LONGMONT — They like to catch fish, they like to eat fish, and now, they hope to be selling a lot of fish.

Sean Leonhardt, the owner, and Neal Cooke, the manager, have just opened the Blue Reef Seafood Market at 900 Coffman St. Leonhardt has been in the excavating business the past 25 years and Cooke’s background is being a sushi chef for the past nine years and acting as a saltwater fishing guide. He used to be in the mortgage business.

But it’s fishing that unite the two. Leonhardt has lived in the area all his life, he said, while Cooke used to live in Florida.

The pair decided to join together and open a seafood market, and after looking in Boulder and Fort Collins, they decided on Longmont because the rents were cheaper.

Blue Reef Seafood Market Address: 900 Coffman St., Longmont Telephone: 970-619-9941 or 970-402-1537 Website: On Facebook under Blue Reef Seafood

“Those places were just too expensive,” Cooke said. “For a startup business we wanted to make sure we didn’t have too much overhead.”

They looked at several locations around Longmont but finally settled on the small shopping center at Ninth Avenue and Coffman Street that also houses Your Butcher, Frank. It wasn’t lost on Cooke that his late father’s name — he passed away just three years ago — was Frank. Finding the spot was almost like a sign, he said.

And for Leonhardt, “This space was available and that was kind of our thought, be close to the butcher, kind of a surf and turf kind of thing.”

The store’s philosophy can be summed up in freshness and quality and in supporting wild and sustainable varieties of fish, Cooke said. Though the store uses seven different suppliers, Northeast Seafood is their main one, he said. Seafood is flown into Denver International Airport daily and then brought to Longmont on a refrigerated truck.

From Hawaii, they get tuna, wahoo and mahi mahi. From the northeast come the oysters and scallops. Snapper, grouper and stone crabs come from Florida, and shrimp — big, plump, put another one on the bar-b shrimp — are flown in from Texas.

Cooke said they’ll maintain about 20 or so choices on hand regularly, including some specialty varieties such as cobia that may not be as available (it tastes like grouper, he said). But they have access to more than 100 varieties of fish, including more than 28 varieties of oysters.

What they don’t have on hand they can get in by the next day, Cooke said.

They’ll also sell varieties of smoked fish and have sushi on hand each day. Free samples also are offered daily, they said.

They will be hosting sushi-making classes, all-you-can-eat sushi nights, and eventually, leading fishing excursions to the Pacific off San Diego, they said. In the meantime, they were still finishing off the final look of the store on Friday.

One thing they have finished is their “bragging wall.” The photos there will dispel all doubt of the pair’s love of fishing.

And Leonhardt and Cooke are not salt-water snobs: They say they welcome any Longmonters who want to bring in photos showing their own prized catch.

But be forewarned: There are some big fish already on that wall.

Tony Kindelspire can be reached at 303-684-5291 or at tkindelspire@times-call.com.