It’s certainly been another learning year. After putting flyers on nearly all the gillnet vessels in town, as well as on the harbor bulletin boards, I finally have a semi-committment from a fisherman to allow us to pay him about 200% over the dock price to sell us pink salmon handled the way we need them. It’s been so hard for me to give fisherman money this year – much more difficult than I expected.
This fisherman, too, is a self-marketer, who just opened a restaurant in Jackson Hole, Wyoming – now that’s some serious marketing!
When he called and said he was interested, I immediately pinned him down to give a demonstration of our pressure bleeding technique, and ran out to our processor to show him. After talking with him for awhile, he said he might even be interested in selling them at his store/restaurant! You just never know where your next opportunity will come up. It’s always exciting to be working with other self-marketers who are excited to have someone else (like me) move a product they don’t yet have a market for themselves. As self-marketers, they know the importance of quality and are interested in learning anything that can easily improve quality.
Bruno came to dinner last night. I went to the bathroom about 2 am, and when I laid back down, I noticed the motion light was on outside. It didn’t register until I heard the gravel crunching outside my window, on the other side of the wall. I walked around to the back door, and sure enough, there was a black bear just grabbing a little bag of garbage out of the can. I knocked on the door and told him to “drop it”, and he ran up the driveway. Luckily, he didn’t scatter the garbage all over the place. I picked up the bag this morning, and we’ll have to put our garbage in the garage from now on.
There are fish everywhere right now – we can watch them jumping 24 hours a day in the channel in front of the house – yet some bears would still rather eat junk food than getting a real meal! They have no shame. Must be an American bear.
– Mark Stopha and Sara Hannan
Alaska Wild Salmon Company Wild Salmon and Salmon Pet Treats
4455 N. Douglas Hwy Juneau, AK 99801
907-463-3115
www.GoodSalmon.com