Talk to the forest service about the fish replanting. When they harvest eggs from certain fish, they give away the fish on a first come first served basis. You have to know someone or get to know someone. I did the latter.
I tend to go to visitor's centers when they are slow and bored.
I agree, free is free, and when you get it you've got to use it. I'm with you on the dinner idea, because what else would you do, except sell it. I enjoy salmon on the grill, so maybe you could do something like that and have burgers for the kids, who probably wouldn't appreciate a nice salmon dinner....Put feelers out to see how many peopel would be interested. Do you have any community events coming up? sometimes you can obtain a food booth and you could sell the salmon meals that way.
I'm not kidding. I just found a way to get A LOT of free salmon and probably other free fresh fish. My first thought is we need to have a fundraiser dinner. But salmon? I don't know. There must be something. We would get them in November. I may be able to find some one to smoke them.
This may be way off the deep end but whenever I hear about something free, I want to use it.