2010 Seafood Case
SilverT
2010-05-19 01:43:57
I thought folks might like to know the posted price in the local seafood case for Copper River king salmon is $48.99 / lb. I have heard of higher local prices, but I saw this one with my own eyes. Perhaps this is the result of some excellent marketing.
The week before last fresh alaska king salmon was $26 / lb. When the Columbia River fish came in they sold for between $18.99 and $26.99 / lb. fresh.
salmon4u
2010-05-19 01:56:53
Ha!!! I don't imagine we'll get any replies to that post on here from SPC, or other buyers.
salmon4u
2010-05-19 02:03:22
I'm down vacationing in Texas right now. I went to the statewide BBQ cookoff. 100's of contestants from the state, Rachel Ray, the Food Network, etc. Wow! Super good steaks, pork, chicken.... I mentioned BBQ Alaska king salmon to many contestants and there mouths were watering begging me for some.. hmmm???
yak2you2
2010-05-19 03:08:51
Interesting, I haven't looked lately, I wonder what the ex-vessel price is in Cordova? Probably about 7-8.00 per lb., which is a gillnet fish, sold in the round, going for more than what are troll price was a couple of week a ago.
Even those poor guys are getting belly robbed. Who's absorbing the other 40 bucks per lb.???? An even better question is, who out there is buying these salmon at bluefin prices? Everyone in Seattle must be rich! I know I can't afford to eat food that costs 50 bucks per lb.
Crabman
2010-05-19 03:18:29
The Seattle area news was running a piece that had footage of the plane bringing in the first fish of the year to the city. Good marketing indeed.
Salty
2010-05-20 17:03:13
Here is an excerpt of some correspondence between Laine Welch of Alaska's Fish Radio and I after she had done a story promoting the Copper River fishery as the "Official" start of the Alaska salmon season.
I hear you and love your show and know you give us trollers more than a fair share of your coverage.
Nevertheless it irks me no end that someone decided that Copper River Kings marked the "official" start of Alaska's salmon season. Who decided that piece of nonsense, the legislature by resolution, ASMI, by decree, or Copper River gillnetters? I am sure, since you state it so assuredly, that it must be so but that still doesn't make it right.
We caught over 40,000 kings this winter season, the majority in 2010, and some other salmon fishery is the "official" start of Alaska's salmon season?
I would suggest wording that marks the Copper River gillnet fishery as the first Alaska "net" or "river" salmon fishery of the season. And I would really like you to use your amazing reporting ability to find out why Copper River gets to be the "official" start of the Alaska salmon season when Alaska Trollers have already produced thousands of the highest quality Alaska wild salmon this year. Sounds like a good story to me.
I was out fishing last week out of Raven Radio range or I probably would have caught it. "Unofficially fishing of course."
Please don't think I am irked at you Laine. It is just that we work so hard to protect and promote these wonderful ocean brite spring feeders and then we get relegated to "unofficial" status.
martie55
2010-05-20 17:46:51
I saw she has an article about this, with a mention of you, on her Fish Factor column. I found it on sitnews.com yesterday, I think it's still up.
Salty
2010-05-20 19:57:40
I just checked that out and a personal e-mail from Laine. She does a great job promoting Alaska Seafood.
martie55
2010-05-20 21:10:53
And I see she referred to you as a "high-liner", yet you always tell us otherwise. Stop being so humble. :)
tacorajim
2010-05-21 00:11:40
Here’s a thought.
My daughter Colleen Shannon is a well known DJ. She’s had gigs in 45 countries. A few years ago she hired a publicist for $20K. Suddenly she was on TV shows, garnished articles in the London Times, New York Times, and had offers of gigs to clubs like never before. While it was a blip in her career, she did get her money back from all that exposure.
I saw that Copper River news segment many times a day for 2 days down here in SW Washington on cable TV.
Salty
2010-05-21 04:31:41
Humble? Have you read my posts? While I may have a few character pluses, humility is not among them.
Most of us arrogant enough to try and make a living trolling salmon, when to survive you have to produce much more than average, lack humility. We are confident in our abilities to catch, to maintain a boat, fix almost anything while afloat, manage a crew, take the best care of and get the best deal for our product. We are also a bit smug in that we have figured out how to do this for a living while others pay thousands for the experience.
The genesis of this thread is that we produce the first and best quality Alaska Salmon of the year and what the heck are those river gillnetters doing getting all the hype for the "First Official" wild Alaska salmon of the season. I don't see much humility in that thought.
martie55
2010-05-21 06:38:01
Hopefully you recognized the humble comment as a joke. I totally agree that something is wrong with these Copper River fish getting all the glory. Whatever mechanism they used for markteting these fish really worked. These winter and spring kings that we've been catching have got to be of equal or better quality than fish near their freshwater spawning grounds. I don't have any solutions, but know that these beautiful, ocean caught salmon need to be separated from the rest of the pack in the same manner the Copper River fish have been.
yak2you2
2010-05-21 07:11:30
In a nutshell, their whole marketing strategy for Copper river fish has been based around oil content. They have successfully sold their clients that the length and the cold temperature of the Copper river cause the fish to build up more oil content than all others. To add credence to this, many top of the line chefs swear to it. They say that they can pick out a Copper river king with a blindfold on.
I've been eating salmon my whole life, and I doubt I could tell the difference. To rub salt in the wound, there are many rivers producing salmon that are as long, or longer, and much colder than the Copper, the Alsek river nearby me for one, that get no glory at all.
I bere the PWS crew no ill will what-so-ever, in fact, good on them for showing us all the true potential for good marketing. I just wish the marketing of our troll kings would catch up, and I wish the actual fishermen in all of our fisheries saw more of the end profit than what they do.
If we were competing politicians with a series of one-up television commercials going on, the next step for us would be to have an actual oil content test done on some of our fish, and some of theirs, and come up with some data that shows that most kings' oil content are virtually the same.
That, and Id like to see some of these chefs actually perform the blindfold test, in front of unbiased judges. I bet your average human couldn't pick out indivual species of salmon, let alone tell one king salmon from another, all seasonings being the same.
Salty
2010-05-21 15:46:48
I have actually participated in blind taste tests. Not with Copper River Salmon but with fresh Sitka Sound winter king, fresh BC farmed Chinook, and frozen Washington State river hatchery kings. Everyone involved in the test could tell that the Sitka Sound winter king had better texture, tasted sweeter, and was their first choice. The hatchery king had good texture but was very dry and did not taste as good. The farmed Chinook lacked texture, was mushy in your mouth and tasted blah.
I was misquoted by the reporter from the Wall Street Journal who was desperately trying to find some balance in the story because all the samplers were raving about the difference between "A" and both "B" and "C". A being the Sitka Sound winter Chinook (the taste test was at Fish Expo in November). And B and C being the others. She asked me how I could tell the difference. I said "I could not tell the difference by looking as they were prepared identically. I could not tell which was better until it was in my mouth and I could taste the texture and flavor." All she put in her story was that longtime Alaska Troller, Eric Jordan, "could not tell the difference between the BC farmed and wild Alaska salmon.
I asked the Alaska papers and Laine Welch, who had picked up the story, to do a correction and most did. The Wall Street Journal and all the AP papers who picked up the story did not. Laine and the Sitka Sentinel did a nice story with me about how it felt to be misquoted on the taste of salmon. I have not read that piece of right wing drivel, the Wall Street Journal, since.
Interestingly enough, when I was a volunteer for the ASMI "fishermen in the stores" promotion a few years ago I learned that most consumers who did not eat a lot of salmon preferred the lighter, dryer taste of Alaska keta salmon. And that is what we used in our store promotions where we had a gal with an electric skillet sauteing the salmon.
I suspect that there are a lot of rivers in Alaska with varying fat content in the salmon. Those of us with some experience eating and selling salmon know that the sweetest tasting salmon are the ocean feeders before the fish start developing spawning maturation and the fat goes to the skin color, humped backs, hooked noses, etc. There is also quite a bit of flavor differentiation depending on what the fish are feeding on.
And then there are those white feeder kings which have a higher fat content and an exquisite light sweetness that makes them the favorite of long time SE Trollers who get to sample an amazing variety of stocks in our fishery.
[attachment=0]2007-06-08 17-43-30.JPG[/attachment]
SilverT
2010-05-23 06:06:44
It sure stinks to be misquoted, particularly when it ends up presenting you in the complete opposite position from where you stand on an issue. Nice that some corrected it. The grill pic kills me every time I see it. Sure looks good.
The publicist idea sounds really good. Thinking about taste test targets, chefs were certainly at the top of the list. If they are sold, when the restaurant they operate advertises the product in the menu, trollers get free advertising from a very convincing source and then they get to taste the proof. I suspect my wife was reading chef/cooking magazines in the womb. I know chefs read chefs magazines. How about a few chef magazine advertisements?
I don't think most chefs even know the difference in the quality of what we harvest or the way the fish are handled and processed compared to other fisheries. The best widget ever invented could be constructed in the warehouse next door, but if you don't know it exists, you can't buy one. You certainly can't walk over and say, "hey buddy, tell you what. I'll give you a buck fifty more for your widgets if you will sell some to us. We just cotta have some of them for our supply business. Everybody wants to know where to get them. You seem to be the only source and we are willing to pay!"
tacorajim
2010-05-23 14:22:58
ericv
2010-05-24 19:06:21
This is a classic example of the "Pavlov's Dog Syndrome" that has been been implanted with great success into the typical American consumer. Be it the I-Pads, Cabbage Patch dolls or Sockeye, play it up, set the release date, have limited quantities and the feeding frenzy will take it from there. These are moments that mainstream media loves and they'll run with it. Ring the bell (not the bar type, that's an entirely different syndrome altogether) and the masses will stampede to the site with live breaking news coverage.
This is not entirely wrong if the right approach is used, after all, it's all about selling a product. The product may truly be great or as Neil Young sings so well about; A Piece of Crap. The Copper River sockeye marketing team has evolved and adjusted to target this consumer, it has done a phenomenal job with a good product. You have the empty Alaska Airlines 737 flying into Cordova with camera's rolling, the first loads of fish getting prepped for flight, touch down in Seattle to live coverage into the waiting hands of Chef Willsoakya. That fisheries is the perfect storm for this consumer mentality. There is a long awaited start time with an end target as well. Gillnets allowing adequate initial quantities just by the nature of capture.
So here we are as trollers. We know as Eric and others have relayed via media outlets, that our fisheries truly is the first of the year salmon from Alaska. We know it is of superior quality both in taste, handling and ethical harvesting of these magnificent creatures. Unlike a net, these salmon in most cases, made the fatal decision to go after our gear. There in lays our challenge for traditional marketing as the quantities typically trickle in as opposed to a big market flush. Add to this, by no fault of the public/media, their often sheer ignorance of the different salmon species, knowledge of the gear type for harvest plus the ethics and handling of the salmon harvest simply does not register in their mind. Worst yet, some don't care.
Were to go from here? I'd like to think our day is on the horizon and might be dreaming foolishly that the crime of obscene low dock prices will come to an end. I admire the Copper River gang for their abilities to really promote their product. It isn't cheap, takes time, dedication and adaption to tickle the consumer, I know we can do the same with a different tack. Many trollers coast wide have been diligently working on this challenge, maybe this forum can continue to be the incubating grounds for more ideas with the help of ASMI, direct marketing and others.
Thanks to those of you posting here. I especially appreciate those of you down south who report in, post photos of troll caught salmon in store cases, the prices and appearance, advocating and admonishing those as needed. All of this helps as we need to be a unified front on this. Like many, I'm not sure I can tolerate another year of $2.00/Lb dock price for the absolute finest salmon product world wide.
Be safe, set that depth alarm, don't gouge, lay out a bit more scope and don't whiz on the windward side.
Eric
Salty
2010-05-27 20:39:40
Eric,
What a great post, thank you.
I will follow all your advice, albeit my definitions of being gouged and gouging, like most trollers, are unique. If I am the first boat to put out my gear in Salisbury Sound or wherever, then if I can see you put in your gear I feel "gouged". On the other hand, when I was running float bags, so long as my floats cleared your bows or stabies then you had plenty of room.
The problems on the drags seems to be the differing opinions within these parameters. I have never seen an official definition of appropriate spacing or determination of the various "drags". I guess gentlemen trollers just understand that the guy making the longest tack, and the guy dragging the slowest define the length and speed on the drag.
tacorajim
2010-05-28 00:06:00
Hey Salty,
What's that got to do with Seafood Case 2010? You should maybe start a gouging thread?
salmon4u
2010-05-28 03:39:11
I'll have one of what he's having.. : )
Salty
2010-05-28 04:47:04
A common error of us old salts. We can't stay focused.
mswkickdrum
2010-05-28 05:11:32
This has been on my mind for a long time. The reason Copper River kings are
so pricey is because a bunch of gillnetters up there got together, taxed themselves,
and used that money to pay to market their catch. It it better? no way, and
knowledgeable folks know that but those folks are only a small percentage of
high end fish consumers. Until trollers get together....... I could just
stop there but anyway, until they do, and fund such a campaign it will stay
as it is now. I think SE gillnetters voted NOT to fund such a campain for
themselves. Could trollers? How likely is it that a majority of the license
holders would vote in favor of that. Could you even get a majority of
them to send the vote card back in? The amount of money needed would
be staggering to most. My guess is at least 300,000.
Seeing copper river net fish sell so high had bothered me in quest to
get trolling. At first I thought it was something solvable. Now with
having talked to every troller I can meet, and getting some help and
advice on getting going, I'm starting to realize that if I want good
pay for my fish, I'm going to have to take care of it all myself.
MSW
shakers
2010-05-28 22:54:09
it is all marketing.
in my days as a news reporter i received numerous press releases touting copper river salmon as the best in the world.
be the first! to get the best fish of the year! was the message. the press release is sent to all reporters and media people in the state and beyond. it is paid for the copper river folks who have a spokesperson. the plane landing with fish in seattle is a symbol to mark off the event. in order for news editors to consider something air worthy it must have a "hook" or element that makes it new or current. the spokesperson says good things about the fish and the annual batch of new reporters make an easy fluff story out of it and than go back to taking pictures of tragedies.
Trollers can do the same type of marketing with a little organization. our product is superior.
a quickly killed, bled, dressed and well iced face tastes much better than one the died in a net and was thrown across the deck into a bag; to be cleaned a day or so later.
salmon4u
2010-05-28 23:52:02
I wonder if there's a way to use Copper River's marketing to promote our product as equal or better?
I wouldn't like to be negative about their product, but would think now would be a great time for a highly publicized chef/taste challenge to hit national media, or at least our high sales regional areas? Why isn't this done by our buyers? our Co-ops?, our Seafood Marketing Institute. is it the expense? I'd love to see wild troll salmon advertised. How about ads on the food networks, or how about a taste challenge at Seattle's Pike Place Market?
there's my ideas, I'd pay a portion of my fish sales toward.
mswkickdrum
2010-05-31 03:39:46
You're still up against the same problem. Copper River is all "one". They all tax themselves
to pay for the HUGE marketing/PR/advertising campaign. If you only have "some" of a group
paying in for the campaign then you're considerably handicapped. At that point you're just
making a "brand" of Southeast troll caught salmon. By having the whole fleet in on it, then
all "Southeast troll caught salmon" is the brand. You would need that kind of scale.
The Copper River guys will be VERY AGAINST any change in their status. You could bank
on them upping the ante the minute SE trollers came on the field. So what it took for them to
make it happen is nothing compared to what it's going to take to re-educate the consumers
as to what is "really" the best salmon from Alaska. Especially when it causes knocking someone
off their top of the hill perch. Keep in mind that years and years ago gillnetters from that very
same neighborhood got it through the BOF to stop trollers at Yakutat. They did NOT want trollers
intercepting those fish and picking around in their fishing hole. I could be wrong but I think that's
how it happened, would love Salty to chime in on that so we know for sure. So just a guess but
I'm thinking you'd have to outspend them 2 to 1. I bet that is a HUGE number, AND you'd have
to do it for years. How is Alaska Airlines going to feel? "we've been doing this with these guys
for years, they say they're the best, we have a relationship with them, we don't care if you're right,
you're trying to screw with our deal here......etc" Maybe the fight over "who has the best Alaskan
Wild Salmon?" might help, the media loves a conflict, but overall it would be a major uphill climb.
I'm not up there fishing yet, so I'm nobody and don't count. BUT when I get there, I will be ALL for
a tax on catch to pay for this. Just don't know if it's likely to happen. The fleet seems to be
made up of "go my own way" types.
It’s ludicrous that CR holds the prestige in the marketplace it does. However, they ALL AS
ONE wanted it that way, and as ONE they achieved it. Trollers are probably too spread
out and diverse to cohesively unite like that. You would think the difference in dock
price to retail price of the catch would motivate that.
Salty, could you chime in on how this all could happen in the aspect of the fleet taxing
itself to pay for it like the CR does? How does all that happen and what are your
thoughts on its possibility?
Being a newbie I hope you guys don’t mind me posting.
MSW
Salty
2010-05-31 20:44:19
Great posts. On taxing ourselves and otherwise doing some troll marketing. The best place to pose these questions is with the Alaska Trollers Association ata@gci.net. Dale Kelley posts stuff on this forum and is a very helpful resource.
My friend Howard Pendell managed to get some of our "mitigation" funding over the years dedicated to marketing but the decision by ATA on the recent mitigation for our loss of 15% of the treaty allocation has been to divide the moneys up between infrastructure, enhancement, and a direct payment to trollers.
Investing wisely in marketing, and having enough to make a difference, is a science and art that I know very little about. The other factor is that Alaska troll salmon, while the creme de la creme of Alaska salmon, are such a tiny percentage of Alaska salmon production, which is but a small percentage of worldwide salmon production, which is another tiny percentage of world seafood production which is increasingly a farmed product.
Then you factor in that we do not manage Alaska's salmon harvest for quality or marketing, but a complex mix of historical and sociological traditions, and it is a wonder we do as well as we do. For example, one of the biggest eating out events of the year is mothers day. Do we manage or develop openings in SE to provide fresh troll caught Chinook for this event? Another example of a problem is the 4th of July which our summer opening on the 1st is too late to really take advantage of. Another problem is 6-8 day first of July openings which tempt us to keep fishing the whole opening and thus delivering 7-10 day old fish. Another is this weekend, memorial day, a known barbeque weekend. The fish are thick on the coast right now. A one or two day opening from Dixon Entrance to Yakutat and corresponding market planning and promotions could add $$ thousands to the value of SE troll Chinook harvest.
I have suggested these type of "creative" season planning for years with very little success for a whole variety of reasons. The primary one being that a large percentage of the troll fleet would rather troll part time (July and August) because they have other jobs, fishing seasons, etc. and don't want the amount of kings available in that time period to be continually reallocated to the relative minority of trollers who fish all year. It is a legitimate argument from the perspective of the part time troller, which happens to be the majority of the SE fleet.
Another problem is that a good percentage of the troll fleet have their own marketing operations through the Co-op or their freezer/processor operations. I am not sure they would see the benefit of an additional tax to benefit those not involved.
This is not meant to discourage marketing investment and ideas but to provide an answer based on my history in troll politics. I hope this helps.
tacorajim
2010-06-01 01:26:13
In the olden days the apple producers got together and came up with “an apple a day keeps the doctor away”.The onion producers became furious knowing that an onion a day was the better way. But, the onioners weren’t willing to challenge those apple folks with their superb marketing record.. So now people expire before their time eating apples instead of onions.