SilverT
2012-04-20 20:13:41
I was in a major grocer (in about half the States) this weekend and was pleased to find frozen, 1.1 lb wild pink salmon fillets, vacuum sealed and looking good for $8.99 each. That's a total of $17.98 retail per 3 lb round pink! I asked the department worker if they had carried them for long and if they moved many and he said yes to both. They looked a lot better than the farm raised stuff and there appears to be a good market for them. Pinks have a light flavor, which might be appealing to folks preferring milder fish - someone mentioned people actually buying farm-raised for that reason in an earlier post. Pinks are mild, but taste way better than farm-raised. We prefer pinks to king and coho when we are serving it with sauces like Yoshida's or Mae Ploy, but maybe that's just us.
Lane
Salty
2012-04-20 22:50:30
Lane,
I agree with you about the good mild taste of pinks. A lot of SE pinks frozen and sent to China for reprocessing and being marketed all over the world in attractive portions.
Abundance
2012-04-21 04:40:31
I am actually of the opinion that pinks are one of the better salmon. People don't like them because they are small and there are so many of them, but that does not change the fact that they taste better than cohos. We tried direct marketing fish for some time, and my Dad tried selling pinks at cost to get people eating them. He believed that once people tried them, they would take off like wildfire. Nobody bought even one. When I informed him of this post, that pinks are getting popular, he was ecstatic. One of his biggest grips has been that pinks are one of the most underrated fish in the sea. Maybe they will get their chance now that people can't afford the more "prestigious" fish. I still hope that we get a good price for coho, but but it won't hurt my feelings if pinks become worth something again.
Salty
2012-04-21 15:06:13
So here is my ranking of the salmon species by flavor, baked or poached, when freshly caught and taken good care of:
1. White, squid fed, feeder king;
2. White feeder king anytime;
3. Krill fed spring red kings;
4. Ocean troll caught kings;
5. Brite troll caught, bled, pinks;
6. Big fat brite ocean run, mature coho;
7. Brite chums;
8. Sockeye;
9. Small coho;
Finally, any salmon's flavor changes dramatically once it starts maturing and the oils in its flesh go into flesh color, humps, teeth, etc. A salmon in the mouth of the river or in the river tastes completely different than an ocean caught feeder. Not that river fish aren't good in their own way, just a great deal different. Firmer, dryer, and not as sweet as the same stock caught in the ocean before maturing.
Some people would wonder why sockeye, arguably the finest looking salmon in the bunch with its brite red color and firm texture is rated so low in my estimation. To me Sockeye, even ocean fresh, has a heavy dark flavor that I do not prefer. It is great canned with salt, or best yet lightly or full smoked. But, having eaten lots of salmon side by side from the back deck there is nothing comparable to Chinook, and pinks have that sweet salmon taste in a moist fillet. Coho vary tremendously depending on maturity and size but are generally too dry for me. A brite chum is better eating to me than a small coho.
Then we could get into the differences in fat content depending on stream of origin etc. Yukon kings versus Copper River and on and on. I imagine a troll caught Yukon king bound for Canada from the Bering Sea eating krill or squid by all accounts would be the richest sweetest salmon in the world. Unfortunately both Copper and Yukon kings are not harvested until they are in the mouth of or in the river. Still good but not the same as that fish in the ocean.
SilverT
2012-04-21 16:10:28
That list has amazing detail and who better to assemble such a list than a troller. I remember folks really turning their noses up at pinks before bleeding and care were emphasized. I can still remember the look on my relative's faces who held that opinion when I cooked some ocean caught pinks that I had immediately bled and iced. They were truly shocked at how good they were and they were salmon fishermen.
Your point on the taste difference between ocean caught and fish caught close to the river was experienced when we brought home some pinks that were getting close to the river. Last year one of my boys brought home some coho from the river and we had a hard time eating them because the taste was so different. They were fairly bright fish.
Abundance, it looks like Dad's work might be paying off. Do you two do anything different than chum when you handle pinks? They seem to be more fragile.
Lane
lone eagle
2012-04-21 23:43:20
Pinks probably have an uphill marketing battle due to the crap that used to come out of a can. Was thinking that fresh/frozen should be sold as 'Sea Trout' or something that's not associated with that bad old stuff. Personally I love pinks...always kept one for dinner when trolling SE. Any Spring run salmon is prized in Oregon, way more than fall run, and Tules are treated with disdain
Abundance
2012-04-22 00:00:17
I know that growing, we lived off of pinks on our boat. Dad would put put one in the oven and bake it all afternoon with an onion and sometimes bacon in the belly, and it was always good. I would notice a difference between early and late season pinks, but they really were quite good until they were really dark. I know that I had some canned coho from the local river, and I could hardly eat it at first. It was just drier and tasteless. I haven't eaten sockeye in quite a while, but I remember being unimpressed when I took one home a few years back, and just decided to sell them from then on. I actually like all salmon, but a guy gets particular when he can be as picky as he wants. I really don't do anything different with pinks than with chums or cohos, I just get them in the ice as soon as possible and sell every few days. Last fall was the first time that I ever sold fish in the round, and I was dealing with minimal product. I have had fish go bad in the past, I'm sorry to say. When I first started fishing, I made at least five day trips with an uninsulated wooden fishold. Everybody did. I did notice that pinks went soft the first. For the past handful of years, I have made it a practice to get fish cleaned as soon as they come aboard, into chilled water to bleed out, and into the ice in about fifteen minutes, no matter the species. And no more than three day trips. I'm just a one man outfit, so I need to know my limits. I may not be able to pull in every fish that I can catch somedays, because I need to pay attention to those already aboard. It helps that my first few years of deckhanding, from when I was 7 to when I was 12, my job was just to clean the fish, and I got paid whatever we made off of pinks. Even today, I have to stop myself from giving the the most attention to the pinks, because the ten year old inside of me still thinks of them as the most valuable. Sorry, I wandered off topic. Yes, pinks are more fragile, but it shouldn't make much difference if you get all of your fish cold quickly, I believe. It pains me to say it, but I think that Seiners are taking really good care of there fish nowadays, with their fish going straight into RSW and quickly offloaded onto processors. They cannot be as good as ours, but there is no reason to hold a can of Seined pink salmon in contempt anymore. Those cans sometimes have some really good recipes on them to.
lone eagle
2012-04-22 00:52:16
canned pinks have always sold well in Britain and the SE States...salmon patties and salmon salad...awesome. The working class salmon. In places where there wasn't much in the way of choice, unlike the Pac NW
SilverT
2012-05-25 03:43:46
Good point. I was in Sequim, Washington last week and saw Yukon Gold smoked Keta Salmon for $23/lb in packages of about 8 oz. each. Granted, it was in a large convenience store, but I was still impressed at the price they had on it. The pieces appeared to be the bellies. Dock prices for Kings on the coast were fairly good last week as well.
Lane