PRE-ORDER: Smoked Canned Wild Alaska Keta Salmon

Wild Alaska Keta salmon oil content makes them ideal candidates for both smoking and canning. Full of flavor and chunked out inside the can, it makes a great addition to any party or outing and is our most popular gift item. Click on our recipes link for ideas on how to use your smoked canned salmon creatively throughout the year.

These fish are drift gillnet caught by small boat Southeast Alaska fishermen with crews of 1-3 people, delivered to Petersburg, AK, then smoked and canned by a 100% fishermen owned cannery. The fishermen catching the fish in these cans own a share of the cannery they are delivering to! See a diagram of drift gillnetting in the photos.

Drift Gillnetting is a fishery in which nets are run out and hauled back in by a hydraulic drum. The net hangs in the first 5 or so fathoms (1 fathom equals 6ft) of the water column. Gillnetters have multiple nets with different mesh sizes (the size of the holes in the gillnet), and can set the net that will most accurately target the species of salmon they are fishing. Each fish is hand-picked out of the net, bled, and slush iced on board.

Photos by www.natalieberger.com

Keta salmon illustration by Amanda M Jorgenson

Drift Gillnet diagram by Alaska Seafood Marketing Institue (ASMI)