Arctic Adventure: On the Hunt for Sizable Sheefish

Anglers have been known to suffer from wanderlust. Our desire to explore runs deep. We’re always wondering what lies around the next river bend, the next bay, the next lake, or valley. The quest for Shangri-La is often rewarded with incredible fishing or at least some fanciful fishing tales.

My own fishing wanderlust has brought me around the globe several times over and has taken me places I never would have imagined visiting without the allure of big fish. Most of those crazy adventures involved jungles, excessive heat, and things that want to kill you. Sometimes, however, you get word of a remote ice-fishing destination that has yet to attract the masses but produces giant fish in substantial numbers. Crazier yet when the fish species in question is relatively unknown to most ice anglers. Such was the case last March when I embarked with three friends on a quest to target trophy sheefish in the Arctic.

Don’t feel bad if your sheefish knowledge is somewhat lacking. In a historical sense, they’ve suffered this same fate going back centuries. Settlers to North America referred to them as inconnu, meaning “unknown” in French.

So, what are sheefish you might ask? Sheefish are the largest member of the whitefish subfamily. While their basic body shape and silvery white coloration resemble the more widely distributed lake whitefish, sheefish vary significantly from lake whitefish in multiple respects, size being a primary one. Sheefish can reach 60 pounds and top 50 inches, making them comparable to muskies at their top-end size range.

In addition, their large, hinged mouth structure more closely resembles that of tarpon or snook, with a lower jaw that protrudes beyond their upper jaw. Contrast that with the slightly downturned, subterminal mouth of lake whitefish, which helps them graze the bottom in search of invertebrates and crustaceans. Sheefish aren’t grazers; they’re predatory carnivores primarily scanning upward for preyfish.

Based on their physical appearance and wildly acrobatic nature in open-water settings, sheefish often are referred to as “tarpon of the north.” Much like tarpon, they can exist in both freshwater and saltwater. Classified as anadromous, they may spend time in saltwater and then enter freshwater to spawn. Their spring spawning migration can cover more than 1,000 miles. After spawning in late September or October, select populations of these fish return to the sea and pack on weight to repeat the cycle. Male fish typically spawn on an annual basis and females every second or third year. This played into the location of our trip.

Onward to Alaska

In the United States, sheefish are confined to the central region of Alaska, including the Yukon, Kuskokwim, Selawik, and Kobuk river basins. Our plan was to target the sizable population in the Kobuk River system. In winter, these fish stage in the Chukchi Sea, located north of the Bering Strait, which separates the United States and Russia by a mere 53 miles.

To the significant benefit of anglers wanting to target sheefish through the ice, the tiny city of Kotzebue rests just north of the Arctic Circle on the Kotzebue Sound. This large, protected body of water is formed by the Baldwin Peninsula to the east and the Seward Peninsula to the south and retains a fishable icepack until late April most years. The Kobuk and Selawik rivers dump a vast amount of freshwater into the sound, along with a healthy population of hungry sheefish.

Although Kotzebue has less than 3,000 residents, it serves as a supply and transportation hub for the Northwest Arctic Borough. This was the “aha” moment that made the trip more memorable in several respects, and much easier logistically.

With Kotzebue as the base for our trip, we would be ice fishing north of the Arctic Circle. Who doesn’t want to say they’ve ice fished in the Arctic? Adding to the “cool factor,” we‘d be targeting fish in saltwater or brackish water of the Chukchi Sea. Who doesn’t want to say they’ve ice fished in saltwater? And who doesn’t want to channel Tina Fey, doing her best Sarah Palin impersonation, and shout, “I can see Russia from my ice shack”? Okay, that one might appeal to a smaller audience.

As for convenience, you couldn’t get an easier location to ice fish in the Arctic. Did I mention that sheefish in this region routinely run 40 to 48 inches and top 30 pounds? Without question, these are trophy size fish for any ice angler. As a bonus, sheefish fight hard, taste great, and run in packs. When action is good, it isn’t uncommon for a group of anglers to put 20 or more big fish on the ice in short order. The daily and possession limit is 10 fish per angler.

With Kotzebue being a central hub for the region, Alaska Airlines offers daily direct flights from Anchorage. While no roads connect the locations, this 550-mile flight takes less than two hours via commercial jet. This allowed us to take a direct flight from the Midwest to Anchorage, then onward to Kotzebue the next morning and fishing that same afternoon. The Arctic has never been so close or convenient.

It gets even better. From the airport, our lodging was only five minutes away and the fishing grounds on Kotzebue Sound were within an hour by snowmobile. We arranged our trip through Lewis Pagel and his outfitting company Arctic Fishing Adventures. This was a turnkey trip for us. Pagel picked us up at the airport and transferred our gear to his fully outfitted house where we would reside for the next four days. He provided snowmobiles, fuel, sleds, portable shacks, heaters, augers, propane (lots of it), chairs, and tackle.

He offered to clean and vacuum-pack our fish and provided fish boxes for the 250 pounds of fish fillets that our group collectively brought home. Pagel provided all meals, drinks, fishing licenses, fishing knowledge, and tremendous hospitality. Typically, I prefer to do my own thing, figuring out the bite as the trip progresses and being self-reliant. While we still tried to be self-sufficient on this trip, the fully guided program offered by Pagel made for a seamless experience. We caught multiple trophy fish every day and had a fantastic time doing it.

Anglers can do DIY ice-fishing trips from Kotzebue by sourcing their own lodging, meals, transportation, snowmobiles, fuel, sleds, shovels, augers, extensions, heaters, propane, and fishing gear, but those costs add up quickly and flights to Kotzebue are expensive. No matter how you slice it, this is not a cheap trip but an experience of a lifetime. To go that far and possibly strike out on the fishing or get stranded on the ice in severe conditions is just something we didn’t want to risk. Accordingly, a fully guided package was the right choice for our group, and it was a trip we’ll never forget.

For those who choose to do it on their own, it gets extremely cold on the windswept Kotzebue Sound, with whiteout conditions and ice hazards. Without proper GPS guidance, the landscape and unique path of the Arctic sun can be disorienting and make navigation difficult. After our first session on the sea, we made adjustments to avoid frostbite, dead camera batteries, and frozen equipment. We also figured out tactics that made us even more productive for sheefish. The availability of trophy arctic grayling and char closer to the river mouths piqued our interest for a possible future trip.

Sheefish Strategies

Sheefish are piscivores and nearly exclusively eat other fish. Where we fished, their primary forage was 8- to 14-inch herring. Our lure selection consisted of large spoons, swimbaits, jigs, and a few secret weapons. The lure of choice was the largest Doctor Spoon, but the two sizes down from the Big Game Papa Doc also had their applications. The local general store carried a full supply of Doctor Spoons and not much else for fishing tackle.

While we didn’t become sheefish experts in four days, we did learn a lot and adapted to conditions in that brief time. We concentrated our efforts on a 15- to 30-foot-deep channel that meandered through the shallow sound. The entire area was affected by tides. This meant what worked a minute ago might turn cold minutes later. Lure color wasn’t critical when sheefish were in the area, but bait size, weight and shape made a difference. Sheefish have hard bony mouths, and it can be difficult to keep them hooked, especially through the ice. Hook size, style, and even placement made a significant difference when fish were scattered and single fish were coming through sporadically.

Any lure worked when sheefish were in large packs and chasing herring, and they would nearly rip the rod out of your hand and dislocate your shoulder. When current was slack, it seemed like fish would just nip at the bait or push water without hitting the bait and then circle back for a second or third time to finally eat. Jigging cadences mattered in these instances.

I brought two jigging combos for the trip. The first was a 45HS Clam JM Elite Mack rod and a 13 Fishing AL13 4.0 reel spooled with 40-pound-test Sufix Superior monofilament. The Mack rod performed flawlessly. It had plenty of power to muscle big fish to the hole. The AL13 reel is designed for saltwater and handled both the salt and cold with ease. Heavy monofilament was selected for its abrasion resistance for extended battles below the hole and for its ability to shed water without icing up in temperatures approaching -30°F.

The second combo was a slightly lighter Automatic Fisherman 42MH-S rod, with the same AL13 reel but spooled with 65-pound-test Sufix 832 braid. The Automatic Fisherman rod had a bit more flex for a less violent fight. More importantly, it has oversized, stainless-steel guides without inserts. This helped counteract water retention and ice buildup on braided line. This outfit was reserved for fishing in the heated shack.

Yes, you could get away with lighter line, but you needed to counter the effects of line drag and sinkage in the current. You need a certain amount of each to suspend lures in current and impart maximum action on them. Plus, with nearly 6 feet of ice in areas, getting an extra-large fish up the hole wasn’t an easy task. Accordingly, the heavy line didn’t seem like overkill when landing fish that averaged over 40 inches in length.

For a third outfit, Pagel invited us to use a traditional Niksik consisting of a 2-foot-long section of curved caribou antler or the rib bone of a beluga whale to which a length of 100-pound Dacron line was wrapped and a Doctor Spoon clipped to the business end. The rig could be easily jigged with a flick of the wrist. Surprisingly, the rib bone was sensitive enough to detect the vibration as the spoon fluttered in the current. With zero flex or stretch to the rig, strikes were intense and battling fish was akin to hand-to-hand combat. You never gave line to the fish for fear the hook would pop free from its bony mouth.

On our trip, our Sheefish averaged about 40 inches. We never caught one smaller than 36 inches, with most being 38 to 42 inches. We caught a fair number of fish from 43 to 45 inches and several fish in the trophy 46- to 49-inch range. At the top-end size, fish began to distinguish themselves more by their girth than their length. The magnum fish had distinct shoulders forming behind their heads. They had a deeper body shape and spread out several extra inches across their backs. When these fish hit, you immediately knew you were hooked up to a different caliber animal. They quickly emptied the reel of line on their initial run and were a challenge to turn up the hole.

Another issue we encountered was either a fish or our line getting stuck under the ice. It regularly happened while trying to land fish and occasionally while simply trying to retrieve a lure. At first, we thought it was merely the fish getting wedged in the hole or the hook getting caught on the ice. Then, we thought it could be the line wearing a groove at the bottom of the hole due to the extreme angle the line would take while fighting a fish. We finally figured it was the result of shelf ice or the uneven formation of ice in this tidal sea setting, in combination with our first two guesses. Adding to the difficulty of solving this mystery was that sea ice always has ice shavings in it. You never get a hole entirely clear of ice no matter how much you try to scoop it out, making it even more difficult to see the bottom of a 5-foot-deep ice hole. We did lose a few massive fish due to this scenario but have plans to combat it on our next trip.

Yes, the grand adventures continue, and perhaps then we will travel to the next valley over.

In-Fisherman Field Editor Steve Ryan is one of the most well-traveled anglers we know. He’s in full pursuit of trophy fish of many species, close to home and at far-flung destinations around the world.

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