Hidden like delicious treasures in our large totes of king salmon are a few Ivory Kings. We offload and box them just like non-Ivory Kings (I was going to call them “normal” but they’re really not just normal, they are extraordinary…). If you're buying our kings this year, you just might get lucky!

What makes an Ivory King an Ivory? This Article in the Alaska News Miner explains it all. If you’re not in the mood to click, here’s the crux of the matter from Terry Thompson's piece:

"The difference in flesh color comes from their genetically-determined ability to metabolize naturally occurring pigments from their food. 

These pigments, called carotenoids, are found in their diet of shrimp, krill, and crabs — crustaceans that are rich in astaxanthin, a carotenoid found in most marine life. Good analogies would be the orange beta-carotene found in carrots or the bright red carotene lycopene found in tomatoes. 

White-fleshed king salmon don’t have the genetic ability to break down their food and store the red-orange carotene in their muscle cells. The marbled flesh color sometimes found in king salmon comes from their limited ability to metabolize carotene, causing the flesh to take on a marbled look. Often, this marbled flesh is more reddish toward the spine and whiter near the belly.

The trait that keeps these fish from taking on the red pigment is passed on or inherited from the adult spawners to their offspring. The ability to metabolize carotenoids is a dominate trait; therefore the majority of king salmon have red flesh.

Essentially, all white kings come from the rivers and streams from the Fraser River in British Columbia, north to the Chilkat River in Southeast Alaska. Biologists with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game estimate that, overall, approximately 5 percent of the king population in this region carry the recessive trait that produces the white flesh."

If you happen to see Ivory King Salmon on the menu or for sale at your favorite fish market - be sure to give it a try. We feel like it has a different, more mild flavor than it’s redder counterparts. Even if you can’t taste a difference, let your eyes feast on that pearly white flesh.

Now that the equinox is here we can say fall has actually started. If you ask me, I’d say it started on the 10th of September. Something felt different that morning out on deck. A special, deeper chill in the air, an unexplainable craving for a big bowl of oatmeal, a real need for a third cup of coffee.

In Alaska we say “When the fireweed turns to cotton, summer days are forgotten”. If that’s true, we started thinking about fall weeks ago! Anchored in Mite Cove on our way home last week the birds around us seemed anxious, restless. Rivers are clogged with fish, bears are fat and happy.

I love the fall. Especially the fact that cooler weather means you can build a fire in the wood stove or dive into an all-day baking project without worrying about the oven heating up the house. Slow cooked meals, fragrant pots of tea, cozy sweaters - it all sounds so wonderful right now!  

Our last off load was a doozy! 8 hours tied up out at the Samson Dock, our amazing crew (thanks so much to Mariah, Jordan and Trina - you rock!) helped us pull the 2000 coho we caught on our last trip out of the freezer and tuck them away in their boxes for the long ride down to Seattle. We fought rain and wind most of the day, and I my abs still ache from leaning deep into the big boxes to place the first couple layers of fish.  

Yesterday we spent cleaning out the freezer, washing bin boards and scrubbing down the walls of the hold. Tarps and gaffs, drag bags and totes, all rinsed out, dried and ready to get packed away for the winter.Right now I’m enjoying a cup of Chai at Highliner Coffee Co., taking a much needed break! 

I happened to bump into our friend and fellow troller Drew who’s taking a short break too, before heading out to chase winter kings on October 11th. Not that far away! For just a moment I started to wonder if we shouldn’t be sticking around for that…  

Hope you’re as excited about fall as we are! Stay tuned to the blog to find out where we’re going to be selling our fish this winter. First stop in late October is Northern Wisconsin - get ready!  

Seems like half the fleet is tied up here in Yakutat for a few days… A two-day blow brought us all in from the drag here, and although the fishing has been good for a while all along the coast we were all ready for a break… there were a few beers consumed, crew shares lightened at the ol’ Glass Door and many mugs of coffee sipped.

We’ve got about 500 fish to glaze so we have our day cut out for us. We can glaze about 100 fish an hour, and along with set up and break down we’re looking at 6 hours of work. Much of it in a 40 below zero freezer… It’s the second to last step in the process for us - all the fish we’ve caught over the last several days have been frozen solid and now just need a protective finish to ready them for storage. Each fish gets dipped into ice cold water so that a sheen of ice keeps the air off the meat and holds the fish in their pristine condition. They’ll sit in our freezer that way until we offload this trip at the Samson Dock and they start on their journey to Seattle.  

We’ve decided this is our last trip of the year - we’ll put a couple hundred more fish on board (knock on wood) on our way back to Sitka, offload and then get the boat ready for winter.  It’s always a bittersweet moment. You’re tired and your entire body aches, you desperately long for a shower and real bed, laundry way past due. You stack the gear and think for a moment, “I can’t wait til this is OVER!” and then the second you tie up to the dock and connect with your friends and share a few stories it’s like a golden shade comes down over everything and all you want to do is troll for the rest of your life…  Maybe we’ll get another trip in!  Cooler heads will prevail once we get to Sitka, I am sure. 

The weather this time of year gets pretty unpredictable and chances are we’ll call it a season. But even as I write this I am thinking “…but you never know when you’ll get a call in that the Cape is slamming and you’ll be running to the fuel dock and setting out hoping for a few more days!”

It’s hard to put the beauty of this area into words, but I will try. We’ve been so lucky to have clear skies. Standing on deck and looking at the full sweep of mountains - from St. Elias down to Mt. Fairweather - is breathtaking. Massive mountains climbing 15,000 feet straight up to the sky. One afternoon we watched huge thunderheads move in and as colossal as they were, Mt. St. Elias still towered above. Glaciers run down to the sea or hang in mountain pockets; we passed the gigantic Grand Plateau Glacier that looked like an enormous river of moonlight thundering its way to the sea.. We fish all along the beach and as the afternoon wears on the sand shines like a golden line leading for miles in either direction. Closer to Yakutat Bay we watched 15 foot waves crest and break, wind blowing spray of the top of each wave as it rolled in. 

We’ve been fishing pretty shallow (no deeper than 20 fathoms) along the beach, hooking up with fish returning to home rivers (The Dangerous, The Akwe, The Ustay, The Alsek). The fish are big and fat and the weather has been spectacular.  The water here ranges from a dusty turquoise coming off the glaciers to a deep cold royal blue, often with a clear line between the two. 

It’s our first year fishing up here, and no doubt it won’t be our last. We almost came last year with The Ocean Cape but we chickened out at the last minute. It’s a long haul getting up here, with no real anchorage between Lituya and Yak, so you’re either drifting at night or anchoring right on the beach (as long as there’s no wind). We did a bit of each on this trip, but old timers reminded us a number of times how lucky we were.  And as soon as this weather breaks we’ll be looking for the first southerly to push us back down to Sitka.

See you when we get there!