After 12 years of eating the farmed salmon
I am wondering if the fresh caught
( Non farmed) Is better ?

Does it taste different? Will I notice
any difference at all ?



Do you have a preference?

I believe so and strongly prefer wild over farmed. And never farmed for sushi. The only farmed salmon I’ll buy or order is New Zealand King Salmon because I can’t find wild king salmon.

Salmon from Copper River or Stikine River is popular and pricey and only available for a few weeks per year.

Type of salmon matters as well to some. Also belly vs tail. Smoked salmon belly - oh la la.

My local fish store carries salmon from the Faroe Islands. Not exactly cheap but it is very good. Have had mixed results on the Costco smoked salmon. One time it was great another over salted. I try avoiding farmed anything especially Asian farmed.

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I believe so and strongly prefer wild over farmed.

Farmed Salmon seems to be more fatty and tastes like the food the are fed. I saw a documentary about the Salmon farms in southernmost Chile. The farms wiped out the local fisheries due to concentrated Salmon shit and antibiotics used in the pens.

I am not familiar with Costco salmon but I do much prefer wild caught Pacific salmon over farm raised Atlantic.

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Originally posted by hberttmank:
I am not familiar with Costco salmon but I do much prefer wild caught Pacific salmon over farm raised Atlantic.

Same here.. will always prefer Wild Caught if possible.

Farmed salmon, as touched on by anush, is not good for several reasons. Costco wild caught salmon is probably pretty good, but it’s already once frozen to get it to Costco. We can’t eat an entire slab of salmon in one sitting.

If you really like fish, or just like having it in your diet, look at a company like Wild Alaska Salmon and Seafood. We’ve been subscribers for a year or so. Honestly, King is pretty expensive, most of the salmon is Sockeye with a couple of pieces of King in each delivery. We’ve kind of transitioned to a bit more whitefish in our order; both halibut and cod are great from Wild Alaska. Oh, and their shrimp is outstanding

We have an outfit that comes through town about every other week or so. They have family up in Sitka that does the fishing and freezing, then they ship it down to these guys who drive from town to town and sell it out of a trailer with a big ass freezer in it.

It's fairly spendy, but a couple of years ago I did the math and the prices came out about the same as if you went up there for a few days with an outfitter and caught them yourself. It's worth it to me as I love their fish. Kings, coho, sockeye, black cod, ling cod, halibut, crab, etc.... It's all great.

I did this experiment a couple years back, comparing farm raised to wild caught of the same seafood.

Wild caught won every single time. I have stopped buying farm raised.

I go to Publix Sunday night and buy whatever is wild caught and on sale and that is Mondays dinner.

I have found Publix seafood quality to be excellent considering we are nowhere near an ocean.

I have looked at the Alaskan Seafood mail order stuff but not pulled the trigger yet.

Thanks ,
I will try the fresh caught salmon ,based on this feed back.

Go wild and you will never want farmed again

My wife and I are of the opinion wild caught have a fresher/cleaner taste

I can taste the difference, and it isn't close. I am not even sure if the farm-raised salmon have the health benefits of the wild fish. I think the fact that they have to dye to farm-raised fish pink is telling.

PS- If Costco has wild Steelhead, give that a try. It is very close to salmon, but I like it a lot better.


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If it's fish and isn't wild caught I don't eat it, don't trust it in the least from anywhere.

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I think the fact that they have to dye to farm-raised fish pink is telling.

Not exactly. The farm raised salmon are fed the same chemical compound, astaxanthin, that wild salmon ingest when eating crustaceans like krill and shrimp. It is that compound that changes the flesh color of both farm raised and wild caught salmon.

I eat a fair amount of fish, often salmon. I never paid major heed to wild or farm raised. I always knew farm was cheaper & more common.

Here’s a study from the Cleveland Clinic about the differences.

https://health.clevelandclinic...mon-vs-farmed-salmon

I will say, I do avoid Tilapia, due to its trashy reputation.

^^^Interesting article. It says 70% of salmon eaten around the world is farm raised. It would seem if not for farm raised, there wouldn’t be enough wild salmon to go around.

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I eat a fair amount of fish, often salmon. I never paid major heed to wild or farm raised. I always knew farm was cheaper & more common.

^^^ It says 70% of salmon eaten around the world is farm raised. It would seem if not for farm raised, there wouldn’t be enough wild salmon to go around.

I do prefer wild over farm raised. If I can get wild, at a decent price at Fresh Thyme, that's what I buy. But I will buy farm raised... it's not as good, but it's OK for half the price or so.

After having fresh coho salmon, I stopped buying farmed salmon.

I used to get Costco salmon weekly.

There was a lot of difference in taste and texture.

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^^^Interesting article. It says 70% of salmon eaten around the world is farm raised. It would seem if not for farm raised, there wouldn’t be enough wild salmon to go around.

Atlantic salmon my understanding is all farmed-raised and is coming out of Norway, Denmark and Canada, to meet EU food standards which include no dyes or color additives and the pens where the fish are raised are highly regulated. Contrast other farm raising areas (SE Asia) where the surrounding waters and the pens are basically aquatic sewers due to the intense concentration of the fish and their location. I've had no problems getting Atlantic salmon from Costco for our weekly fish meal, the Coho though I've not been impressed with..maybe I'm spoiled. If I'm going to make gravlax or coulibiac, I'll go to a fish monger/shop that specializes in seafood.

I've had wild salmon of all varieties out of Copper, Yukon and Kuskowim rivers arguably the best fish I've ever eaten, very tasty and no odd coloring. Wished the costs weren't so high but, that's the price