Salmon on ice

[Highliner]

How you you keep a decent size hali in the round? Who has a cooler that's big enough? Chickens I can understand. Are you guys using fish bags as well? Head on?

I always bleed/de-gill upon catching, gut upon docking, bag, into the ice. When on a trip I drain the water out regularly, but I don't leave the drain plug out all the time, as the fish are contained in the bags. Thoughts?

 

[cuttlefish]

Great thread! A quality experience should be followed up with the best quality product.

For salmon, bleeding out by cutting the artery between the gills and the heart is key but here's another tip for removing more blood while/after gutting. There are two veins close to the backbone where it meets the head at the front of the kidney. Stick your hose into sac that forms the kidney. Make sure the hose covers the two veins. Let the water push through the sac which will swell up and soon blood will begin to trickle out of the ends of the veins along the sides of the fish in the belly cavity. In a few minutes the blood trickle will turn to water. Voila!, saves scraping all those veins with your fingernail to get the blood out.
It takes a few tries to get it right, but once you get the hang of it, it will save you time and effort.

Another tip after gutting is to cradle the tail before the fin in your hand and elevate it slightly while gently shaking it. You will see more blood exiting through the backbone at the back of the belly cavity. I continue to do this while washing the belly cavity until I don't see any more blood. This is labor intensive but makes for a cleaner, better quality product in the end.

And x10 in the ice. Can't use too much ice.

 

[tortuga]

Bleeding a fish definatly makes a difference in the quality of the meat. QUOTE]

Had a discussion with a buddy about this the other day.
Wish I had this thread to show him.
LMAO

 

[Steelhead S2]

Someone else mentioned using a water jet. We did this on one troller I worked on. You head the fish before opening the belly, and there are two arteries exposed, near the spine. Then you insert the water jet into one of them and the water works through the entire circulatory system in seconds. It is super cool to see it in action. The jet was something like a water pick attached to a piece of aquarium tubing then connected to the deck hose. Frankly, a bit messy and a bit more work. I'm not sure it is any better than just bleeding as soon as bonked. But it sure does clean the blood out.

To answer someone else's question, slime is good. The hold on a hali boat is a total slime fest, but the fish is first class (if properly dressed and belly iced). And all halis have "nuts", boys and girls. If you're icing them, then rip em out! Scrape all the "sweet meat" too.

And for those going after tuna, brain spike and bleed right away. We'd bleed ours in a tub of water, so that once the blood was pumped out water would also pump through... not sure if it worked that way, but that's the theory.

One exception to all this is sockeye. If you are going to be freezing them right away (not storing on ice for days), you can bleed them and freeze them on the round, guts and all. They keep amazingly well this way, for a looong time. Only sockeye though, the rest all have too much stomach acid.

 

[tfish]

One of the better threads I have read as we spend so much money and energy to bring home quality meat, that sometimes lodges do not have the same incentives as we do to bring home the best quality meat we can. Most camps I have been at shut down their generators at night and having information as to alternatives methods of storing your catch is a plus. Great and important information that will be of help to all. Thanks to all for their contributions to the thread.

 

[Bait tricks]

Steelhead S2, This is exactly how I've been freezing all of my Sockeye ever since I can remember. I keep trying to tell people this but hey, like they say"you can lead a horse to water" lol. I've cut them up to a year later and they're still fresh as the day they were frozen. The trick is not to nick the fish in any way with a knife to expose any of the flesh as this will be the point where the freezer burn will start and will eventually make the oils in the fish go rancid.

 

[Steelhead S2]

Bait Tricks: I was really skeptical about it. But last year in the midst of the big run I was low on freezer bags and my wrist was sore from so much filleting, so I caved and let my mother-out-law show me how it's done. We wrapped the fish in newspaper first, then in a bag and remove as much air as possible. Do they ever keep well! I've had fish at her place over a year old, and still good... which I only learned recently .

 

[Rob H]

Steelhead S2, Bait Tricks et all: Years ago I met a Japanese woman at Sunny Shores Marina who noted to me that the sockeye she and I both had were best frozen whole as you are advocating. Her husband was a retired commercial salmon fisherman and that was the way they kept all their personal sockeye. I haven't tried it personally but will if given another opportunity.

...Rob

 

[Cuba Libre]

Yuk.............................. Without access to a blast freezer, there is no way I am going to do that. Why do your think the companies pay a premium for DRESSED troll caught fish?

 

[eaglemaniac]

Exactly my thoughts CL. Could you imagine throwing eight or twelve sockeye in the round into a normal household freezer. It could take days to freeze properly. A friend of mine called me a few weeks back, asking me the same question. Can I throw a dozen Sox in the freezer whole? I asked him if he had a blast freezer. When he said no, I said get gutting then and seperate them as best as possible. eman

 

[Steelhead S2]

I guess common sense was implied in the earlier posts... just like you wouldn't pile up a bunch of fillets to try and freeze them, you have to assess the capacity of your freezer and spread the fish out. But a whole sockeye and a big hali fillet are going to take about the same amount of time to freeze. neither the gore not the air ever touches the meat, and there is nothing gross about it. it took me years before I finally did a fish this way, but do one and you will be pleasantly surprised.

As for commercial fish, the premium is paid for troll caught, and all troll caught salmon are dressed. I am not aware of any premium for the dressing part? However, not all troll caught fish are dressed. Tuna, for example, are frozen on the round.

Provided the fish go from ocean to freezer in fairly short order, this is a very good way to preserve sockeye. Take it or leave it, but the yuk factor is all in your noodle.

PS: Gosh I am sick of being stuck at my desk. 8 weeks into a 10 week course, and am so distracted I keep refreshing a dicussion about how to freeze salmon rather than concentrating on my materials. HURRY UP AUGUST! I NEED TO GO FISHING!!!

 

[Bait tricks]

FAS troll caught sockeye command the premium. The quality of any dressed fish regardless on style of icing decreases dramatically by the day/hour. From a plant controlled situation after day 3-4 the fish are graded to be canned as the quality of the flesh is considered too soft for any other type of quality fresh presentation. This is just my observation from working in this type of environment years ago. Mind you there were more numbers of fish available back then so the price on the premium may have been at a higher level. I'm not by any means trying say anyone should freeze their sockeye in the round, but for those that haven't tried it but are wanting to try it out, the method I use is I always pack lots of ice in a good quality cooler and throw my fish in there as soon as it's caught. By the time I get home the core temp of the fish are so cold they freeze very fast. I see people catch fish and let them sit on the shore in the sun for hours on end while they continue to fish, no ice but bled and dressed and say how good their fish is after they've prepared it lol. Talk about yuk fest.

 

[Sharphooks]

...."FAS troll caught sockeye command the premium...."

Man, you'd think so, wouldn't you? But last week I was out at Echo Bay and met a gal who crewed on Billy Proctor's troller last year in Johnstone Straits. They knocked into a huge jag of fish in one of BP's secret spots. Not a boat around them for miles as they loaded up. The Cap had them dressing the fish with velvet gloves; not a scale missing from 500 fish.

Triumphantly they steamed into Port Mcneill with their treasure. They tied up and before they knew what was happening the crew at the offload station went down into the hold with shovels and shoveled every one of those fish into totes....

The gal and the crew were in tears. Captain Billy was hyperventilating. Never again, he said. From now on we treat them like the seiners do

The seafood market's new benchmark for quality.....

 

[Bait tricks]

Man that is sacralidge. Those unloaders should be fired for that. We used to have to hand load everything into the brailers. I've never heard of that before for unloading such a valuable resource especially a product in such pristine marketable condition.