California King Salmon/ David and Garret Rose/ Troll
Oct 23, 2022
ABOUT THE FISHERMAN:
Garrett Rose grew up fishing with his dad, David, in Morro Bay. David started out as a trawler and was one of the few brave fishermen to volunteer to partner with The Nature Conservancy in 2008 to convert his trawler to long line and commit to integrating their research on the new gear into his operations. These days, David still fishes groundfish, but he also takes in squid and salmon off his boat, the Kai Honi II. A couple years ago, Garrett bought another of his dad’s boats, the Taurus. It has been so fun to watch him take on ownership of his fishing business with serious determination and success.
Garrett has a diversified fisheries portfolio with a rock crab permit, a long line permit for sablefish and thornyhead, a Dungeness crab permit, a deeper nearshore rockfish permit, a salmon troll permit, and a little used urchin permit just in case he finds a moment to go diving! You can find Garrett selling his catch at the Saturday Fishermen’s Market almost every weekend.
ABOUT KING SALMON:
Salmon are one of Planet Earth’s most impressive and tasty life forms, able to live in oceans, rivers and lakes, and migrate thousands of miles between their feeding grounds and home spawning turf. King (Chinook) Salmon in California are particularly adept at handling the diverse and fluctuating rivers and ocean environments of our neck of the woods.
Although King salmon can stray as far south as the Santa Barbara Channel, they are more plentiful to our north, so each year a handful of Santa Barbara fishermen head north to chase the fish wherever they may be off the California coast.
The California troll (hook and line) fishery is a very small, tightly regulated fishery that only opens a few weeks at a time to ensure sustainability. The recent rainy years in Central California have lead to an upswing in population size for the species. Each salmon is hand caught, and gutted bled and iced immediately on the boat to product a top quality product.
