The Tuna Guys are John Holt and his son, Sean, two generations of fishermen who have found a unique use for their catch. John, now retired from fishing, has owned a fishing boat since he was a teen, and has fished for everything from bottom fish and crab to salmon. Sean has fished alongside his father since he was young, and now runs their fishing boat, Kathleen, named after his mother.

The Tuna Guys story starts at the market. The father and son used to take some of the catch to a farmer’s market in Gig Harbor. Their display consisted of a truck with a huge tuna hanging on a scale. The fish usually intrigued children, and in turn got the parents’ attention.

“These people all started calling us ‘the tuna guys,” John Holt says. “Sean said, ‘Why don’t we write that on the back of the truck.’ We didn’t look for a name, the public named us.”

The market was labor intensive but had limitations: Selling the tuna just once a week for a few months wasn’t very profitable. “We decided, let’s can it — if we can them, we can sell them every day,” Holt says.

The story could have ended just like any other canned tuna story. The regular process usually stores the tuna in brine on the boat (which makes it saltier in the end), packs it in a water “slurry” or oil (only about half or less of the can’s weight comes from actual tuna), and cooks it twice. By the time the can ends up at the grocery store waiting to be made into tuna sandwiches, the fish has just about zero of the Omega 3 fats left.

The Tuna Guys’ Albacore tuna is processed to the standards of the Japanese sashimi market, where Holt still sells the largest of the fish. The Japanese use it for sushi, and require special high-quality processing. The Tuna Guys tuna is stored at sub-zero temperatures after being blast-frozen; the fish are filleted and packed by hand. The can is filled to the brim with tuna sans water or oil — so right off it compensates for part of the higher price.

“This is a very expensive way to can because it’s labor intensive,” Holt says. The tuna, which is troll-caught, without using nets that are dangerous to dolphins, is canned at a cannery on Vancouver Island. The company has a warehouse in Tacoma for processing grocery store orders, and one in Gig Harbor where Holt, packages and ships online orders (via www.tunaguys.net). Kathleen is involved as well, often doing deliveries, which are offered locally.

Holt runs the office from a beautiful live-aboard yacht — Kathleen II — in downtown Gig Harbor. Kathleen II was the only boat that got out of the immense fire at the Gig Harbor marina in 2005, but not before sustaining severe damage and needing more than $300,000 in repairs.

The company offers a line of other canned products besides the popular solid white Albacore tuna, including smoked steelhead salmon, smoked oysters and Dungeness crab. The Christmas season is especially popular, when Internet orders of special gift packs are shipped as fast as they are ready. The company has been featured in several publications, and the tuna even got a little blurb in the upscale Forbes fyi magazine (courtesy of its editor, who unbeknownst to Holt, was a fan).

Despite the success, Holt says the company is “small potatoes.” And so far, he’s resisted hiring help. The business keeps him busy full time and is not exactly conducive to vacations, which Kathleen says would certainly be nice to have.

The canning idea took off after Holt had a hard time selling the smaller catch a few years back (the market price now is about five times the price he could get at the time). Since then, the Tuna Guys evolved far beyond those days when Kathleen strolled up and down streets and visited neighbors, trying to sell the cans. Starting out with about 300 cases sold the first year, Holt now sells about 24,000.

But the story doesn’t end there either. Holt may not be ready to hire help, but he does want to see the company grow. This fall, he is launching yet a new product, canned red sockeye salmon that will be caught in Bristol Bay, Alaska. Holt hopes the skinless, boneless (hand-filleted, of course) salmon will appeal to those who don’t usually like canned salmon because of its bones and skin, including the younger generation. He has the labels ready, with the fishing season underway.

“It’s a gamble,” he says. “You put this gamble up, and hope it works.”

Some gambles haven’t worked. After taking a risk with Spanish style Yellowfin tuna, which took a while to take off, and investing a lot of energy and money into promoting it, Holt ran across a major glitch: The Food and Drug Administration said no more fish could come from the Philippines. He’s down to about 1,000 cases, and after that, this product, figuratively speaking, gets canned for good.

The biggest gamble of them all, however, was to take the Tuna Guys idea from a Saturday farmer’s market tuna-sale operation and turn it into a gourmet tuna concept.

“It turned out, it was a good move,” Holt says. “It just caught on.”.