^th because it’s the right thing to do.  God bless Johnny Appleseed.

I am no longer making any bold proclamations about the wild salmon market, as I am tired of being wrong.  Everybody has been very kind about not pointing that out to me, but I know, and I have to live with myself.  And that’s hard enough, even under the best of conditions.  So here is what is actually happening as opposed to what I think will happen:  This week has brought a very slight softening in the king salmon market.  Troll caught fish are coming in from Oregon, Washington, and Alaska.  The price will probably tick down again by the end of the week.  The Taku River gave us a few fish, but mostly we got Ivories from there which remain the best value in a wild king salmon.  What I like about these Taku River Ivory Kings is they tend to be true ivories, not those bullshit pale fish they call ivories in Washington. The Bella Coola River (I just like saying that) should be producing more soon as well.  The Copper River Scam continues with stupendously high priced fish that really are no better than some of the river systems with less pronounceable names.  That is one of the greatest marketing coups of the seafood world.  I only wish that I was clever enough to have taken just another net caught river fish and branded it so effectively.  Anyways, Sockeyes are starting to creep into our crosshairs, with downward pressure on those prices as well.  It’s still a bit cheaper to buy troll Kings from Oregon or Washington than a Sockeye from Alaska.  It’s funny, but our market down here regards Sockeye as a 2^nd or 3^rd best salmon, something to use only because it’s too cheap to resist, while our culinary brethren in the Northwest regard it as its own fetish item and its pricing tracks completely separate from the King market.  Sockeyes tend to run in that 4-7 lb. range, so they can be a hard sell to people who associate high quality wild salmon with size.  I do think that by the 4^th of July, or shortly thereafter, they will be our wild fish of choice, so you may want to start to readjust your thinking now.  Unless of course I’m wrong.  

California White Bass season gets into full swing right about now.  The prices started coming down over the weekend in anticipation of bunches of fish showing up.  By the end of this week we should be seeing lots of really nice fish at reasonable prices (whatever that means).  These are hook and line fish, and if you are so inclined, inquire about vessel names and your peppy sales rep will be happy to make one up for you.  Along with the White Bass, we can expect Yellowtail Jack and some Spot Prawns in the mix.  And can Local Albacore be far behind?  I can hardly wait.  That possibly is about my favorite fish on this mess of a planet.

Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but it has been motherfucking windy out there.  There is an inverse weather equation that happens in the summer here.  When it’s really nice and hot inland, it’s blowing savage outside, and when we are socked in with the inversion layer, it’s calm on the water.  Well, my weekend in the Bay Area was hotter than, well, choose your favorite obscene metaphor.  Which of course meant it was very windy on the high seas.  Boats in from Bellingham to Santa Cruz.  What this means is you can pretty much forget about Petrale this week.  That mid-water trawl business tends to get really fucked up in this weather.  The weather is already changing, but it will be Thursday until it gets fishable and that means Saturday or Sunday until any fish is unloaded.  But we will be offering some kind of second rate sub standard substitute that will serve to piss you off since you don’t look at the product list and see that it’s not available anyway.

Speaking of Santa Cruz, there has been an end of the season catch on Dungeness Crabs down there.  Not sure why, but they are rolling in and I just got off the phone with the buyer down there and lo and behold, prices are coming down just a bit.  Now that there is about 20 minutes left to the season.  Better late than never.

Six weeks have gone by and there is still oil spewing from a hole a mile underwater into the Gulf of Mexico with no end in sight.  I hate to be an alarmist or anything, but really, at this point, anything could happen.  As the spill creeps east toward Florida, the oil could be pulled into the Loop Current which means all bad for the Florida Keys, and then from there could make its way in to the Gulf Stream and then up the Eastern Seaboard.  And let’s not speak of hurricanes.  No one knows what havoc that could wreak. This is all of course, worst case scenario, but so far, the worst is what we have come to expect, so why not go all in?  So there is much hand wringing and fund raising and the like going on for all the Gulf fishermen, as people ask “what can we do to help the poor people who ply their livings from the Gulf?”   There is one thing you can do that will make an immediate difference in their lives:  BUY THEIR MOTHERFUCKING PRODUCTS! Really.  Right now, 25% of the Gulf is shut down.  That leaves 75% of a very large body of water open.  We are seeing sales of Louisiana Shrimp off by as much as 50% over safety concerns.  I understand that no one wants to have to explain to a concerned public that the shrimp they are serving are wholesome and safe, but they are probably safer than ever before, as the region comes under closer scrutiny.  And I really am not telling you this because I need to sell more shrimp.  To me, it’s a zero sum game:  if you’re not buying shrimp from me, you are probably buying another seafood item that I am carrying.  But to a Gulf shrimper, there is no other item.  If you are not buying them, he/she has no market for their product, and that ultimately means no income derived.  So fishermen relief?  Yeah, I’m all for it.  Put fresh Gulf Shrimp on your menu.  “If you give a man a shrimp, he will eat for a day, if you buy his shrimp, he’ll buy beer with the money and boost the local economy.”  Ghandi said that, I think. 

Arctic Char from Iceland seems to cycling down as they get into a younger generation of fish.  This is typical of most farms when they transition from one generation to another.  Rather than buy smaller and smaller fish, we will give it a pass until the fish mature a bit.  This could be 2 weeks or 2 months depending on whichever particular lie I am buying into at the time.  What I am really hoping for is that our domestic Arctic Char farm, Cascade Aqua, will be back on line by mid-July.  These are the same folks who are farming the Steelhead, which coincidentally is an excellent substitute for the Char.  Aside from being a superior product to the rather anemic Char from Iceland, their proximity to us makes for a lesser carbon footprint.  My mother used to beat me senseless if I tracked carbon into the house.  I guess that explains a lot.

And while on the subject of insanely cool aquacultured fish, these McFarland Springs trout are pretty bitchin’.  These are farmed in Lassen County and are the product of the good folks at 2byC in collaboration with American Trout Company.  What they have done is contract with the owner of the farm to buy all of the production while supplying the feed that meets their requirements for sustainability.  This means a 97% vegetarian feed with a conversion ratio that is substantially lower than other farmed trouts.  The translation is that less fish is used in the feed than is produced in the final product.  My most accounts, that’s a good thing.   And they taste good too.

The shrimp market is going kinda nutty.  To some extent, it’s predictable, what with the oil spill and all.  But the problems are bigger than just a few tar balls washing up on the Redneck Riviera, but it does serve to exacerbate a pre-existing condition.  To start with, the Black Tiger Shrimp market has all but ground to a halt.  What with the rotten global economy and all, smaller sizes of imported Black Tigers (and not coincidentally cheaper) became much more popular, so those forward thinking farms overharvested the smaller shrimp which effectively sacrificed a generation of larger shrimp.  As well, in Vietnam, where much of the Tiger Shrimp are farmed, they had an unusually rough winter which caused higher than normal mortality.  In Thailand, they were dealing with white-spot disease (not sure what this is, but I think I was vaccinated when I was a kid) in their broodstock, and in Bangladesh, they were off line for about a year while working through the detection of some antibiotic residue or some such shit.  All this created an upside down shrimp market this past winter where frozen wild white shrimp were actually cheaper than farm raised tiger shrimp.  But as things have a habit of doing, they are changing.  In the midst of all this, the U.S. State Department (that’s us) de-certified wild Mexican Shrimp because they found some vessels not using the required turtle excluder devices that are so popular with the kids these days.  So effective April 20^th of this year, there is an embargo on wild Mexican Shrimp caught after that date.  I suspect they will get this all worked by late summer when the new season kicks in, but for right now it all adds up to “way fucked up”.   Oh yeah, and then there’s the oil spill.  So far, as last reported, the fresh Louisiana Shrimp we are getting, are relatively unaffected by the spill, as they are fishing well west of it.  I say “relatively” because they are still getting shrimp, but they have to go a bit farther to get them.  Prices are creeping upward as they approach Texas.  Can’t say as though I blame them.  I would want more money if I had to get close to East Texas too.  Particularly if I was studying revisionist history in the public schools, but I’ll save that for another day. 

In unrelated shrimp news, the Laughing Bird Caribbean Shrimp folks down in Belize are shutting down for a month or two of something or other. Maintenance?  Spring cleaning?  I forget, but it doesn’t really matter, because after this week we won’t have the product until I forget when.  Maybe I should actually read those press releases.

Alaskan Halibut shows no signs of reasonableness yet.  Landings have been way off, with the vast majority of the fish landed being 10-20’s.  Prices have stayed high.  Can’t find any good news there, except that they continue to fish True Cod.  I have never seen True Cod go this deep into halibut season.  We should see that fish well into June they are telling me.

And lastly, since I know that no one reads this thing, I have to cop to being way wrong on Wild King Salmon.  My bold proclamations regarding the availability and price had barely left my lips, or my keyboard, when the price started to climb again.  It’s early in the season, so anything can happen, but like the proverbial broken clock, I have to be right twice a day.  I had probably used my two times up by then.

With Mother’s Day is behind, summer unfolds ahead of us like U.S. 50 across the Nevada Desert.   I can almost see August if I squint real hard.  I’m not sure, but I think things are kind of looking a little better out there.  I am almost afraid to say so, but there, I did it.  But things will likely never be the same, not that they ever were.  We just get attached to a certain set of circumstances and start to believe that that is they it always was and is meant to be.  Speaking of how it was meant to be, here is what the coming week might hold:

Big wind, no crab.   Little wind, no crab.  No wind, no crab.  The local guys have all but hung it up for the year.  The season doesn’t technically end until late June, but they’s just burning fuel going out there and pulling in 174 lbs of crab.  Even at today’s prices, there is no there there.  And we are starting to see upward creep in the prices of crabmeat.  Even though live crabs and crabmeat have such a price disconnect they at times seem like they are not products of the same creature.  I probably shouldn’t tell you why, but I can’t resist.  It’s because this time of year, and throughout the summer and into the fall, practically all of the “fresh” Dungeness Crabmeat is pulled from frozen sections that are put up in the winter when product is plentiful and cheap.  People will jump up and down screaming and swearing that their crabmeat is fresh all summer, but it’s total bullshit.  You need look no further than the price of crabmeat.  If it tracked the live market, meat would be $29.00/lb right now.  Now that’s not really as bad as it sounds.  There are sections that are so damn good, that even a trained professional such as myself can barely tell the difference.  And it guarantees a certain stability in pricing and availability throughout various seasons as well as adverse weather.  But sometimes, they just plain suck.  Overbrined, watery, fishy tasting are all hallmarks of poorly handled frozen sections.  And even the best packers fall down on occasion.  I fear that this summer will be very tough for quality crabmeat, as upward pricing pressure is already happening.  That means that by July, they will be scraping the bottom of the proverbial barrel as product runs short.  What’s a chef to do?  Go east young man.  The Maine Jonah Crabmeat does not fall prey to the same shenanigans.  It is a byproduct of the offshore lobster fishery pretty much all year round.  While they don’t quite get the tonnage we see on the West Coast, we seem to have a fairly consistent supply, and at least historically, price stability.  It’s a finer flake crabmeat than Dungeness, but is very comparable in terms of flavor and quality.  It is also known by its bullshit marketing term “peekytoe crabmeat”.   I am now officially a traitor to my own people.

They told us they were coming, and we waited and waited, and now they are here.  By this weekend, there should be major tonnage of King Salmon coming down from the Columbia River system.  These are all net caught, despite what some might tell you. Look for the tell-tale net marks around the head and upper body.  Net fish does not necessarily mean unsustainable, though.  This is a very healthy, well managed fishery.  As well, this spring run is generally very high quality, quite unlike the fish we see in the fall.  With Atlantic Salmon continuing their upward price march, there will be little reason to not be using these wild kings by next week.       

And lastly, but not leastly, we got ourselves some locally caught Anchovies showing up.  Right now we are getting the famous 2byC brand ‘o fish caught by Sean Hodges on the F/V Mya Nicole.   This is the same fisherman that was getting the sardines last late fall/early winter and deserves props for bringing us a local sustainable harvested product.  Damn good, they are.

I could start everyone of these blogs with the sentence “I have never seen anything like the blah blah blah market” and it would be true.  I forget which baseball announcer used to say “If you come out to the ballpark everyday, you are guaranteed to see something you have never seen before”  or something sort of like that.  Which is what I particularly like about my job.  I’d like to be more specific, but my mother might be reading this.

That pesky little oil spill certainly turned into a bit of problem.  If it makes you feel any better, the shrimp we are getting from Louisiana come from west of where the spill seems to be heading.  It appears that the slick is more problematic for eastern Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and the western part of the Florida panhandle.  “Problematic” understates the issue.  Catastrophic is more like it.  This is an area that has only begun to recover from Hurricane Katrina, it remains to be seen how much this ghost of a fishery can truly ever recover from.  It affects us little with the restrictions on Groupers and Snappers in the gulf, and the health related issues of gulf oysters as perceived in California, but make no mistake about it, it could well be us.  But since people will ask, here is the skinny on the items we are carrying from the Gulf of Mexico:  Louisiana Shrimp are coming from Atchafalaya River Basin to the west of the Mississippi River Delta, well out of the path of the slick.  Rock Shrimp is fished in the open waters of the Gulf of Mexico, and landed on the southern gulf coast of Florida, again out of harms way.  Stone Crab Claws are a near-coast fishery on both the west and east coasts of the Florida peninsula, which so far is unaffected.

I wish I knew why the Sardines started sucking so bad, but they have.  Very small and very soft, with lots of broken bellies.  We are looking for another source from another galaxy where the sardines are always large, firm and fat, and fair maidens pull those little tiny bones from the fillets.  I’ll let you know how that works out for us, but in the meantime, we are giving them a rest for a minute, but I am thinking that by the weekend, we will have this worked out.

Soft Shell Crabs are starting up this week.  These are the genuine item from the Chesapeake Bay, packed live-ish, delivered fresh.  Some of you may recall my years of ranting about the outsized expectations associated with this particular product.  I will try to be less offensive than in years past, but my general sentiment has not changed:  these are animals that have just shed their ecto-skeleton, are put in a box, trucked to the Baltimore or Washington DC airport and then flown 3000 miles where they are picked up by our truck, brought to our plant, re-packed before they are shipped to you.  If you are from the Chesapeake area, they may not be quite as lively as you remember them “back home”.  Don’t make me take off my belt.  

Locally speaking, this week is looking pretty dicey, what with all that wind.  “But the weather has been beautiful”, you say, and damn right it has.  But those lovely clear skies and balmy temperature we have been enjoying generally mean big wind and rough seas offshore.  It’s expected to blow 20-30 knots (for you landlubbers, that stands for nautical mile) all week.   This means groundfish will be tight.  And Dungeness Crabs.  I expect little on Rockfish, and nothing on flatfish.  Forget about Sand Dabs and Petrale.  For Soles, our hope likely will lie with our friends on the East Coast.  That is, if we still have any friends on the East Coast.  Or possibly small Fluke from southern California.  Stay tuned.

In the unintended consequences column, we have Smoked Salmon.  It never even dawned on me that due to the rising price of the raw materials (this is the place that more tech savvy folk would insert a hyperlink to last week’s blog), the price of the finished smoked salmon is going up too.  Imagine my surprise.  Consider yourself informed. 

And remember, this weekend is Mother’s Day.  If your partner happens to be a mother, she counts, too.  I learned this the hard way.

April 26, 2010

Fish Stories

This week promises to bring some good news from the European front.  The operative word is “some”.  Finally, freight should start to move as the backlog of happy travelers stuck in airports across the continent start to work their weary ass’s home.  What does it all mean?  It means there is relief for Scottish Salmon, and hopefully this will spill over into other areas of the farmed salmon world.  This couldn’t have come at a worse time, as the salmon farms in British Columbia struggled with their own supply problems.  A couple of major farms are off line for up to a month so you take a situation with less British Columbia Atlantics on the market and subtract all the Scottish and Norwegian product and you get upward momentum in pricing that may take a few weeks to correct. Funny thing about Economics 101, but the global supplies shrank; demand rose, and are you ready for this?  Prices went up too.  Don’t yell at me.  It’s like bitching at your neighborhood gas station attendant.  But relief is around the corner, it just may be a really long block.  Prices on all farmed salmon were moving upward anyway, it’s just those motherfucking Icelanders gave it the brutal shove it needed.  Haven’t they done enough to damage the world already?  And is it okay to speak disparagingly of Iceland?  The funny thing about all this (if you weren’t stuck in a European airport) is that the airports in Iceland never closed, as is evidenced by the uninterrupted supply of Arctic Char from that country.  So hopefully, by the end of the week, we will be more or less back to normal on the supply side of Scottish Salmon, as well as other adversely affected European product like Branzino and Dorade.  At least regarding availability.  Prices are still expected to rise, at least in the short term, on farmed salmon from everywhere.

In other salmon news, is anyone else wondering where this huge biomass of salmon is that was supposed to hit the Columbia River system this spring?  All the really smart people were saying that this was supposed to be the largest landings since 1936 or some shit.  All I see is fish at $15 per lb.  That should change soon. British Columbia opens for trolls this week, but I am often not too impressed with the grading or the handling of the fish.  Depends where they are caught and how long they travel.  Southeast Alaska looks to be a better bet, at least early in the week, but they are none too shy about asking for some righteous shekels for their fish.   And we will pay them, too.  Then you have a bit of an opener in Washington and Northern Oregon later this week, with pricing a complete mystery.  What this all points to, in my opinion (that means a complete fucking guess) is that prices will start to go down around the end of this week.  There will not be a lot of fish from anywhere, but there will be a little from everywhere, or so it appears.

Ahh, Alaska.  The True Cod which we have so come to rely on during the winter should be drying up soon.  In fact, this is pretty late for it.  Usually it is done by the time halibut opens, but more and more boats are saving their halibut quotas for more opportune market conditions so they continue to fish cod in the meantime.  That’s okay with us, as the fish, which used to just a substitute for our local groundfish has developed quite a following of its own.  And rightfully so.  Look to work in Canadian Ling Cod, East Coast Pollock, or Local Rock Cod in the weeks to come.  Alaskan Halibut promises to remain fairly tight this year, what with the quota cut by as much as 20% in some areas.  Also, freezers have been empty of last year’s production since December, so there is nothing to put downward pressure on price short of some really good fishing weather.  Of course, all this could have changed by the time you read this.

Local Halibut remains a bit dicey.  It’s too early in the season for the hook and line guys, and the weather has made the trawl fish somewhat inconsistent.  Southern California managed to fill some of the void, but that seems to have slowed down a bit.  Hang in there, though, as we are close to the late spring/early summer days when there is truly local line caught halibut everywhere.  While you are waiting, you can use the Alaskan model, while a bit more money, it’s at least steadily available. 

Lastly, today is my brother’s birthday.  He is 51.  His name is Mike.