Black Cod at Little Fish Co

you may have seen California black cod sable fish or butter fishes it's also known at our local farmers markets but what you may not know is the story on how we get that fish to you so fresh it all starts with Laura when you place an order online via email or over the phone Laura coordinates all the orders to figure out what we need to bring the market then it's up to me and Justin to go catch that fish after we get to the boat in San Francisco we drive over to our storage facility to load up some bait for the trip everybody wants to know why my Prius always smells so bad Laden up four black guys after we're done loading up about 200 pounds of frozen squid for bait it's time to go get ice will slush big totes of seawater with shaved ice to make a nice slurry to put the fish in Justin will slush three totes of ice below the deck these three totes should allow us to get about a thousand pounds of fish on board before we have to come back into port it's now Thursday afternoon and the boat is all loaded up we're gonna head to our slip for the night and leave early Friday morning to head offshore and set the black cod gear and hopes to pick it up Sunday and return on Monday see the Golden Gate out there Justin and brand take turns on will watch while the other sleeps the Muslim so here's San Francisco as we came out this morning about five hours ago run away offshore you can see these these are what we call the bathroom curves this is like a topographical map basically shows the death you can see out the coast kind of gently tapers out to the edge of the continental shelf which is where we're heading now or just getting ready go off it man it's just a drop off and there's these canyons and in these canyons or we push these black khat it's about 8 a.m. and the sun's starting to rise we're about an hour away from the black cod grounds you can see all the gear on the deck and Justin in the back chopped and baked and ready to load the pot so they can be deployed sup Justin nothing's working on fait CE he's chopping up a flock of frozen tomato go in these pods attracts the black hot we're finally out off the continental shelf and it's time to set the first pot Brandon Justin carefully shoved the pot off the edge of the boat where it's attached to 300 feet of line before it gets to the next pot it's important that we keep our hands feet legs and everything else out of the way as this pot comes off the boat once the third pot leaves the boat Justin gets in position to set the anchor the anchor will keep the gear from walking around at the bottom of the ocean once the anchor has been set now comes the time to pay out thirty six hundred feet of buoy line that's right 36 hundred feet from the anchor to the surface buoys this is an extremely dangerous task as the pots are fallen to the ocean floor as the boats traveling in the other direction if a person was to get their hands or feet or legs or anything else caught there'd be no way to stop either the boat or the gear and they would be sucked overboard [Music] as we reach the end of the 3600 feet of rope the pots and the anchor continue to soar towards the ocean floor we'll release three buoys at this spot and hope to find them 48 hours from now when we come back to this area as I head in to mark our location on our GPS plotter so we know where we left the buoys and pots Justin rejoices to another safe set and decides to do the happy dance for the camera now that the first gang of three pots with its anchor and buoys are safely off the boat it's time to set up gang number two for deployment we'll carefully stack three more pots hook them up to all the buoy rope and get ready to deploy them we'll do this a total of four times today before we head into the Farallon Islands to anchor up for the night got all the gear off the boat 12:31 o'clock in the afternoon they started a day at 3:00 in the morning so wait just come awake Lily's still hanging in there we got about three hour run to the Farallon Islands probably can't see in there just barely in the picture way out there anchor up there for a day and come back and get here black island research vessel island laboratory on the island they drop some people off I said damn it nobody else so while we're waiting a day for the black cod gear to load up with black cod we spend some time messing around around the islands with rod and reel we're allowed to catch 300-pound a ling cod a month and you'll often see these at our farmers market alongside the black cod great fish and excellent fish tacos Lily likes it that's what we do for fun it's been nearly 48 hours since we set our black cod gear and it's time to pick it up and see what we caught we pull up to the buoys and try to get them in the boat before they get too close to the boat or under the boat into the prop really don't write [Music] [Music] [Music] once the buoys have been brought into the boat Justin puts a barrel underneath the block the block is I draw a contraption that allows us to bring up the pots from the ocean floor Justin will now hand coil in thirty six hundred feet into two 55-gallon barrels until we reach the anchor and eventually the pots after about 45 minutes of hand-coiling the anchor gets to the block Justin that's the lien outside the boat attach the boom which to the anchor disconnect the anchor from the ganyan and then boom the anchor over the side of the boat next up is the first pot Justin has to again lean over the side of the boat attach the boom winch hook to the pot disconnect the pot from the gain in and then we can hoist the pot over the rail and put it on the deck [Music] [Music] [Music] once the pot is safely on the boat it's time to release the drawn pucker which will allow all the fish to drop out onto the deck of the boat for sorting we will then swing the pot outside the boat so that we can safely sort all the fish [Music] justin will select the biggest fish to go down into the slush the small fish will be released unharmed back into the ocean where the swim the 3,000 feet back down to the bottom after all the fish out of that pot have been sorted and either released or put down in the slush will stack the pot on top of the stack and make room for the next pot to scum up shortly [Music] the job often comes as scrapes bumps bruises cuts and even broken bones [Music] now as pot number two comes into the boat we quickly notice that this pot is much better than the first one lots of big fish in this pot [Music] [Music] once again it's time to release the drawn pucker to dump the load of fish onto the deck for sorting this one's gonna take a while after nearly two hours from grabbing the buoy we're finally to the third and final pot in this gang of three this pot looks to be just as good as the last and promises to be full a big beautiful black cotton [Music] [Applause] thank you as you can see here we're often visited by albatross with wingspans of nearly 12 feet these are magnificent creatures very rarely are they seen on land and can spend as many as five years at sea before returning to land wait most the black cop that we catch range between three and six pounds every now and then we get a jumbo this was the biggest black pot of the trip weighing in at nearly fifteen pounds big black God [Music] it's now early afternoon on Sunday and it's time to head in we have to buck easterly winds for the next five or six hours as we head back towards the port of San Francisco it's late into the evening now as we finally reach the Golden Gate we have an hour left to go before we get to Pier 45 after already working for 18 hours we finally arrived to the pier but we still have hours with the work left to do as we unload all the gear the pots the rope the buoys from the bow there [Applause] now that we have all the gear off the boat we're gonna put it away in our storage locker and go get a few hours sleep before our early morning offload of fish here we are Fisherman's Wharf San Francisco pier 45 the big black cod run load the whole total black cod it's Monday morning poor star CP is gonna cut package these for us they'll be up in Tahoe tomorrow on Tuesday Roseville farmers market on Tuesday didn't get much fresher than that the federal government is responsible for managing the population and stocks out in the ocean of these black cod we're assigned quota that we can't exceed and we have about a thousand pounds of quota left to fill in this period will begin to hoist the fish up about a hundred pounds at a time to be weighed and make sure we don't exceed our quota I voted blinka Oh beauty got all the black caught off though they created there's two different prices we get one price for three to five pounders they don't want anything that are under three pounds and then there's another price for over five pounders so pretty substantial difference nearly double with these guys away every single fish and then they'll sort them into one ban or the other these are all the big ones there well most of our fish gets sold to four-star and we'll end up in the highest of high-end restaurants in San Francisco we'll take some hand selected fish to our market Hector here is in charge of cutting and filleting all of our fish to go to our farmers market you can see in addition to the black cod that he's playing he's also been cutting some petrale sole some halibut some ahi tuna and some fresh local swordfish keep in mind this is Monday morning and all these fish will be a market tomorrow [Music] shortly after the offload Catherine from the Little Fish Company arrives to Pier 45 Catherine oversees all the packaging to make sure everything's labeled correctly in the fish is of the utmost quality Catherine will make sure that all the fish gets divvied up properly and packed on ice to go to market tomorrow all the fish going to Roseville farmers market have to file city and Truckee it's noon on Monday and the fish is all packed and loaded up for market Brandon Justin tied the boat up in the slip where it'll sit until the next trip it's finally time to go home it's now Tuesday morning just 18 hours after the fish have been unloaded this is where Robert takes over Robert is our salesperson at the farmers market and is responsible for giving the customers their fresh fish that were caught just hours earlier all in all it takes nearly a dozen people operating from our home office in Grass Valley to Pier 45 in San Francisco and out to the middle of the Pacific Ocean in an effort to bring you guys fresh fish within just hours of it being caught we appreciate you watching the video and hope to see you enjoy some of our fish at the local farmers market

Channel: littlefishcompany

Views: 27,391

Rating: 4.7886181 out of 5

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Id: fr7RtRo6xDg

Length: 20min 52sec (1252 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 12 2018