It seems like ever since COVID, getting our fish processed in Kenai has become more challenging. We understand that fish processing is seasonal and good help isn't always easy to find however it just seems like the last 3-4 years of processing has been challenging enough to decide to just go back to doing the processing ourselves next year. Custom, like the other processors in town were honest and let us know right up front that they were very busy and on some days even stopped taking fish after certain times, even telling us one day they couldn't guarantee fish to be ready in less than 72 hours. We worked around their policy and availability and dropped off our catch.
Like most anglers, we filleted our fish prior to bring it into Custom for sealing, freezing and boxing. We gave them our departure date and being we were flying out early morning, we were told we could pick up our fish the evening prior at 7pm. When we arrived to pick up our fish at the agreed time we were told that all the people who handled our fish had already gone home for the day. We argued that we were following their pick-up direction and one of their employees heard our concern stepped up and said she would help us with our order. After about 15 minutes some of our boxes of fish were boxed and ready to ship.
After all that and getting our boxes of fish home is when our real problem began. When we arrived home and started dividing up our salmon and halibut it was very obvious that this was not the fillets that we dropped off. Both the halibut and salmon fillets were much smaller fillets than the fillets we dropped off. From that it appeared that we received someone else's fish and someone else got our nicer, bigger fillets. Both the halibut and salmon fillets we received were much thinner and smaller portion than the fish we dropped off and it was disappointing enough to just say "for the price we paid to end up with someone else's fish, forget it, we'll do it ourselves next year".
Whatever their reason is whether their processors are short handed, over committed or maybe they just put everyones fillets in a general fund and when you come to pick up your 50 pounds, you get what they give you out of the stock? The fillets that we dropped off for processing look just like the ones on their webpage, but the ones we brought home weren't even close. Going forward, we'll do it ourselves to guarantee we go home with the fish we caught. read more