The shift was driven by the need for more fish than he could catch and to spread the gospel of "pressure-bleeding" fish to the boats that supply his business in the endless demand for top-quality product.

Stopha and his wife, Sara Hannan, began Alaska Wild Salmon Co. in Juneau in 2002, as they searched for an alternative to the abysmal prices of the traditional big-processor market. They called the "Problem Corner" program on Juneau's KINY radio station and sold a dozen king salmon in five minutes.

"That's the first time I saw the pent-up demand in Juneau for fresh fish," Stopha recalled. They formalized their off-the-boat sales of whole, dressed, troll-caught salmon with Internet notices of port calls and the catch of the day to their local customer base. Stopha hooked up with Dick Hand at Alaska Seafood Co. and began offering his catch in easily mailable retort pouches.

"That is the hardest thing to find in this state, a custom processor who's really interested in working with small operators like me," Stopha said. Beside Hand's processing skill, Stopha used his contacts for the supplies of a retail product line.

"He's done his own line of fish, so he has contacts for boxes, labels and things like that. He doesn't help me with marketing. I do that all myself," Stopha said.

Alaska Wild Salmon's marketing now includes fresh, pouched, canned and smoked (in Alaska birch syrup or sugar-free) salmon in seasonally available species, including pinks. He also offers fresh halibut and cod, and dog and cat treats made from salmon scraps, garlic and spent barley from the Alaskan Brewing Co.

A global education

Eclectic synergy has been a hallmark of Stopha's seafood career, which began after his family moved to Fairbanks from rural Bolivar, N.Y. After graduating from the University of Alaska Fairbanks with a bachelor's degree in fisheries, he worked for the Department of Fish and Game. His syrup supplier is a former fish tech who worked for him on a salmon counting tower in Kodiak.

Stopha also spent time in the Peace Corps teaching tilapia farming in Sierra Leone. Alaska Wild Salmon's newest product is a selection of products in woven vine baskets, hand-made by members of the family he lived with in the West African nation. The college professor who suggested he consider the Peace Corps also sent him to Mississippi State University for a graduate degree in fisheries management, where he also learned the art of hand-grabbing or "noodling" catfish.

He hasn't found a use for that technique, but his continuing education also led to the Alaska Seafood Processing Leadership Institute where he learned about pressure-bleeding. Run by the Alaska Sea Grant College Program, the institute helps young seafood industry professionals keep up with the cutting edge of seafood processing technology.

Pressure bleeding is a technique that allows a salmon's body to be cleanly drained of blood by taping into its circulatory system with a tube, commonly the barrel of a pen. "Almost all the trollers have heard of it and a lot of the trollers know how to do it," Stopha said. "It's the way to go. It takes time, but it's volume and quality. If you're doing quality, you're almost always going to sacrifice volume."

Stepping down to get ahead

Being a deckhand allows Stopha to directly monitor the quality of the fish he is buying and relieves him of the job of managing a commercial fishing boat. Leaving the soaring cost of fuel and logistics as someone else's headache was an added bonus.

Buying from several boats also gives him a steadier, larger supply of fish, making him a more secure supplier. "If you're out (of product) once or twice and they go to someone else, you may lose them and you spent a lot of money to get them in the first place. Now I can sit down and draw up a business plan and say, based on my past years, this is how much product I can move," he said.

Working with hand trollers whose small production makes it more difficult for them to find buyers among the large-volume buyers is also a good fit for Stopha. "They're just thrilled to have anyone buying hand-trolled fish," he said.

He uses the same technique in his national marketing efforts, which range from the Player's Grill in Fairbanks to restaurants and healthy-eating groceries in Florida, Ohio, Minnesota and elsewhere.

"I've really concentrated on smaller stores where I can go in there and give them somewhat of a unique product ... I tell them they are not competing with Whole Foods, because I market only to small stores. It gives them a unique product to draw people into their stores," Stopha said.

He's found a consistent demand for wild salmon over farmed in his Midwest ventures where still-maturing seafood gastronomy also allows for some experimentation.

"All they want is wild. That's what they understand. They want to know if it's wild. Coho and pinks are what I explain about," Stopha said.

He got into pink salmon business, not just on the coattails of the NorQuest and other large companies that have been developing the product form, but to keep his low-price smoked, pouched salmon line supplied during last year's weak chum return.

"I wanted to keep some product line in that price range. I thought I'd try the pinks. I like them better in that form than I like the chums. They have a really good taste and a really good texture," he said.

As in life on the bridge of a fishing boat, innovation remains part of Stopha's life. He had to stop over-the-rail sales when he sold the Dutch Master, but he has recovered that customer base with home-delivery of fish processed by Alaska Seafood Co.

In the long term, his target is a secure system of top-quality seafood suppliers. "It would be nice to be able to develop, with several of my friends who helped me along to get this far, for them to have the same level of certainty: that I can go fishing for Mark and not be subject to the whim of fish prices every year," he said.

"The people we market to is mainly based on the quality of the fish they're getting. As long as they get the same quality they'll keep buying it ... We'd have certainty that we have a market and we're going to be able to get a workable price for it," he said.