Meet Darius Kasprzak
Darius Kasprzak has been fishing the waters off Kodiak, Alaska, for a long time. He started at age 14, helping his parents catch sockeye on a remote setnet site in Kempf Bay. Setnets are shore-based gillnets that intercept salmon as they move inland to spawn. It was there that he first learned what it takes to be a fisherman. As he gained experience, he began spending summers on seine boats during high school. After a couple of years, he worked his way up to “skiff man” — the person who operates the small but powerful seine skiff that drives the net around schools of fish. The skiff man and the captain must work together closely, and Darius enjoyed the teamwork so much that, even after nearly 40 years, he still jumps on the occasional seine boat when the season looks especially promising.
He began fishing halibut back when the industry still ran on “derbies” — 24- to 48-hour openings for halibut and black cod, held regardless of the weather. These short, intense periods accounted for a large portion of a fisherman’s income, and people fished hard, often through major storms. In the 1980s and 1990s, halibut and crab fishing were among the most dangerous occupations in America.
Darius spent his first years jumping between fisheries before landing on trawlers, or draggers, which tow large nets through the water to catch groundfish. This style of fishing never sat well with him. It generated extensive waste and substantial incidental bycatch. In the late 1990s, he worked an experimental arrowtooth flounder (a deepwater flatfish common in the Gulf of Alaska) fishery. Arrowtooth flounder are generally low-value fish, often processed into products like surimi, and the fishery is known for high bycatch of long-lived rockfish species. On one tow, the crew accidentally hauled up about 15,000 pounds of shortraker rockfish. The captain’s anger wasn’t over killing so many of these vulnerable fish, but over the time lost towing them up. They changed depth and towed again, this time catching nearly 20,000 pounds of shortraker rockfish.
This kind of waste deeply troubled Darius, though he rationalized it with the old adage, “If I don’t do it, someone else will.” He later referred to his 1990s dragging years as his “dark years,” and everything came to a head in 1997.
On another trip, he narrowly avoided catastrophe. Darius was tossing halibut back over the side in an attempt to keep them alive when the captain stepped onto the back deck to help. The steel dragger struck a shallow reef. Their Echotek plotter showed only a small rock, not the full shoal they hit. With a steel I-beam on the keel, the boat lurched and scraped across the reef before miraculously clearing it. In the engine room, they found water pouring in from a broken through-hull fitting. The lights failed, leaving only a couple of dim 12-volt bulbs as the water rose. The boat could easily have gone down, but Darius made one more attempt to save it, grabbing a Mustang float coat and a binboard to jam the leak enough for the pumps to catch up. Miraculously, they saved the vessel — but for Darius, it marked the beginning of the end of his dragging career.
After the boat was repaired and they returned to sea, the captain came onto the deck in a rage. Darius was tossing dead cod overboard — fish that had died in the trawl — and feeling more conflicted than ever about the waste. The skipper was furious about the newly implemented Gulf of Alaska state-water cod season for pot and jig gear, which reduced the federal cod quota available to trawlers and closed the trawl cod season earlier than expected. He shouted about being shut down for “stupid goddamn jig boats” taking “their” quota. To Darius, this was irony incarnate: jigging was exactly the kind of fishing he longed to do. He laughed to himself, thinking, “The next cod I throw over the railing will be one that I catch myself — and I’ll be throwing it into my own boat.”
Darius soon bought a quirky little vessel and began jigging for cod and rockfish. That first season, he wasn’t properly set up and caught only a single cod. Undeterred, he spent the winter upgrading his boat with jigging gear and returned to fishing. He soon bought an old 39-foot wooden Sagstad with a seized engine for two thousand dollars. He got the engine running, and beneath the peeling paint he found solid wood that had been maintained over the years. He paid off the boat on his first trip and was hooked. Jigging on his own terms — where he could care for each fish and move on when the fishing didn’t feel right — became his calling. After a few different boats, he’s still at it today.
For Darius, feeding people the highest-quality protein means everything. Each fish is bled and immediately chilled to ensure peak quality and reduce stress. He believes this method is at least as humane as the natural fate of many ocean fish — slowly dissolving in the gut of a larger predator. Connecting with the people who eat his fish and contributing to conservation are central to his motivations. His experience across many fisheries gives him a strong voice for sustainable practices. He now serves as president of the Alaska Jig Association and recently stepped down after nine years on the board of the Alaska Marine Conservation Council.
He’d like to thank you for buying his fish and supporting sustainable fisheries. It remains difficult to make a living catching fish by hook and line. He runs a small, fuel-efficient operation and keeps costs as low as possible. While fish prices have been slow to rise, fuel and maintenance costs have climbed, pushing small-scale fishermen to the edge. He urges consumers to seek out hook-and-line caught fish whenever possible, because the quality is consistently better when each fish is handled with care.
At Sitka Seafood Market, we are proud to work with and support Darius and the local processors who fillet and freeze his catch. It’s why this business began — and it reinforces our mission every time we connect people with exceptional fish harvested by the amazing fishermen who catch them.
