Sitka Alaska (Sitka and: price, eat, business)

[GoDawgs06]

Returned from a great fishing trip a couple weeks ago, but have a few words of warning for anyone that may be considering Sitka, and in particular Big Blue Fisheries during a fishing trip.

My trip lasted June 3rd - June 7th, and I caught more fish than I knew what to do with. Luckily Big Blue had a few ideas in mind; switch my large salmon for the 8 lb salmon they had laying around their warehouse, insist half of all fish caught are tail sections, refuse to offer any explanation for the size and weight discrepancy, and tell me to f*ck off when they are called on their lies.

If I decide to return to Sitka and am offered the choice to work with Big Blue again, I would just as rather throw my fish to the eagles. Absolutely under no circumstance would I encourage anyone to use the scam artists know as Big Blue. I am missing roughly 40% of the fish I caught.

Be sure to take many pictures of the fish you catch, as it will be the last time you'll see them if you make the mistake of using Big Blue Fisheries.

Big Blue only smokes its customers!!!

[Rance]

So are they a processing place? Clean, freeze, wrap and ship? Thats a bummer but not the first place to pull that stunt. We have a local meat processor that would scam a large portion of moose meat in the same manner. Didn't take long before the word got out to all the local hunters and they pretty much went belly up for processing wild game. You might consider sending a letter to the better business burough and CC the party in question. You never know. They might suddenly find your remaining fish hidden in the freezer. Some of these places will retain a large portion for smoking and re-sale in their own showcases. Makes them a little profit.

[rotorhead]

Why people think they can get away with stunts like that is beyond me. If you can't make a legitimate go of a business, you'd think that most people would just find a different line of work instead of cheating and stealing and trying to BS their way through when they get called on it.

Thanks for the warning.

[Cordovan]

I used to work at a fish processor. For future reference, use as your guide:
1. Always weight your fish going in.
2. Expect waste loss (different for each specie, but this is a general guide): Fins, guts, gills, & head usually 25% unless the guy with the knife is really bad. To save the good meat around the collar, request "Princess Dress" which is head & tail on, guts, gills and fins off. Then you know it's your fish, and you can cut it up as you want, when you get home.
If you have it filleted, your waste goes up to 50% (everything goes including the backbone, and a heavy fillet knife can really eat it up).
If you have the fillets smoked, you will lose up to another 50% of the fillet.

Bottom Line: Expect no more than 75% recovery from whole fish to H & G (head and guts), 50% on fillets, and 35% recovery on smoked.

That is why fish appear so expensive in the store:
$1.00/lb. to the fisherman means:
$1 x 50% recovery=$2 (doubled the cost, by losing half the weight to fillet)
$2 + processing overhead (processing and shipping costs-add another $1 at least), plus mark-up (whatever the wholesale market will bear)
+ retail mark-up (usually doubled again, because it is perishable).
So a $1 price to fishermen has a $6 price tag not counting the processors mark-up ($1 + $1+ $1 x 2). The processor will add whatever the retail market will accept. It's a tough business, not matter how you fillet it.