- We're out in the Gulf of Alaska
catching Copper River King Salmon,
the rarest, most expensive salmon in the entire world.
Alaskan salmon has slowly become the favorite salmon
amongst chefs and restaurants.
And in the category of Alaskan salmon,
the fish coming from Copper River
are considered the best and the fattiest.
In order to understand why people say it's the best,
you have to understand the salmon spawning process.
Salmon are actually born in fresh water at high elevations
where they spend a few years before swimming down
into the ocean, where they live for two to seven years,
depending on species.
When they decided it's time to have babies,
they swim up to 300 miles upstream
in search of their birthplace.
In preparation for their athletic journey,
they stop eating and rely entirely on their fat reserves,
which means the longer the distance they have to travel,
the more fat they store.
So the reason Copper River fish are touted as the best
is because their journey home is said to be the longest.
This is where Alaskan fishermen come in.
They are intercepting these fish as they head home to spawn.
That is when they're fattiest and at their highest value.
There are two main styles of catching salmon in Alaska.
Early in the season, they use gill nets,
which is a gentler method for the higher-priced sockeyes
and king salmon.
Later in the season, they use seine nets,
which actually use a second boat to encircle fish
and catch way more in bulk.
So, today we're at Copper River fishing with Kyle Lee
a fisherman who has started a distribution business
where he uses a network of fishermen, a processing plant,
and flash freezing techniques to get the highest quality
salmon he can to chefs and home consumers alike.
(upbeat banjo music)
So, this is maybe a ridiculous question,
but why don't we just like go right
to the mouth of the Copper River and then net
and just trap them off, stop them all from going in.
- It's a great question, but the reason why
we can't do that is because we wanna give the fish
a fair chance.
So Fish and Game, they set boundaries for us.
So we can't fish that high up cause you're right,
if we just went to the mouth and just shut it off,
nothing would get by us.
- Right.
- And the fish don't have a fair chance.
And so that's why we're restricted
to certain areas of where we can and can't fish.
- Part of the game now is finding the places
where there's gonna be tons of fish like,
that are forced to pass by you.
- Yeah.
Yeah, they're forced into this, you know,
more narrow channel.
From here, we're gonna pull up to the beach.
Once I hit the sand, I'll give you the nod.
Then you're gonna throw the buoy on the shoreline.
- Aye, aye Captain.
This is called the lead line,
which is at the bottom of the net.
- Yep.
- All right, so this is top of the net, bottom of the net.
- Yeah, exactly.
- Cool.
- So, throughout the net, we have corks that float
and the leadline so at the bottom, so it spreads.
- Okay.
- Yep.
- That one's good.
Just so it's barely in the water, you're gonna hold this.
And when I tell you to, you're gonna throw it.
- Throw it throw it?
- Yeah.
- Okay.
- I'll let you know when.
- [Dan] The goal here is to throw the buoy as close
to the beach without actually landing on the beach
because that would cut away any chance
for the fish to escape and be a Fish and Game violation.
Can I help it?
- [Kyle] Yep.
Just like that, just pull it out.
Perfect, good.
- [Dan] Whoa, crazy, what's that water doing?
- [Kyle] It's crazy, it pulls it out
away from the net faster too.
- [Dan] The challenge with setting the net is getting it
out as quickly as possible, as straight as possible.
- When I first started I had a hard time doing was,
you know, being able to throw the buoy out
and set the net out in a, you know, fast enough
to maintain the shape.
Like right now it's a really nice day
so you don't have a lot of current.
When the tide is ripping, you have to be really fast.
Otherwise, by the time you're done setting your net,
you're already so outta shape.
And then you gotta pick up and redo it.
And it's just a lot of waste of time.
Now we're just constantly watching, like,
just pay attention to the course,
like when a fish hits, you know,
it'll like start bobbing like crazy.
So that's how we know like, okay,
there's fish coming our way
or like there's fish in this area.
- So now I guess we just watch.
- Yeah, just watch.
Seal, and so that's what you gotta be careful of.
'Cause when you do, you know, catch like one fish,
those seals will come up and they'll pick your net.
I mean, we're all, everyone out here is trying to catch fish
including the seals and sea lions.
- So what do you typically do if you're here
just waiting, just wait and watch?
- Watching the net.
- So you really just watch you watch this net
for like an hour.
- Nonstop all day.
You know, if you see a group of fish hit,
depending on the situation, but usually they run in groups,
right and if you see one fish hit,
we would untie we'd detach from this net
and then we'd run our boat down the line,
down the net and so it scares the rest of the school
into the net and so something like that,
just paying attention makes a huge difference.
'Cause that can mean from like catching two or three fish
to a school of 20.
- [Dan] With no luck after about an hour,
we decided to pick the net and head to deeper waters.
- Some days you get 'em, some days you don't.
- [Dan] We ended up moving the boat
and trying out three different spots.
And by the time we pulled the net out of the last one,
hope had almost entirely run out.
Things weren't looking good though.
The tide was rising and none of the other fishermen
in the area had caught anything.
If he can't get a bunch of fish,
then clearly they weren't out here to be caught.
We decided to give one more final spot a try.
(boat motor hums)
- [Kyle] I realized that the secret to fishing
is just ruthless optimism.
- So if you had like, let's say you were--
- What was that, a seal?
- I don't think so
- Right, so we'll yeah, we'll run the net.
We're gonna detach and we'll we'll run the net.
- Okay so we think we saw something over there.
So you're just dropping the net down here.
- Yep so it holds its shape.
And then we're gonna try to
- Do you think that was a fish too, right?
- Yeah.
Definitely something.
(boat motor hums)
(suspenseful music)
Whoa!
(beep)
You guys good?
- [Dan] So now you kind of gotta wait for it
to calm down a little bit
before you can start reading them again.
- [Kyle] Yeah, well usually if you run 'em in,
you'd be able to tell.
It'd be bobbing pretty aggressively.
- It was a light, it felt, it was definitely a tail.
It was like a light tail.
Dude, I can't imagine, this is so cool.
- Boom, there look in the corner.
There he is, we got him.
F*** yeah.
- Wait, okay, so.
- See, that's right in the hook.
Exactly what we talk about.
So we scared him, but he felt the net.
So he ran all the way down
and because we had that hook, he got stuck in the corner.
See it?
See how the corks are bobbing?
- Yeah, yeah.
Holy s*** that's cool.
But that's just one fish, right?
- Yeah.
(Dan cackling)
- See, ya got one.
So if you hadn't shuffled over,
you probably wouldn't have gotten him, right?
- Probably not.
You can grab the buoy.
You're gonna pull it up
and clip this carabiner into the net.
- [Dan] Okay, got it.
- You got it?
So we'll take the buoy off.
- Okay.
- Get under it.
Get under it.
- [Dan] Okay.
- [Kyle] Good.
Okay, it's a red.
- [Dan] And now what
- [Kyle] Still got one.
All right, nice.
Yeah, it's a nice red, we didn't get skunked, okay.
- [Dan] We didn't get skunked.
- We didn't get skunked.
All right so the next part, to pick the net,
the proper way to do it is you start at the cork line.
- Yeah.
- And you shuffle.
And so you take like one mash at a time until it's slowly...
- [Dan] You find the fish out.
- But like, it just keeps it organized
so you're not more tangled.
So like you just shuffle till you find the fish.
- [Dan] Yep.
- And then now that most of his body's out,
you take it like that.
So he is dangled.
- [Dan] Yeah.
- And when you shimmy, it brings it all the way up.
- [Dan] Okay.
- [Kyle] It shimmies it up his body.
(fish thuds)
- [Dan] And then what do we do?
- [Kyle] You pop a gill like this?
- [Dan] Yeah.
- [Kyle] And then we let him bleed out.
- [Dan] Bleed out.
- [Kyle] It's really important
that the fish are properly slushed, you know,
you don't wanna put 'em directly on ice.
You know, you see that a lot,
but the temperature difference is too great.
You know 'cause like one side of the fish
is directly on the ice where the internal's not
and it'll cause gaping in the meat.
So, that's when you start to lose quality.
And that's why it's so important for the fishermen
to take care of it so that, you know, the end product
when the consumer gets, is in.
- From a commercial fishing perspective,
this was a huge bust of a day.
The cost of the fuel and resources just to get out
to the fishing zone is more than a thousand dollars.
But for our purposes, it was really cool to see the process
that these fishermen go to preserve the quality
of these fish.
Back at Cordova Harbor, we probably don't need the crane.
So I just wanted to see
how the kind of commercial process works.
- [Kyle] So go ahead, open the hatch and put it to the side.
- Okay.
- [Kyle] Yep and then yeah, clip in those.
Yeah, those handles and you got one more, yeah.
- Now armed with our one fish,
we're going to the processing facility to see how
these fish get cleaned and sent out.
All right we're at 60 North.
This is your processing facility
or the one that you've hired to process your fish.
- Yep.
- They're going through a load of black cod right now.
And then we're gonna see the,
then we're gonna see
some of your commercial salmon come through.
- Yeah exactly.
- Oh, here we go.
Oh my God, this is happening.
This is a half tote of cod right now.
Because this facility only processes one fish at once.
We had to wait for them to get through
this big load of black cod.
Black cod is processed using a machine
that splits it in half.
The bones are then cleaned by hand,
it's portioned, and then vacuum-packed.
Finally, once they were done the black cod,
they turn the facility over and get ready for salmon.
This happened to be an order that was going out
through Kyle's company, Alaskan Salmon.
The salmon is all processed by hand.
It is sliced, cleaned, portioned, and vacuum-packed
just like the cod.
The tricky part of this stage is getting the salmon
and cod processed as quickly as possible
after it comes off the boat.
So it can be flash-frozen right away
to protect all of its freshness.
It felt like the only way to end the day would be
to take our single sockeye salmon that we caught
and bring it over to a friend's house to grill it up
and eat it.
- Oh my God.
That's so good.
- Thank you so much for bringing me out
and showing me the operations.
Hope you catch a few more fish next time you go out
on your own.
- [Kyle] Absolutely, it was our pleasure to have you.
Thank you.
(upbeat music)