Why landlocked foodies are buying wild Alaskan salmon in bulk

Kirstyn Sterling spends every summer fishing for salmon at the mouth of Bristol Bay in Alaska with her husband and two little kids. They’re 9 and 5, but they’ve been going on fishing boats since before they could walk.

“They’re kind of wild, feral children running around,” Sterling said.

The fish they catch is trucked and barged to Salt Lake City, where the family spends the rest of the year hiking, skiing and delivering sockeye salmon direct to customers or restaurants.

“We all started out with this because it was like, ‘Oh, you’re a fisherman in Alaska. So how do we get fish?’” Sterling said.

Fed by six major rivers, Bristol Bay is home to the largest wild salmon run in the world. Historically, almost all of those fish were exported to Japan, but now some fisherman and direct-to-consumer companies — like Sterling’s — are focused on markets closer to their homes.

“If you’re an expecting mother, this is like the most perfect food for you ever,” said Sterling, who’s a bit of a wild salmon evangelist. “If you are a little baby, this is the most perfect food for you ever. If you’re a dog, this is the most perfect food for you ever.”

Sterling said you do pay a little bit more for her wild fish, which is ruby red from eating plankton and krill in the open ocean. It’s about $16 a pound — nearly twice as much as the farm-raised grocery stuff — but buying salmon in bulk can cut down on costs for customers.

In Teton Valley, Idaho, dozens of customers have done just that by signing up for a community salmon share.

On a late summer Saturday, they lined up in a parking lot to pick up 10-, 20- and 40-pound boxes of filets and ground sockeye.

“This is it right here. So, see — it just looks so beautiful,” said Carlen Hervig, unwrapping the paper around a vacuum-sealed bag of ground salmon.

She was also getting a box of filets to serve at dinner parties. “‘Cause you see, it’s a pretty big piece. So once you’re going to thaw one out, you kind of want to know, ‘OK, I’m having friends over. I can serve this many portions,’” she said.

Amanda Wlaysewski with Kvichak Fish Co. was handing out the day’s fish.

“I think the first year we delivered seven boxes and we thought that was a huge deal,” she recalled. “Now, it’s grown into, what, 70 people.”

That’s 3,600 pounds of salmon.

She processed it all in Bristol Bay, then shipped it by barge to Seattle and trucked it 700 miles to where she lives in Montana. From there, she loads all the salmon into a bright blue freezer-cold trailer, and once a year, delivers to rural communities like this one.

Many of her customers put in orders months in advance.

“They care about knowing where it comes from, because the economy around here is focused around agriculture and food,” Wlaysewski said, “and just a desire to support small producers, because a lot of them are small producers themselves.”

One customer, Kyle Barrus, works at a nearby ranch. He crammed 15 boxes of salmon into his Subaru Outback. Some of the fish is for him, some for neighbors. He said it’s special to get Alaskan salmon from a local Mountain West business.

“I’ve come to just really like these guys,” Barrus said. “I like supporting small business.”

And just like having a deer or elk in the freezer, Barrus said he’s excited to have all this wild salmon stored up for the long winter ahead.