- We're out in the Gulf of Alaska catching Copper River King Salmon, the rarest, most expensive
salmon in the entire world. Alaskan salmon has slowly
become the favorite salmon amongst chefs and restaurants. And in the category of Alaskan salmon, the fish coming from Copper River are considered the best and the fattiest. In order to understand why
people say it's the best, you have to understand the
salmon spawning process. Salmon are actually born in
fresh water at high elevations where they spend a few
years before swimming down into the ocean, where they
live for two to seven years, depending on species. When they decided it's
time to have babies, they swim up to 300 miles upstream in search of their birthplace. In preparation for their athletic journey, they stop eating and rely
entirely on their fat reserves, which means the longer the
distance they have to travel, the more fat they store. So the reason Copper River
fish are touted as the best is because their journey home
is said to be the longest. This is where Alaskan fishermen come in. They are intercepting these
fish as they head home to spawn. That is when they're fattiest
and at their highest value. There are two main styles of
catching salmon in Alaska. Early in the season, they use gill nets, which is a gentler method for
the higher-priced sockeyes and king salmon. Later in the season, they use seine nets, which actually use a second
boat to encircle fish and catch way more in bulk. So, today we're at Copper
River fishing with Kyle Lee a fisherman who has started
a distribution business where he uses a network of
fishermen, a processing plant, and flash freezing techniques
to get the highest quality salmon he can to chefs
and home consumers alike. (upbeat banjo music) So, this is maybe a ridiculous question, but why don't we just like go right to the mouth of the
Copper River and then net and just trap them off,
stop them all from going in. - It's a great question,
but the reason why we can't do that is because
we wanna give the fish a fair chance. So Fish and Game, they
set boundaries for us. So we can't fish that high
up cause you're right, if we just went to the
mouth and just shut it off, nothing would get by us. - Right. - And the fish don't have a fair chance. And so that's why we're restricted to certain areas of where
we can and can't fish. - Part of the game now
is finding the places where there's gonna be tons of fish like, that are forced to pass by you. - Yeah. Yeah, they're forced into this, you know, more narrow channel. From here, we're gonna
pull up to the beach. Once I hit the sand,
I'll give you the nod. Then you're gonna throw
the buoy on the shoreline. - Aye, aye Captain. This is called the lead line, which is at the bottom of the net. - Yep. - All right, so this is top
of the net, bottom of the net. - Yeah, exactly. - Cool. - So, throughout the net,
we have corks that float and the leadline so at
the bottom, so it spreads. - Okay. - Yep. - That one's good. Just so it's barely in the
water, you're gonna hold this. And when I tell you to,
you're gonna throw it. - Throw it throw it? - Yeah. - Okay. - I'll let you know when. - [Dan] The goal here is
to throw the buoy as close to the beach without
actually landing on the beach because that would cut away any chance for the fish to escape and
be a Fish and Game violation. Can I help it? - [Kyle] Yep. Just like that, just pull it out. Perfect, good. - [Dan] Whoa, crazy,
what's that water doing? - [Kyle] It's crazy, it pulls it out away from the net faster too. - [Dan] The challenge with
setting the net is getting it out as quickly as possible,
as straight as possible. - When I first started I
had a hard time doing was, you know, being able to throw the buoy out and set the net out in
a, you know, fast enough to maintain the shape. Like right now it's a really nice day so you don't have a lot of current. When the tide is ripping,
you have to be really fast. Otherwise, by the time
you're done setting your net, you're already so outta shape. And then you gotta pick up and redo it. And it's just a lot of waste of time. Now we're just constantly watching, like, just pay attention to the course, like when a fish hits, you know, it'll like start bobbing like crazy. So that's how we know like, okay, there's fish coming our way or like there's fish in this area. - So now I guess we just watch. - Yeah, just watch. Seal, and so that's what
you gotta be careful of. 'Cause when you do, you
know, catch like one fish, those seals will come up
and they'll pick your net. I mean, we're all, everyone out
here is trying to catch fish including the seals and sea lions. - So what do you typically
do if you're here just waiting, just wait and watch? - Watching the net. - So you really just
watch you watch this net for like an hour. - Nonstop all day. You know, if you see a group of fish hit, depending on the situation,
but usually they run in groups, right and if you see one fish hit, we would untie we'd detach from this net and then we'd run our boat down the line, down the net and so it
scares the rest of the school into the net and so something like that, just paying attention
makes a huge difference. 'Cause that can mean from like
catching two or three fish to a school of 20. - [Dan] With no luck after about an hour, we decided to pick the net
and head to deeper waters. - Some days you get 'em,
some days you don't. - [Dan] We ended up moving the boat and trying out three different spots. And by the time we pulled
the net out of the last one, hope had almost entirely run out. Things weren't looking good though. The tide was rising and
none of the other fishermen in the area had caught anything. If he can't get a bunch of fish, then clearly they weren't
out here to be caught. We decided to give one
more final spot a try. (boat motor hums) - [Kyle] I realized that
the secret to fishing is just ruthless optimism. - So if you had like, let's say you were-- - What was that, a seal? - I don't think so - Right, so we'll yeah, we'll run the net. We're gonna detach and
we'll we'll run the net. - Okay so we think we
saw something over there. So you're just dropping the net down here. - Yep so it holds its shape. And then we're gonna try to - Do you think that was a fish too, right? - Yeah. Definitely something. (boat motor hums) (suspenseful music) Whoa! (beep) You guys good? - [Dan] So now you kind
of gotta wait for it to calm down a little bit before you can start reading them again. - [Kyle] Yeah, well
usually if you run 'em in, you'd be able to tell. It'd be bobbing pretty aggressively. - It was a light, it felt,
it was definitely a tail. It was like a light tail. Dude, I can't imagine, this is so cool. - Boom, there look in the corner. There he is, we got him. F*** yeah. - Wait, okay, so. - See, that's right in the hook. Exactly what we talk about. So we scared him, but he felt the net. So he ran all the way down and because we had that hook,
he got stuck in the corner. See it? See how the corks are bobbing? - Yeah, yeah. Holy s*** that's cool. But that's just one fish, right? - Yeah. (Dan cackling) - See, ya got one. So if you hadn't shuffled over, you probably wouldn't
have gotten him, right? - Probably not. You can grab the buoy. You're gonna pull it up and clip this carabiner into the net. - [Dan] Okay, got it. - You got it? So we'll take the buoy off. - Okay. - Get under it. Get under it. - [Dan] Okay. - [Kyle] Good. Okay, it's a red. - [Dan] And now what - [Kyle] Still got one. All right, nice. Yeah, it's a nice red, we
didn't get skunked, okay. - [Dan] We didn't get skunked. - We didn't get skunked. All right so the next
part, to pick the net, the proper way to do it is
you start at the cork line. - Yeah. - And you shuffle. And so you take like one mash
at a time until it's slowly... - [Dan] You find the fish out. - But like, it just keeps it organized so you're not more tangled. So like you just shuffle
till you find the fish. - [Dan] Yep. - And then now that
most of his body's out, you take it like that. So he is dangled. - [Dan] Yeah. - And when you shimmy, it
brings it all the way up. - [Dan] Okay. - [Kyle] It shimmies it up his body. (fish thuds) - [Dan] And then what do we do? - [Kyle] You pop a gill like this? - [Dan] Yeah. - [Kyle] And then we let him bleed out. - [Dan] Bleed out. - [Kyle] It's really important that the fish are properly
slushed, you know, you don't wanna put 'em directly on ice. You know, you see that a lot, but the temperature
difference is too great. You know 'cause like one side of the fish is directly on the ice
where the internal's not and it'll cause gaping in the meat. So, that's when you start to lose quality. And that's why it's so
important for the fishermen to take care of it so that,
you know, the end product when the consumer gets, is in. - From a commercial fishing perspective, this was a huge bust of a day. The cost of the fuel and
resources just to get out to the fishing zone is more
than a thousand dollars. But for our purposes, it was
really cool to see the process that these fishermen go
to preserve the quality of these fish. Back at Cordova Harbor, we
probably don't need the crane. So I just wanted to see how the kind of commercial process works. - [Kyle] So go ahead, open the
hatch and put it to the side. - Okay. - [Kyle] Yep and then yeah, clip in those. Yeah, those handles and
you got one more, yeah. - Now armed with our one fish, we're going to the processing
facility to see how these fish get cleaned and sent out. All right we're at 60 North. This is your processing facility or the one that you've
hired to process your fish. - Yep. - They're going through a
load of black cod right now. And then we're gonna see the, then we're gonna see some of your commercial
salmon come through. - Yeah exactly. - Oh, here we go. Oh my God, this is happening. This is a half tote of cod right now. Because this facility only
processes one fish at once. We had to wait for them to get through this big load of black cod. Black cod is processed using a machine that splits it in half. The bones are then cleaned by hand, it's portioned, and then vacuum-packed. Finally, once they were
done the black cod, they turn the facility over
and get ready for salmon. This happened to be an
order that was going out through Kyle's company, Alaskan Salmon. The salmon is all processed by hand. It is sliced, cleaned,
portioned, and vacuum-packed just like the cod. The tricky part of this
stage is getting the salmon and cod processed as quickly as possible after it comes off the boat. So it can be flash-frozen right away to protect all of its freshness. It felt like the only way
to end the day would be to take our single sockeye
salmon that we caught and bring it over to a
friend's house to grill it up and eat it. - Oh my God. That's so good. - Thank you so much for bringing me out and showing me the operations. Hope you catch a few more
fish next time you go out on your own. - [Kyle] Absolutely, it was
our pleasure to have you. Thank you. (upbeat music)
