There are a lot of ways to catch a salmon. Nets. Traps. Seines. But if you ask anyone who has spent real time on the water off the BC coast which method puts the best fish on the dock, the answer comes back the same almost every time. Trolling.
It is not a complicated idea. A boat moves slowly through the water, usually somewhere between two and three knots, dragging weighted lines behind it. Each line carries hooks and lures set at different depths, and when a salmon takes one, the crew brings that fish in by hand, one at a time. That is the whole method. No net full of thrashing fish. No thousands of pounds coming over the rail at once. Just a boat, a few lines, and a lot of patience.
First, Let Us Clear Something Up
Trolling and trawling are two completely different things, and the words get mixed up constantly. Trawling drags a large net through the water column or along the bottom. Trolling drags hooks. One letter, entirely different practice, entirely different footprint. When you see troll caught on a label, you are looking at fish that came up on a line.
Why the Fish Is Simply Better
The quality difference starts the second a salmon comes over the side. Because the crew handles every fish individually, there is no crushing, no bruising, and no long wait while the rest of a set gets sorted out. The fish is bled immediately, then dressed and iced, often within minutes.
That matters more than most people realize. Blood left in the flesh breaks down quality fast and dulls the flavour. Get it out right away, chill the fish down hard, and you preserve the firm texture, the deep colour, and the clean taste that made wild salmon famous in the first place. Trollers have the time and the small volume to do this properly on every single fish. That is the whole advantage.
Selective by Design
A troller sees every fish before deciding what to do with it. Wrong species, undersized, a stock that needs protection, it goes back in the water alive with a good chance of survival. That level of control is not possible with gear that catches everything in its path.
The gear also stays up in the water column, which means no contact with the seafloor and no damage to the habitat below. Bycatch on a troll boat is measured in individual fish, not tonnes.
For a fishery that depends on salmon coming back year after year, that selectivity is not a nice bonus. It is the point.
Small Boats, Long Days
Trolling is a small boat game. Most of the fleet is owner operated, often family run, and many of these skippers have been fishing the same grounds for decades. They know where the fish hold, how the tide moves through a particular passage, and what depth to set the lines on a given morning.
It is slow, physical work. A good day might be a few hundred fish, brought in one by one, each of them handled and iced before the next one hits. Nobody chooses this method because it is easy or efficient. They choose it because it produces the best fish, and because it keeps a fishery worth passing on.
What It Means on Your Plate
You can taste it. Troll caught salmon holds together on the grill, flakes cleanly, and carries a richness that fish handled roughly never quite gets to. The colour is deeper. The texture is firmer. It tastes like it was looked after, because it was.
So when you see troll caught on the label, know that there is a person behind it who brought that particular fish aboard with their own hands and took care of it right away. That is not marketing language. That is just how the method works
