I would suggest that if they really want to do high quality research based on high quality sample collection they consider collecting samples themselves perhaps using their grad students.
If you are interested in Chinook for example:
Print up some tee-shirts that say “UV salmon research”.
Make arrangements to attend a big sport fishing Derby. This will allow you to collect samples from a specific date, caught in a specific local because of the required Derby boundaries and give you an extremely accurate weight, as well as a determination as to the salmon being marked or not marked.
Offer to clean the fish or at least oversee it. This means the samples will be fresh, properly labelled, go on ice and be complete. You would have to be careful removing them to insure you get all the contents and from what I have seen most anglers are far from careful when they rip the guts out. Researcher collection would be preferred and the anglers would be happy to get their fish cleaned for them.
You could also take scale and DNA samples which would allow you for example: to determine that on x date, in x specific geographic area, an un-clipped Chinook, of x specific weight, of x age, of x sex from x river system had the following stomach contents.
