Alaska tie drives Hot Rod Seafood Rockport shop eyes fish niche

ROCKPORT – Hot Rod Seafood is within a mile of the Maine coast, but its owners hope their connections to fishing grounds in Alaska will net them success in a niche market.

Kym Scott and her ex-husband, Dan Beishline, along with friend Sissy Onet, opened Nov. 1 in a former gas station on U.S. Route 1 just south of the Camden town line.

Their bright, airy and cool shop presents products such as ebony Prince Edward Island mussels, rich pink wild salmon burgers, and slabs of multicolored monk fish like art in a gallery.

Scott, 39, is a former commercial fisherman who worked on a long-liner in Alaska catching halibut and black cod.

When fishing regulations changed, squeezing many out of the business, she put her pilot license and a 1947 Cessna to use spotting fish from the air off the Alaskan coast, then over the Great Salt Lake in Utah, and off Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts.

A native of the Camden-Rockport area, she now lives in Lincolnville with her children.

She and four of her six brothers and sisters work in fishery-related businesses, and those family ties are paying off.

“My brothers catch all the lobsters and crab” that Hot Rod Seafood sells, she said. “They fish out of Rockport.”

While the tanks of live lobsters and crabs are typical of a Maine fish market, products such as smoked salmon jerky, fresh wild King salmon filet, and sockeye salmon oil pills high in omega-3 oils set Hot Rod Seafood apart.

“I know so many people in Alaska,” Scott said. “Almost all the salmon comes from connections in Alaska.”

This time of year, the catch is frozen on the boat, then flown to Maine.

Scott and her partners believe Alaskan salmon is more healthful than its farm-raised counterparts.

Scott said that at Hot Rod Seafood there will “be no farm fish,” which she dismisses derisively as “Frankenstein fish.” She believes salmon raised in pens are contaminated with chemicals absorbed from the grain they are fed.

Beishline explained that when salmon swim in the wild, their muscles develop in a way that produces some of the beneficial fats and oils for which the fish are touted as healthful food.

Beishline, 50, was a commercial pilot who flew for commuter lines, “then I got into fish spotting.”

He and Scott return to Bristol Bay, Alaska, each summer with the children and head out to sea for six weeks on the boat, in pursuit of sockeye salmon.

“It’s a thriving fishery,” Scott said.

The third partner in Hot Rod Seafood, Onet, 41, of Belfast, is a former Montessori teacher. Onet met Scott in New York City years ago, and she and Beishline and Scott lived for a time in France.

Onet was reluctant to move to Maine from New York when Scott tried to persuade her, but agreed when the plan included opening a business, she said.

In addition to fish from Alaska, Hot Rod Seafood sells fish foods such as its own fish cakes, sockeye lox, fish sticks, lobster cakes, and quart containers of lobster and fish stew.

Other fish, caught locally, come from Port Clyde.

The Knox County port is host to the second-largest fishing fleet in Maine, Scott said, with 17 boats bringing in fish. Captains call Scott and her partners when the boats approach home.

“We climb into the holds and pick out the best fish,” Scott said.

On Tuesday, the display case featured grey sole, halibut, scallops, smoked herring filets, Pekey toe crabmeat, monkfish, salmon pate, haddock, coho salmon and tiger shrimp.

Though some cooks might find the exotic-looking species daunting, the crew at Hot Rod Seafood will offer recipes and cooking advice.

The business name comes from an image that Scott had in her head for years: a fish with screaming tires on it. That image now adorns their sign.

Hot Rod Seafood is open from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday. For information, call 236-8200.