A plentiful local harvest nets chum salmon new reputation

By Hal Bernton
Seattle Times staff reporter

STEVE RINGMAN / THE SEATTLE TIMES Fishermen aboard a purse-seining fishing boat circle schools of chum salmon off Misery Point in Hood Canal. The fall chum are helping to keep alive Puget Sound's commercial fishing. This season's catch could help the harvest reach $3 million this year.

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Their flesh is a pale red compared to the fabled ruby hue of the sockeye. Though silver chrome at sea, their bodies may blotch and their teeth turn snaggly as they prepare to enter spawning waters.

But over the past decade, the Puget Sound fall chum have proved to be remarkably resilient, and they've emerged as a mainstay of Indian and non-Indian commercial fishermen. In the fall harvest now under way, the chums are returning in near-record numbers, and they are fetching higher prices than in years past in a marketplace that shows new interest in wild fish as opposed to their pen-reared cousins.

"They are the most abundant salmon in the state, and people ought to give them more credit. They get a bad rap," said Jim Ames, a state fisheries biologist who spices up his department's Web site with recipes for chum chowder, chum pepper-steak and chum teriyaki kabobs.

	STEVE RINGMAN / THE SEATTLE TIMES After extracting the females' roe, Smokey Foods employees clean and process chum salmon that will be frozen then later thawed for smoking or carved into fillets and steaks. The roe is cured into caviar and then packaged for shipment to Asia.

In an era when more than 20 Puget Sound salmon runs have been listed for protection under the federal Endangered Species Act, the fall chum also are helping to keep alive the Sound's commercial fishing. Last year, the harvest topped more than $2 million, and this year the total value could reach $3 million, according to industry and state officials.

The harvest unfolds in a series of openings that begin in October and last deep into the fall, ranging from Hood Canal north to areas off the San Juan Islands.

Hundreds of tribal fishermen, who under the 1976 Boldt ruling have treaty rights to half the harvest, generally use gill nets strung behind boats or beach-seine nets staked out from shore for personal use and commercial sales.

"There are a few guys making a living off of this but for most, it's part-time work to supplement their income," said Chris Phinney, harvest manager for the Puyallup Tribe.

The non-Indian fleet is dominated by more than 70 purse-seine fishermen, who — aided by skiffs — encircle the chum in a net that is then cinched up tight like a purse. Most of these skippers work the waters in Alaska's much larger summer salmon harvests before moving to Puget Sound in the fall.

The chum still fetch just a fraction of the prices of the more highly prized sockeye and chinook. Last year, they fetched about 20 cents a pound; this year, the price is averaging about 30 cents a pound. Many seiners will gross from $50,000 to $80,000 for about 10 days on the water.

	Trader Bay LTD employee Maria Garcia cleans single-egg roe freshly processed from chum salmon. After being cured into caviar, the roe will be shipped to Asia.

"For some of the fleet, this may be 20 percent of their salmon income, and for others significantly more," said Bud Marrese, skipper of a Puget Sound and Alaska seiner.

The last big seine opening unfolded Monday in the foggy waters of Hood Canal, with the fishing crews searching for jumpers that indicate a shallow school of chum.

"The chum are very lively fish, and when there is volume around — they show," said Randy Babich, a veteran of 39 years of fishing in Alaska and Puget Sound, who both catches his own fish and buys from other vessels.

The chum are graded on a sliding scale from silver-bright to dark fish, where the meat is paler and less firm. The Hood Canal fish are on the darker side of the scale, but fishermen have found plenty around. In the 10-hour opening, Babich hauled in more than 48,000 pounds of chum Monday in about eight sets of the net. The fish generally weighed from 8 to 10 pounds and were brought back to a Seattle plant for processing by Smokey Foods.

At the plant, the females' roe is harvested and cured into caviar and then packaged for shipment to Asia.

Early in the season, the carcasses often yielded fresh-market fillets shipped to West Coast markets. Much of the Monday harvest will be headed, gutted and frozen, then later thawed for smoking or carved into fillets and steaks for retailers.

Babich said the demand for chum, despite the big show of fish, has remained strong. Babich credits the stronger market to more consumers looking for wild salmon rather than pen-reared fish, which must be fed pigments to create a pink-hued flesh.

"There is definitely a niche for the wild salmon, a real turnaround in the value of the flesh," Babich said.

The wild chum return to spawn in river systems all around the Sound, with juveniles hatching the next spring and heading back into the Sound, then north into the Gulf of Alaska for several years of open-water grazing.

State fishery biologists say the chum have benefited from a mix of favorable freshwater conditions, without too many damaging floods, and an abundance of ocean food. And they are hopeful that next year will bring another strong run.

Ames, the state fishery biologist, said he hopes the strong runs will tempt more sport anglers to pursue the chums.

"I have been on a mission to encourage people to try to catch them," Ames said.

Hal Bernton: 206-464-2581 or hbernton@seattletimes.com

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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