Whatever the opposite of doomscrolling is, that’s how I feel when I come across Reed the Fishmonger. In his YouTube and Instagram posts, this young guy breaks down a giant fish in the spotless backroom of some fish market somewhere, narrating his flawless technique as he explains, with joy and mastery, all about the fish.
You go binge your Landman or whatever. I sit and watch Reed take on a tilefish, striped bass, or grouper. His tilapia episode is particularly gripping.
I watched these videos without knowing where Reed actually works. If you pressed me, I would have said, “Um, on Instagram?” But last week, on a trip to Boca Raton, I remembered Reed mentioning something about Florida. Well, Boca’s in Florida. So I Googled Reed’s market, Captain Clay and Sons Seafood Market, and discovered it was 17 minutes from our hotel room.
So I met Reed IRL.
Captain Clay and Sons Seafood Market is in a strip mall along a busy thoroughfare in Delrey Beach. Road signs along the way point to the ocean, but you can’t see it from Federal Highway.
Just inside the light blue and white mall-chitecture, there’s a sparkling refrigerator case filled with mostly local species of wild fish: clean white filets of pompano, stacks of swordfish steaks, halibut, snowy white grouper, as well as some bright whole fish: sheepshead and pink snapper. A handwritten sign behind the counter lists all the locally-caught fish for sale on the left, and the few non-local or farmed fish for sale on the right — branzino and Oro King salmon.
A booming voice greets a customer and I recognize it immediately: Reed the Fishmonger is in the house.
He’s younger than I expected, a teenage 31, with long sandy hair, tattooed arms and that made-for-TV voice. The place is busy, with as many people behind the counter as in front. One of the fishmongers, Kevin, tells me everyone who works there also fishes. “That woman by the cash register?” he points down the line, “She was just out getting swordfish.”
I introduce myself to Reed, who thrusts his hand out, happy to meet, well, another fan.
Reed’s dad is Clay Brand, the boat captain who decided in 2006 that instead of turning over his catch to others to sell, he’d open his own place. It started as a divey fish shack, but recently they moved into the new location, which Reed Brand manages.
“I love spending time with customers,” he said. But, as the store got busier, he had less time to explain what they should buy and how to cook it. If he could make cooking videos, he’d be able to just tell his customers to check out recipes online.
He asked his friend Noah to help him create videos for TikTok, which was fairly new back then.
“Noah said no way,” Reed said.
Between fishing and running the store, he would have no time to shoot full-on food videos, so he began filming himself breaking down the fish that came off the stores’s fleet. He had to do it anyway, so why not shoot it?
He edited the footage and posted it to his Instagram account, where his small number of followers liked it. Then someone told him about Instagram Reels, whose algorithms dump your videos, like chum, into the feeds of non-followers. The views exploded.
He called his friend. “Noah,” Reed said, “it’s working.”
Reed the Fishmonger has 334,000 Instagram followers, 323,000 on TikTok, and 620,000 YouTube subscribers. He’s shooting longer form videos on location — shows, really — and I’ve noticed he’s inspired some fish-cutting imitators.
But Reed has passion going for him. We spoke about his latest video, which is about how to get more meat out of a striped bass.
“Five million are harvested every year and only about 80% of the meat is used,” he said. If his videos could teach kitchen workers to get just 5% more meat out of a fish, that’s hundreds of thousands of pounds that would otherwise go to waste.
“That would be awesome,” he said.
Yes, there’s a food porn aspect to watching someone carve into a giant tilefish and separate out the different muscle groups — upper loin, lower loin, belly — each with its own distinct taste and texture. But Reed also uses the platform to push sustainability, which the fish market practices.
No boat in Captain Clay’s fleet is over 41 feet. There’s no bottom trawlers, which turn the ocean floors into deserts. The most hooks they set out is 35 at a time. Their goal is to keep the ocean productive for a long time.
As we talked, he stopped to shout hellos and goodbyes to customers. His new-found social media fame has brought in bonafide fans, a few each day, he said. But most, I assume, are like me, people who come across this guy who loves fish, fishing and the oceans that make it possible, and end up, yes, getting hooked.
