Why landlocked foodies are buying wild Alaskan salmon in bulk

Idaho Matters

(Hanna Merzbach / Wyoming Public Media )

Excitement was in the air as people spent one of the last Saturdays of summer lined up in a coffee shop parking lot in Teton Valley in Eastern Idaho. They were there for fresh Alaskan salmon — 10-, 20- and 40-pound boxes of fillets and ground sockeye.

“This is it right here,” said Carlen Hervig, standing at the front of the line under a blue tent “So, see. It just looks so beautiful.”

Hervig pointed to the vacuum-sealed bag of bright red-orange ground-up salmon.

She was picking up for a neighbor and getting herself some foot-long fillets to serve at dinner parties.

“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 explained.

( Courtesy of Kirstyn Sterling)

Hervig has been coming back for this wild salmon for years. It comes from Bristol Bay in southwest Alaska. Fed by six major rivers, the bay is home to the largest wild salmon run on the planet, and it’s sustainably managed.

Hervig said the fish from there just tastes better than the farm-raised stuff you find in the grocery store. Plus, wild salmon is hard to come by in this part of Idaho since many varieties are endangered and illegal to fish.

“I think the first year we delivered seven boxes and we thought that was a huge deal,” said Amanda Wlaysewski with Kvichak Fish Company. “And, now, it's grown into, what, 70 people.”

That’s 3,600 pounds of salmon today.

(Hanna Merzbach / Wyoming Public Media )

Wlaysewski first got hooked on Alaskan salmon after spending a summer at a cannery in Naknek, Alaska after high school.

Now, she and a friend from the cannery run this company, working with fishermen on the Kvichak River in Bristol Bay.

“When we first were starting out we just assumed that we were gonna be a company that put fish in a box and shipped it all over the country, and right away, we stopped doing that,” she said.

Instead, they opted to keep operations small. They now ship the salmon by barge and truck to Bozeman, Montana — where Wlaysewski lives — and load it all into a bright blue freezer-cold trailer. Then, once a year, Wlaysewski, her sister and her business partner haul it to different pickup spots in Montana and Idaho.

(Hanna Merzbach / Wyoming Public Media )

They started serving this small community in Driggs, Idaho, in 2016. Wlaysewski was friends with a fisherman who used to deliver here, and when he retired, she helped locals continue to have access to wild fish.

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

In recent years, at least three other companies have started bringing wild salmon here and across the state line in Jackson Hole.

(Hanna Merzbach / Wyoming Public Media )

In Salt Lake City, Kirstyn Sterling runs a similar company.

“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.

She fishes every summer in Bristol Bay, living in a 700-square-foot cabin with her husband and two kids. For the rest of the year, she sells salmon in the Mountain West.

“If you're an expecting mother, this is like the most perfect food for you ever,” she said. ‘If you are a little baby that’s just starting out eating, this is the most perfect food for you ever. If you're a dog, this is the most perfect food for you ever.”

(Courtesy of Kirstyn Sterling)

Sterling’s business has been growing, but part of her job is still convincing people that wild sockeye is healthier than fish raised on farms, which are fed pellets, antibiotics and dyes. But her fish is ruby red from eating plankton and krill in the open ocean.

“You're paying a little bit more, but it's so much better for you and it tastes so much better,” she said.

A single piece of wild salmon can be about $18 a pound — about twice as much as the farm-raised grocery stuff. But the Alaskan fish can be cheaper if you buy in bulk or ahead of the season, like folks in Teton Valley, Idaho.

Back at the pick-up, local resident Kyle Barrus is cramming 15 boxes into his Subaru Outback. He works at a nearby ranch. Some of the fish is for him, but he’s also picking up for family and neighbors.

(Hanna Merzbach / Wyoming Public Media)

“I've come to just really like these guys,” Barrus said. “I like supporting Amanda [Wlaysewski], and 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.

Can he taste the difference from grocery store salmon?

“I don’t know,” Barrus said. “It’s delicious. I know that.”

This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Wyoming Public Media, Nevada Public Radio, Boise State Public Radio in Idaho, KUNR in Nevada, KUNC in Colorado and KANW in New Mexico, with support from affiliate stations across the region. Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.