Bill Webber knows the Copper River flats as well as anybody. That's because he started fishing them with his dad when he was seven. Foreseeing a limited entry licensing system coming to Alaska's salmon fishery, his dad made sure Bill was fishing his own boat as soon as he could handle it. So Bill putted out to the flats on his own in a skiff and a small outboard. At the age of 11.  

 

Webber has seen a lot of changes in the 43 years he's been fishing kings, sockeyes and cohos in one of the more treacherous salmon fisheries in Alaska, where big breakers roll in from the Gulf of Alaska and break on the myriad bars. As a founding member of the Copper River Fisherman's Cooperative in the early 1980s, he helped put the name Copper River on the menus of restaurants around the country. Later, after the Coop floundered and closed in the early 1990s, he knew he wanted to do more than simply sell his salmon to canneries in Cordova.  

 

Selling to a cannery like everybody else offered little incentive to produce a top quality fish, since the cannery paid all fishermen the same price and sold all their fish for pretty much the same price, regardless of quality.  Webber knew he could produce a much better product. But if he wanted to get more money for it - and he was confident there were enough chefs who would pay for it - he would have to take his fish into his own hands and do it himself.  And he has.  

 

"I spent 20 years figuring out how to produce the best quality salmon," he says. "I realized I had to get out there and build a network to make selling direct work." It's taken awhile, but unlike many fishermen who try their hand at direct marketing and give up after realizing how much more work it is, Webber has stuck with it. Today his company,  Gulkana Seafoods Direct, ships to restaurants around the country. Last summer, he says, he sold 98% of his catch direct. 

On a good opening, Webber can load his 31-foot aluminum bowpicker up with 10,000 pounds of salmon. Instead of just picking salmon out of his gillnet and tossing them in the fish hold, he bleeds each fish when they're alive in a tank and then flushes more blood out with a low-pressure water hose. After that each fish is carefully belly and layer-iced. "I control every aspect for quality purposes," Webber says. "All my fish are bled and iced pre-rigor."

Back at the dock in Cordova, Webber puts his fish in 50-lb. wetlocks (his minimum order size) and humps the boxes out to the airport, where he puts them on an Alaska Airlines jet bound for the Lower 48. Thirty-two hours after he catches them his  prized Copper River salmon, marbled with fat, can be in the kitchen of a restaurant. He typically fishes the flats from mid May, when the first kings and sockeyes show up, to September when the last cohos head up the Copper River. It's all a lot of work, which is why Webber finally broke down and hired his first crewmember the summer before last.

But don't tell Webber, who has also built more than 50 fishing boats during the long Alaska winters, what he does is work. "I'm a pressure-driven individual. I enjoy it. It's all fun for me. I've never worked a day in my life!"

 

Click here to see Gulkana Seafood-Direct's products and remember to tell them you found them on FishChoice.com when you contact them.