Hey there!
It’s Sarah, your fisher(wo)man friend and founder of Copper River Fish Market.
Up here in Alaska, our 2023 fishing season is winding down. It'll go down as a year with consistently cooler than normal air temperatures and seemingly unending overcast days interspersed with torrential showers. Our moss is beginning to grow moss.
More so than usual, we had difficulty this year predicting what lay around the next bend with our fisheries. We appreciate your understanding when run timing and ordering availability did not line up with our initial projections. This in itself is a reminder of the wild nature of the catch we sell and how dependent we are on natural rhythms for our success.
CONTINUED...
Our chilly, wet summer is inching it's way towards autumn. The wearing of wool socks continues uninterrupted. Dark nights are here. On the few clear nights we have had recently, stars shine with a brightness that can only truly be appreciated after having experienced no darkness and only dusk for the last few months. A different face of nature's beauty is unveiling itself in this season of autumn. Maybe a little bit rougher around the edges and definitely more fatalistic, but still so pretty.
Birdsong is everywhere. Crane fly overhead in V's headed for gentler weather patterns. Ducks, geese and songbirds clatter as they pass through. Some nights it's so very loud and just fills our cabin with a ruckus of energetic noise as they call to each other on their migration. Hundreds, even thousands passing overhead in the night sky.
This activity in the sky runs in tandem with what we cannot as easily see in the ocean. A final salmon migration journey is occurring with as much vigor, yet more stealthy to those of us that dwell on land.
I imagine it to be sheer chaos to ocean creatures and to occur with the aquatic version of thundering wildebeest migrations across the open savanna. But to us up here above the waters surface, it’s pretty quiet.
Our beautiful and abundant Copper River Coho are pushing through anything and everything in their way to get to their destination. The big difference being that unlike the birds, theirs is a one-way trip.
There is no turning back this is the final phase of their lifecycle. No matter if we catch them or not, they will not see another season.
We catch these special salmon just before they begin their arduous journey up into the winding and rushing, glacier fed Copper River.
In preparation, the wild ocean-bright salmon have fed with vigor and fattened themselves up, creating massive stores of Omega-3 oils and muscle mass meant to power them as they force their way against the currents of the raging river.
After they enter into the fresh water river system they will no longer feed and instead begin to burn their reserves of oil and muscle.
They are at their peak of flavor and nutritional value when we catch them in near coastal ocean waters. They've spent a lifetime bulking and fattening for one of the toughest migrations, not only in the aquatic world but on the planet.
These are incredible athletes of the salmon world and we hope you enjoy them as much as we do!
Copper River Fish Market
eat fish… be happy®
Best Fishes, Sarah 🐟💕
Fisher(wo)man & Founder