Love the taste of white kings. Consistently and exceptionally oily and flavorful. There's got to be something about lipid metabolism that accounts for this, and it likely is something unique to their fat cells. The adipocytes in white kings are physiologically different. The fact that these kings are white is simply because they lack the enzyme to store fat-soluble vitamin A as the red-orange pigment B-carotene (basically two vitamin-A molecules linked tail-to-tail). Plain old vitamin-A is colorless, hence the white meat.

Red kings on the other hand are all over the map in oil content and flavor.... esp in the ocean where you are dealing with mixed stocks that change in composition at different times of the year. The red kings you catch outta Westport are a mixed bag of feeders, CR summer spawners, lower CR fall spawners, tule spawners, fall URB spawners, and a handful of WA coastal fall spawners. Eating quality from all those stocks is highly variable.

Bottom line, white kings are consistently good, red kings can leave you disappointed. That said, the finest piece of ocean salmon to grace my lips in 2010 was the collar off of Katosan's red king.