Welcome to the smell of the North Pacific (scratch & sniff here)
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If you are here for fun and entertainment, or for specialty Copper River sockeye salmon products, you have come to the right place. We place a high value on fun. And on good, healthful wild salmon. Skip to near the end of this long page if you just want to order the Flopping Fresh Fish Company's specialty sockeye salmon products and Giftpacks.

Even if you have arrived here by mistake, you might as well hang around and check out the Flopping Fresh Fish Company's story and stories. Then you can resume your search for "fishnet stockings" or whatever brought you here having spent at least some time on socially acceptable frivolity.

If you are in northwest Washington, you can find some of our products on the shelves of Bellingham's Community Food Co-operative on Forest or on Cordata Parkway, or at the "Wild Blueberries" gift shop in the Public Market at the intersection of Cornwall and Ellis in Bellingham.

Capt. Buck Meloy and friend

The Copper River salmon season runs from May through September, when Captain Buck catches the prized, wild Copper River sockeye and prepares them for his Flopping Fresh Fish Company affishionados.

Once the season is over, Captain Buck dusts off the old Smith-Corona, to share with you a peek at what goes on in his peculiar world. New stories will be coming. In the meantime, take another glance at "A Tale Untold", a long-suppressed account of a botched burial at sea, or "Buck Naked in Cordova", which noted the changing seasonal tempo of a small Alaskan fishing town.

Exxon's appeal and refusal to pay the court-ordered punitive damages for its egregious negligence in letting a known relapsed alcoholic captain one of its supertankers was finally heard by the U.S. Supreme Court in February of 2009. That gave Exxon's lawyers the chance to argue that they didn't really mean it. Read about it here: "Exxon Will Make Us Whole".

The more than 37,000 injured claimants will now receive one-tenth of what a federal jury determined would have been fair, twenty years after the destructive event.

The Name That GMC Contest is long over.

' Slicky '

Sorry, winner Kathy Roberts. "Slicky" was and is a great name for the seagull dung-covered Flopping Fresh Fish Company 1972 GMC, but your prize has long since been eaten. As a consolation prize, I will name something of yours if you ever reveal your location.

FLOPPING FRESH FISHY STUFF

Though salmon prices were generally depressed worldwide for years, due primarily to the impact of huge numbers of inferior farmed "feedlot" salmon being dumped on markets everywhere, the excellent reputation and high quality of Copper River salmon contiues to keep their prices well above those of salmon from other parts of Alaska. And, as you may have noticed, the prices of nearly all fish have been rising for a while. Not to mention the cost of fuel, canning, transportation, and just about everything else. Nevertheless, through diligent cost-saving, the Flopping Fresh Fish Company has managed to resist inflationary pressure again this year.

Fortunately, the Post Office has returned to some "Flat Rate" boxes that allow for bargain shipping to anywhere in the country for most orders. See below for details.

A Word About "Organic" Salmon

You may recall that my salmon, and those meeting the same standards on delivery to Prime Select Seafoods of Cordova, Alaska, obtained the first and only "Organic" certification ever earned by wild salmon. Unfortunately, differences among organic certifiers and the refusal of two major natural foods marketers to recognize this certification created a turmoiled situation that made marketing our salmon as "Organic" uneconomical. Adding to the confusion, a few foreign salmon farms have obtained "organic" certifications from a foreign certifier for their "feedlot" salmon.

The USDA is still developing national organic standards for seafood marketed in this country. Incredibly, it is possible that the USDA is preparing to permit the labelling as "organic" of farmed salmon that are raised in crowded cages, innoculated, fed pellets laced with dyes (without which they could not develop the red flesh color of their wild counterparts), and routinely dosed with chemicals and antibiotics. Should this come to pass, harvesters of naturally organic wild salmon from the pure waters of the North Pacific will take no pride in a similar label for their fish.

Now that farmed salmon have been shown to contain questionably high levels of PCBs, due to the way they are fed and raised, wild Pacific salmon have become even more highly regarded by people who seek healthfulness in everything they eat. And those who insist on food produced in environmentally friendly ways will also want to avoid eating fish as destructive to wild resources as most farmed salmon are. You can read Capt. Buck's story about Alexandra Morton, the woman who first proved that sea lice in penned farmed salmon are destroying wild salmon in British Columbia, here: "Alexandra's Pink Revolution".

But with or without "organic" certification, the North Pacific's wild salmon have been given a clean bill of health. The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), following years of research and documention, has certified the harvest of Alaska's wild salmon as environmentally friendly and a sustainably well-managed resource, and has given them its highly-regarded MSC seal of approval. It has already begun showing up on Alaskan salmon in your supermarkets.

This simply proves what Captain Buck Meloy already knew: that a creature as exquisite as a wild Pacific salmon is worth more than a toss into a box upon capture, and that those who appreciate delectable and nutritious table fare deserve better than a fish that still has (only) a few days of shelf-life left. He also understands the natural superiority of wild fish, which are inherently antibiotic-free, get plenty of exercise, and have grown up eating an organic diet in some real cool clean water. And they are high in the nutritious Omega 3's that have been proven to have many health benefits.

Capt. Buck wants his friends to have salmon that are as good as they can be -- and that's pretty darn good! To make sure it happens that way, he catches every salmon that carries the Flopping Fresh Fish Company label himself, in the clean, cold North Pacific right in front of the 55-mile wide Copper River delta.

Of course, quality can't be put in a can or in the freezer unless it's there to begin with. So Capt. Buck handles each fish with great care, making sure not to traumatize it.

Using the most selective form of fishing -- gillnetting -- assures that his catch will be of the desired size and species. It also allows Buck to break a gill on each sockeye as it comes aboard, draining it of the blood that otherwise would hasten spoilage. He then immediately chills them in slush ice in his insulated hold so they will keep their flopping fresh quality.

Since only a small portion of his total catch meets his finicky standards, Capt. Buck picks out the ones that will be honored with the Flopping Fresh Fish Company label right when he catches them. They are all ocean bright sockeye salmon, fat, healthy, and undamaged by the seals, sea lions , and sharks who harvest from the same runs. Icing them immediately after bleeding inhibits the actions of enzymes and spoilage bacteria which could otherwise diminish quality.

Then Capt. Buck speeds them to Cordova, Alaska, aboard his trusty bowpicker, the Spindrift III. If you would like to see where Cordova is, take a boat or plane (there's no road), or click here:

There are only 2000 year around residents of Cordova, nearly all of whom depend on fishing one way or another for their livelihoods, so you can imagine how fussy they are about salmon. That means there are plenty of experts who know how to do fish right.

Gerald Masolini, at whose tiny Eyak Packing Company the Flopping Fresh Fish Company's products used to be prepared, retired years ago. Though we still occasionally have Gerald and his charming nature, we no longer have handy excuses for stopping by and jaw-boning away his day. And we had to seek out another custom processor with the wherewithal to equal the exceptional standards that Gerald had set.

Remarkably, we found one. Long-time fisherman and smoker Bill Bailey, whose expanding custom processing business has finally settled into semi-permanent quarters, now personally smokes my Flopping Fresh Fish Company sockeye salmon. And his small crew of pros hand cuts and packs it.

Bill's cutter fillets each salmon, then cuts it into narrow lengthwise strips instead of slabs as is done in more commercial operations. The smoke comes from smoldering alderwood fires. There is no substitute for alder when it comes to smoking Pacific salmon.

Slicing them into strips assures that they take the natural brine evenly and that the smoke will rapidly penetrate the meat and surplus moisture dissipate without causing excessive drying or bitterness. Needless to say, chemical preservatives, colorings, flavorings, or adulterants of any kind have no place here.

Hand packing enables careful placing of the smokey morsels, with pieces of the especially succulent belly meat neatly centered in each can radiating their richness throughout.

Available Products of the Flopping Fresh Fish Company

All cans are at least 1/2-pound each (slight variations in net weight result from hand packing), and are attractively and entertainingly hand-labeled in a style consistent with their specialty nature.

With a little advance notice I am happy to custom-label cans, and can do so at modest additional cost.

All of our products, except the smoked sockeye, contain almost no salt -- at least 80% less than is used in commercial products. And we add nothing else whatsoever, not even water. The smoked sockeye has been briefly marinated in a salt brine that also contains a tiny amount of brown sugar, according to Bill's tried-and-true formula.

We continue to be proud of our association with Mama Lil's. Proprietor Howard Lev does with peppers what I do with salmon. Leaving nothing to chance, Howard supervises the growing, harvesting, brining, pickling, pampering, portioning, packing and promoting of the peppers that will make him a legend in his own time.

Step aside, Peter Piper!

Mama Lil's Pickled Hungarian Goathorn Peppers in (extra virgin olive and expeller pressed canola) Oil are delicious right out of the bottle. But mixed with Flopping Fresh Fish Company sockeye salmon and cream cheese, they create a spread that no one has yet created a cracker good enough for. I finally managed to locate Howard, crouched down behind a pickle barrel, so we are again offering fancy Giftpaks containing my salmon and a jar of Mama Lil's premium peppers.

Mama Lil's pepper lovers finally persuaded me to use a larger jar in the Giftpacks. Each now contains a full 9-ounce jar, replacing the previous 4-ounce jar.

FLOPPING FRESH FISH COMPANY Product details below:

Please keep in mind that during the fishing season, Capt. Buck is often out on the water. So responses to your queries may take a while. Also, some products and giftpacks may not be available for shipment until the season is over, and all orders have to wait until the Captain is ashore and has a few days on his hands. Like the act of fishing itself, the key thing here is patience. And we do our best to make it worth the wait.

Shipping/handling charges:

The Post Office has instituted several "flat-rate" Priority boxes that enable us to offer affordable and fast shipping anywhere in the U.S., including a special rate to those overseas in our military:

Rates for larger quantities and to other countries depend on weight and distance. Email me your zip code and order size for a quote.

Feel free to write or e-mail fish@nas.com if you want to place an order or have any questions. We appreciate any comments or feedback we get on our products or how we do things.

Our mailing addresses are: