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What is a "Silverbright" Salmon?

67K views 44 replies 34 participants last post by  Fred N 
#1 Ā·
I was outraged when I saw wild "silverbright" salmon on sale for $3.00 a # at Safeway today. I can't believe wild fish can sell for that cheep. I guess the netts are doing good these days (wonder why are #'s are down?) to be selling wild fish so cheep. Anyways I got in a debate with the lady at the counter because she was telling people it was Chum salmon. The tag read, silverbright salmon. Can someone tell me what a Silverbright salmon is?
 
#3 Ā·
lol that is just somthing they say to describe the chrome in the fish. It probably was chum salmon. Safeway mostly sells chum. Only seen nook or coho there twice. Silverbright also referrs to how fresh it is...
 
#8 Ā·
This name has been used for quite some time for Chum. It sounds a lot better than Dog Salmon and makes the fish easier to sell.
BTW, flounder, turbot and other species are marketed in some restaurants as California Halibut.
 
#11 Ā·
They taste like garbage, I wouldn't take them if someone paid me. Yhey may smoke good but they are hard to get lit. Never buy fish when you can spend hours fishing for one. I have had people at safeway tell me steelhead were a type of salmon, I just go along with it and laugh.
 
#12 Ā·
So... "Silverbright" = "chum". Thanks, never heard that before. Definitely not Columbia R. springer or early summer steelhead, but Pacific wild salmon rarely disappoints. I'd easily spend 5X more for "Silverbright" over farm-raised Atlantic. In fact,... I'd just as soon the farm-raised Atlantic's on the west coast spoiled on the shelf to the point that they stopped raising it on this coast.
 
#14 Ā·
I have had people at safeway tell me steelhead were a type of salmon, I just go along with it and laugh.
Actually, these days steelhead ARE salmon. No more Salmo gairdneri.
Now it is Oncorhynchus mykiss.
 
#15 Ā·
Drhall99 just because I said I had a "debate" doesn't mean it was heated. It was just a friendly debate between 2 adults. Kind of like what we are having now. I just didn't think Chum salmon would ever be sold in the store for human consumption. I was wrong.
 
#18 Ā·
Yeah, I've seen Safeway do the same "marketing crap" even as early as 1989 in California. What a bunch of BS. I'm sure they never get repeat customers!
Part of me says this is false advertising. The general public knows these fish as "chum" or "dog" salmon. Safeway is the only person/entity I've ever seen call them "Silverbrite".:frown:
 
#22 Ā·
Chums have a different life cycle than other salmon. They only exist in very short rivers that dump directly into the salt, i.e. Skykomish, Nisqually, Skagit etc in WA and Miami, Kilchis, Trask etc in OR. They spend very little time in fresh water, migrating to the ocean after only 90 days or so since they were hatched much sooner than other salmon. They dont need to be larger since they are spawned in short rivers. They deteriorate very fast in freshwater. Since their spawning runs are very short, their fat reserves are small thus poor taste and fast deterioration.

Called dogs cause..two stories, Eskimos fed them to their dogs and also cause all those teeth make them look like a dog. Not much to eat but a big a buck can go in the teens and are great fighters. Fun to catch otherwise about the same category as slime trout (Pinks).

Used to be the commercials couldnt give them away, .05 to .10 pound. As a matter of fact, about 10 years ago, the commercials were setting up in Seattle area parking lots giving the things away to try and get some demand. I think due to asian demand, they get .40 -.50 now. Puget Sound has a run of a 1 million plus. I'd rather have Nooks and Silvers.
 
#23 Ā·
Good description.
For what it's worth, I believe the Yukon and the Amur have fall run fish that are exceptions to the general rule. These fall run fish migrate quite a distance upriver.
 
#24 Ā·
Silverbright is the marketing name for chum.

"wild" refers to caught in the wild. Fish sold as wild can be hatchery or native. They just have to be harvested in the wild to be labeled that.

Steelhead/rainbow and cutthroat are classed as pacific salmon now. The only two fish that are classed as true trout are Atlantic salmon and brown trout.

Although chum mostly run up small rivers there are also runs of them that go great distances. The Yukon is an example. The Columbia R used to have "URB" chums but all the dams put an end to those runs.
 
#25 Ā·
I'm going to step in on this one since I have first hand experience eating them. I just returned home after spending three weeks on the Nush. The local natives at Ekwok call bright chum "silver brights". This is not a Safeway marketing scheme. We ate many of them while in camp and they were delicious. Bright chum in Shake and Bake and then quick fried in oil for two miniutes. Mmmmm! Side by side with a king filet it was hard to see a color difference on the flesh side. Mind you these chum were fresh in and many still had long tailed sea lice. We did several up for our guests as a shore lunch and it was excellent fare. For those of you who dismiss chum as tasting poorly, I doubt you have ever had a fresh one and are basing your experience on a fish that has been in fresh water for a while or you are repeating the opinion of others.

E
 
#26 Ā·
For those of you who dismiss chum as tasting poorly, I doubt you have ever had a fresh one and are basing your experience on a fish that has been in fresh water for a while or you are repeating the opinion of others.
E
Seconded. Ocean caught chum taste great. Much better that a humpy. The Yukon variety have a high oil content and are delicious smoked.
 
#31 Ā·
I'm going to step in on this one since I have first hand experience eating them. I just returned home after spending three weeks on the Nush. The local natives at Ekwok call bright chum "silver brights". This is not a Safeway marketing scheme. We ate many of them while in camp and they were delicious. Bright chum in Shake and Bake and then quick fried in oil for two miniutes. Mmmmm! Side by side with a king filet it was hard to see a color difference on the flesh side. Mind you these chum were fresh in and many still had long tailed sea lice. We did several up for our guests as a shore lunch and it was excellent fare. For those of you who dismiss chum as tasting poorly, I doubt you have ever had a fresh one and are basing your experience on a fish that has been in fresh water for a while or you are repeating the opinion of others.

E
The Nushagak chums have a long way to go as well, kind of an up river bright chum. I agree, they are good eating there. I've spent five seasons guiding the Nush. I also spent two seasons working at a chum salmon hatchery in SE Alaska. Those SE chum, even when bright, were not the quality of the ones that have a long way to run.
 
#32 Ā·
The Nushagak chums have a long way to go as well, kind of an up river bright chum. I agree, they are good eating there. I've spent five seasons guiding the Nush. I also spent two seasons working at a chum salmon hatchery in SE Alaska. Those SE chum, even when bright, were not the quality of the ones that have a long way to run.
I'd like to add that winter run chum are different than the summer fish, as well.

Back when I left the military no one would hire me in my chosen trade due to the partial loss of my vision. I volunteered many hours to fill my time in between looking for work. Part of that was at a South Puget Sound project. We trucked early chum from a Hood Canal hatchery to a pond above Percival Cove stock chinook. We basicly used the chum as a biological filter to protect the chinook from the parasites.
Well, we released the remaining chum to nourish the estuary. Guess what? They survived.
This last year I heard Harvest Management staff tell the Commission about how there was this increased availability of chum in the South Sound.:bigshock:

Since these "Silverbright" Salmon will be caught in the saltchuck, well, will they be marketed as such?:shrug:
 
#29 Ā·
Pretty easy to see why they call Chum/Dog salmon "silverbrights." Ain't gonna sell anything called Chum or Dog for eating, unless you are buying it for Fido. My buddy caught a chum in the Cowlitz last fall, I had never seen anything so ugly in my life. But like others have said, you get any salmon species in cold salt water of the north Pacific and you've got something good to eat.
 
#30 Ā·
A few years back we belonged to Paradise Cove RV park. Every year on the 4th the park hosted a barbecue. No one really wanted to share good chinook sport caught fish for the barbie so the manager bought (horrors!!!) pen raised salmon from Freddies.

I did some of the cooking and convinced one of the older cooks there to try my Alaska recipe. Butter, Lemon pepper and a good coating of Parmesian cheese. Most of the people who attended were fisher persons and knew nothing of the origin of these fish. There was no leftover fish! The few extra filets were argued over and taken home. :food:

We told a few of the old timers who said they could tell one fish from the other just by taste. They had to be convinced.

Point is, some can take fresh mediocre fish and make it taste good. Others can take great fish and ruin it! Once or twice I have seen people put barbecue sauce on salmon! YUK !!
 
#33 Ā·
"Silverbright" kind of reminds me of "prawns". Marketing is shameless and very effective. Tell someone something long enough and it will become fact.....kind of like brands of tackle and fishing methods, etc,,,,, Commercial fish marketers are not only telling the public that chums are to be confused with silver salmon (yes, that's what they are doing) They are also telling the public, even liberal eco minded people, that it is GOOD to eat wild salmon!! Trout Unlimited is doing it too! They want people to be confused about the 'terminology'. Wild, native, hatchery, farm raised, silverbright, Keta, Chum, prawns, shrimp, etc,,, These 'green' eco minded people would be our best allies for stopping non-selective salmon harvests. If they knew that a local stream's native endangered Coho run is likely to get swept up in a November lower Columbia commercial season and then sold to them at Wild Oats, they would be outraged!
INSTEAD...... They think they are doing the right thing and they pay premium price for the stuff. It is up to us to change this. That's for another thread. ( I just said Wild Oats for example. I am not claiming they sell endangered Coho. I have seen it marketed at urban Grocery stores here and in Seattle and don't have the specifics.... well, one comes to mind. Ballard Market in Seattle had a big sign a few years back touting their wild Columbia River Coho salmon on special in late November, yes they all had adipose fins. As far as others, I have no proof or.... well, you know what I'm saying. I just don't want to accuse someone of something specific and have no proof.)

Done with the hi-jack. Chums taste different in different systems, just like most salmon. Sometimes they have that "plankton" taste and other times they are very mild and excellent when batter fried, blackened, smoked, etc,.... I like to skin mine and remove the grey meat regardless of method. I have tried to eat chrome hen chinook with full eggs from the coast and some are worse than most chums I have eaten from Hood Canal. Not all, but many. Chums are not worth eating if they are not firm and fresh. They also need to be eaten within a few days of being caught and I have had no luck freezing them or Humpies..... Yuck!
flash frozen at sea might be different, but I don't know. Fresh Nushagak chums are pretty tasty! You can keep Hood canal and Puget Sound bucks that have a little color and they are still good to eat. Hens need to be chromers and even then they need to be 'tight'. Gee, kind of like every other kind of Salmon and steelhead. Humpies? Fresh and chrome, they are good too! I can't believe the slime those fish can produce. Kind of like shad.

Ed
 
#35 Ā·
I have eaten chum caught in Puget Sound (only very bright ones), and they were fine. Not my favorite species, but they were fine. I'd be cautious about buying chum from Safeway though at any price. Most of the big chains have cut back on their expertise in the meat department and in my experience they seldom know anything about any of the fish they sell. I like to know where my fish comes from and when it was caught. If I cant catch it myself, I don't mind buying it but I'm careful about it.
 
#36 Ā·
I see most of the Puget Sound Chum, caught in saltwater, being stripped of roe by commercials. Giving the carcasses away might seem noble to some, but they fail to see the true cost of the commercial take IMHO.

"Silverbright" Salmon is just a marketing effort to sell these fishes to the public before they are sold for pet food.:twocents:
 
#37 Ā·
"Silverbright" Salmon is just a marketing effort to sell these fishes to the public
the industry always uses new names to SELL, a marketing ploy, if you change the name to a happy appropriate name people will buy. For years the industry could not get Squid off the ground, then they labeled it Calamari, the rest is history.
 
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