Have you ever had wild Alaska salmon? You can find it fresh for a few short months each summer. But really, wild-caught Alaska salmon, you won’t believe what tastes like. In Summer 2014, we stayed in Anchorage for three nights, and we could have some time to fishing. As long as we had a license, we could fish everywhere. We started from the ocean. There was a meet between freshwater and saltwater. We were standing right between the waters, and we could see the line of salmons trying to swim back up the stream from the ocean. The bad thing for salmons was right next to the Beach, which means we could access easily. And for us, they wouldn’t bite whatever we threw in there. They weren’t hungry. We figured we needed to hook them, not fishing them. Finally, we caught 12-inch salmon in middle of the night. We danced around that salmon like Indians. We cooked it next day for lunch. Oh my god, it was amazing. It was like melting in my mouth.
Alaska salmon has a most interesting life. They start out as small eggs in a stream, and they begin their journey downstream towards the ocean. One that takes them from the rivers and streams of Alaska’s wild frontier to the high seas of the Pacific Ocean and back again. In fact, right back to the very place they were born. These mature salmons have an extra layer of fat that makes them keep going without eating break. Once they get back to their natal stream, they breed and lay their eggs. After spawning they generally die within a week, fertilizing the stream and creating a nutrient-rich environment for the new infant salmon that are about the hatch. That’s when the summer goes away, and you can find it wild fresh salmon throughout Alaska.
