Where Your Salmon Came From In 2025: A Season With Skipper Otto Fishers

(Photo Credit: Image captured by multi-generation fisher John Hassall of son Riley)

Overview

As anyone living on Canada’s west coast knows, salmon is a core part of the local experience — for the people eating it, the people catching it, and the shoreside support of BC’s coastal communities. Salmon is also the foundation of Skipper Otto. Otto Strobel, now a retired salmon fisherman who wanted to be paid a fair price for his catch, and thus, the idea for Skipper Otto was born.

Seventeen years and a third generation of Strobels later, we offer our members over 20 different species of seafood. But salmon is still the backbone of what we do, and it is caught by multi-generational families and a deliberately diverse fleet — parents and kids, Indigenous Economic Opportunity fishers, and Vietnamese-Canadian families like Toan Thi La’s.

In deciding who will target which salmon runs,“we focus on longevity: of the fishery, of the people who are fishing, and the longevity of our organization, Skipper Otto, too” says Chris Kantowicz, Skipper Otto’s Chief Operating Officer.

So, as the 2025 salmon season draws to a close, Chris gave us an inside look at who caught which salmon, where, and how.

Season at a Glance (June - September)

Here’s a quick overview of what Skipper Otto’s 2025 salmon season looked like:

June: Sockeye season began in Barkley Sound and moved into the Port Alberni Inlet in July, fished by the commercial gillnet fleet and commercial Indigenous Economic Opportunity fishers.

July: Focus shifted north to the Skeena River for sockeye and the Nass River for chum. It was also the first year of our sockeye partnership with the Nisg̱a’a Nation.

Late July: A supplemental sockeye opening in Johnstone Strait.

Aug–Sept: Chinook harvested in Alberni Inlet and the Somass River, while our trollers fished for coho and pink north of Haida Gwaii.

Sockeye

For the first time in a long while, we had four different sockeye runs in 2025. Usually, we only have two or three, so this diversification is a positive trend that positions us to meet member demand for sockeye for years to come.

Our sockeye season started in June in Barkley Sound, with gillnetters moving up the fjord toward Port Alberni Inlet as the season progressed. We fish here earlier in the season to avoid Henderson Lake sockeye, a population of concern.This year, our commercial gillnet fleet included our co-founder Shaun Strobel and his son Oliver on the Eldorado, John Hassall and his son Riley, Rick Dietterle, Johnny Bears, Jeremy Chapman, Gordie Johnson, Thao Nguyen, and third-generation Vietnamese fisher Toan Thi La. We also worked with the commercial Economic Opportunity fleet, which included fishers from the c̓išaaʔatḥ (Tseshaht) Nation — families including Les Sam, Willard and Natasha Marshall, and Melanie Cranmer. They fish in skiffs and work in family groups as they pull their gillnets on board by hand. You can find out more about each of our fishers on our site.

If you’re interested in learning more about how a diverse group of fishers and experts has made the Somass River Fisheries out of Port Alberni one of the best-managed fisheries in BC, we recently wrote about the unique management of the Port Alberni fishery.

Offloading at Port Alberni Fishermen’s Harbour is always a challenge; often 100 or so boats are all waiting to use just  two winches at the same time. For the first time, we had our very own Skipper Otto flatbed truck with a crane to offset the bottleneck at the dock. After a long day of fishing, Shaun led the offload, easing pressure on the existing winches and speeding up offloading for our fishers, leading to smoother operations, and ensuring absolutely premium quality fish.

By early July, some fishers, including Gordie, Dean and Danny (Dean’s 82 year-old dad) were already headed north to the Skeena River. We tend to focus on fishing the early runs there to avoid weaker upriver stocks later in the season.

We were also excited to have the opportunity to work with the Nisg̱a’a Nation who fish along the Nass River. Working directly with Gitwinksihlkw village leadership, we were able to secure better prices for their community fishery. Community members fish in small skiffs, and youth are trained in careful offloading and icing. Because this is a community fishery, fish won’t be labelled as being caught by an individual fisher, so keep an eye out for these anomaly labels on your sockeye this season.

Our final sockeye source was Johnstone Strait, where Doug Kostering fished a small, late-July opening. After offloading in the community of Sayward on Vancouver Island, he delivered his  catch straight to our processor.

For us, what matters is building a resilient, diverse network of fishers that keeps members well-fed, more fishing families supported, and salmon stocks protected. Chris clarifies, “We don’t just ask existing fishers to do more — we ask who else we can support?” 

That’s why we source sockeye from four different runs, spreading opportunity across communities while providing delicious salmon for our members.

Chum

The chum we source comes from the Nass River near the Alaska border. Unlike much of the Chum caught on the coast, which is targeted for roe with the flesh going to lower-value uses, this northern Chum is ocean run, and silverbright, and we showcase it in both fillets and smoked products.

The Nass River opening was one of the first northern salmon openings this year, so with news of an opening and no time to waste Gordie Johnson loaded his boat onto his trailer after one of the last Alberni Inlet openings and made his way north to meet Dean who was already in place. Together Dean and Gordie managed to catch a year’s worth of chum in just a few days!

Coho

It has been a tough year for coho. One of our main trollers, Francis van der Sande, spent much of September, north of Haida Gwaii, enduring some of the worst storms he has experienced in recent years in search of coho. His daughter Lily, age 9, joined him for her first commercial trip which spanned a few weeks at the start of the season; another wonderful example of the next generation learning the family trade.

For the past few years, catches have been modest. It’s too early to say if this is an anomaly or a longer-term trend, but we’ll continue to keep you updated.

Pink

As well as fishing for coho, Francis also fished for pink salmon in the same area, again with very little luck.

While pink salmon was abundant in some parts of the coast, we prefer to source from north of Haida Gwaii because it’s of high quality. While our intention was to work with an additional three fishing families, catches there have been unfortunately scarce for all so we will have limited availability of pink salmon as we head into the winter season.

Chinook

The Alberni Inlet region is also the site of the chinook fishery which takes place in August and September. Gillnetters fish overnight and offload in the wee hours of the morning; the salmon is often cut in Vancouver that same afternoon. Our crane truck ready with totes and ice definitely came in handy again for the chinook season— the quicker we can offload and process fish, the higher the quality.

Many of the same fishers will also head out for chinook as for sockeye: Shaun, John, Rick, Toan and Thao were back, as well as our consistent group of Indigenous Economic Opportunity families.

Fishing as a Way of Life - For Generations

When you enjoy Skipper Otto salmon, you’re part of a bigger story built on long-term care for the fishery and the families who depend on it. Chris says, “We don’t go for fast, one-off solutions. Instead, we build relationships and infrastructure that work for everyone, year over year.”

That approach is evident in everything from our Nisg̱a’a Nation partnership to the youngest generation of kids like Riley, Oliver, and Lily all fishing alongside their parents, to building the ideal crane truck to speed up offloading.

Your Skipper Otto membership doesn’t just support one boat or one fisher or one type of fish; you’re supporting a multi-generational, diverse network of fishing families and the shoreside businesses that keep coastal communities strong.

The more members we have, the more families we can support. That’s why, when you share Skipper Otto with your friends and family, you create a ripple effect — you support keeping dollars, fish, and traditions alive here in BC.

Now that you know all about how and where our salmon were caught this year, by whom, and why we fished where and when we did, we hope the labels on the salmon you enjoy from us will bring even more meaningful conversations to your kitchen table.