Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Alaska She Fish Sheefish

Change of weather is always good for fishing Some gas, time and a few frost bites, but its worth it.





A spare Smelt fell out of this one


Now we got some good grub for camping, and leave some behind, so I guess well be gone moved in a day or two.

If they are biting. - ie present:



But sometimes.... a day later

8 months gone, and I am missing the Arctic already!

Have to suck it up, I guess....

chip your family is tuff

Thanks, 44mc, I do say were rather average

One of the best eating fish there is I think, Las. I like the second picture, Good example of the ''worst day fishing or best day at work.... LOL!

We have a camp exactly on the 1998 plotted Arctic Circle , as it wobbles up and down with the Earth, but still, one half is south of the Arctic Circle, and dead North is the other 1/2 of the property, across the rivers channel.

If not right there, then a mile out and its Sheefish heaven untill they migrate upriver with the passing of the ice. Theres a small cabin , but a camp is being organized and more permanent dwellings are in the works. Might make a great business for 1/2 year at a time.

I hear the fish calling....

Really enjoying the updates!
Jeff

What does it compare to in flavor?

What is the origin of the name Inconnu? Yup'ik?

How they fight thu the ice? I've caught the he'll out of them ...good fun...the cold com them down alot?

IIRC it is from the French and means wanderer or stranger.

It is quite oily and bland. It has been baked whole most of the times I have eaten it. I smoked some once and it was difficult to get it to firm up without getting it too hot.

I had it quite a few times when I lived in Bettles. I thought is was excellent. Not sure what to compare it to. It was better than Lakers and Northerns- the only other fish I caught.

[s][/s] Folks up this way call them ''Sii'' (See), the french Iconnu , and the German spelling 'Shee' and then into English ''She", I guess its too close to ''Sea Fish"....its funny how phonically Inupiaq was translated to German (The first explorer in the region was a Dane in Russian service) and then ,again, into English.
I dont know the Yup'ik name for them. They are all around the Arctic and sub Arctic

Oily when full of eggs and headed up river for spawning, sorta dry when they come down.
People have a hard time with the softenss and oils when drying the fish headed up river, springtime but the one that are returning after spawning, to the sea are good to dry, no oils to go rancid, no soft flaky meats.

The winter has them fat again, the eggs small and not very oily, just sweet firm and great to fry, bake or chowder

I eat them with out salt, I like the sweetness. Salting make them bland.

The fight is short and sweet with ice jigging, as the line is often less than 20 feet or so.

From the F&G website:

The Yup’ik and Inupiat of Alaska as well as some Athabascan people call these fish “shees” and thus in Alaska the common name is sheefish. However, in other parts of the circumpolar north, this species is commonly called Inconnu (unknown fish) because early explorers, upon seeing this fish for the first time, did not know what they were.

Closest I can come to describing taste is about halfway between halibut and cod, and very fat and oily.

Generally jigged through the ice is not much of a fight. I hear they fight like hell in the summer, on rod and reel. Or if they miss the jig and you hook them in he eye.

They don't like that!

Dogs love 'em. Or my Lab did.. I've had mushers tell me that if their dogs go on food strike, they'll always start eating again if it is sheefish.

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:

O.ive oil to lube a blockage rather than mineral oil?

Seems an expensive way to go.

I had previously caught only one sheefish of about 5 pounds at the mouth of the Cosna River/Tanana River in Interior on rod and reel one summer years before while fishing for pike. That one fought well, and a tattered tail - from spawning, I guess. We ate it anyway.

Big fish picture was taken about 8 years ago on my first try at jigging for sheefish through the ice in Kotzebue, which would have been off the left side of the picture, and about 7 or 8 miles away across the Sound.

Staley Foster took me out to near the mouth of the Noatak, where they had been hitting well the day before. We ice-picked 3 inches or so of refrozen ice out of some day-before holes (the two bloodiest) , and our jigging lures never hit bottom. I had 7 fish in less than 20 minutes, but I was using the "wrong" lure, and the second bloodiest hole. Staley had 10 or 11. Maybe 13? I quit (more than enough to fillet, vacuum pack, and put in freezer). He had other intentions for his, and let them freeze up whole, for outside storage, and kept fishing. 30 minutes after we got there, I headed home. Staley was still pulling them out, with 20 or so on the ice. Crazy fast fishing!

The second picture was about a mile out from the Tech Center, and that is Lockhart Point. They had killed the chit out of them the day before (hence the birds), but this day us two lonely ice-holers could not get a hit.

We should have brought beer!

[img]https://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g71/edwardhailstone/th_a5yzeryhrhy8.mp4[/img]

[img]https://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g71/edwardhailstone/th_a5yzeryhrhy10-1.mp4[/img]

I used to set 7" nets at Pipe Spit about a mile out, 300 feet long and get 80-200 a haul. We built ice block houses and cached them there untill we could get them all home.

Sometimes we fillet a few out there, if they are fat and keep them in the freezer for immediate eating, or just handsaw steaks fromthe pile in the cache'.

when we got out of dogs, we dint have to fish nearly as much, so we mostly catch a few and be happy.

The fish paddys sound cool, Mainer, and as to back bones, my wife hatchet chops the frozen ones along the back bones, tward the belly and chunks them up for the dogs that way, before cooking. Seems to keep the backbone blues away
We also give raw , though fermented, whitefish to them as well, as the fermentation has all the parasites dead.

We also boil out the fats and make fish oil, which is pretty damn good with frozen fish




Mmmmmm Mmmmmmm good.

Here's one we baked up. You can see all the oil that ended up on the big cookie sheet.



Caught it ice fishing over here on Lake Labarge. There are lots of them in the Yukon River system. They are delicious!

Ted

Had to do it...

The Cremation of Sam McGee
BY ROBERT W. SERVICE

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.

Question.

Is it the cold and need for calories that make it taste better?