Heya Chip, can't get tired of fresh fish aye? I just cooked down 500 lbs of it for my dog team. Pre-cooked, spread flat, broken into wafers. Rice pre-cooked in the fatty drippings, also spread flat and frozen into wafers. Break it up, fill up a contractor trash bag, store in the sled. On the trail: Add hot water to the bucket, the frozen wafers of fish n rice and the dogs will get a luke-warm/cooked meal. They don't do well on raw fish, judging what comes out the other end of em. Heading to Kobuk by dog team and will be passing through if trail is good and this blizzard subsides. This morning, I was gonna leave, but when I couldn't see 60 ft in front of me, I said screw that!
Las, I own the only freight team in all the northwest arctic, they do very well on sheefish. All that's really around nowadays, are an occasional gangly team of those dainty-footed dogs used for racing sport. I never see these guys on the trail, mileing up their dogs. Can't speak for them, but sheefish is what's commonly fed to all dogs, simply because it's there. The Seaveys buy it from local fishers for their teams, and some others. Definitely better than salmon.
I learned something new last week: Don't give whole/cooked-down sheefish to pups, gotta separate bones from fish well beyond 5 months of age. I thought at the 10 week mark, that my latest litter were ready for whole fish. One of em got blocked up bad with a sheefish spine piece. This dumb a s s inhales his food whole, is quite the pig. He even tries to crowd out the other pups and eat as fast as he can. Four days ago, had to squirt olive oil down his gullet with a syringe, and in the other end of him as well. 5 mins later, poor guy passed an undigested spine piece. Idiot.
That pic looks like lockhart point. A bit beyond, I usually head 12 miles out, to the mouth of the Noatak for a decent fishin hole. Ice was thin back in November though, only bout 3-4 inches:
