SHEEEEEEEEET

ONE ARCTIC SUMMER, PIKE WITH GREAT INCISORS, VOLE-INHALING GRAYLING, AND THE MYSTERIOUS SHEEFISH BROUGHT BRENT FLACK-DAVISON AND HIS MATES TO ALASKA FOR AN EIGHT-DAY FLOAT THROUGH THE WILDERNESS.

All of us have that one fish, that one mysterious fish in a faraway place that just calls to you. Sheefish was that fish for me. I had heard about it while living in Alaska for a summer. Tarpon of the North, they called it. I mean, how could you not?

It took a few years after that summer but, finally, I had persuaded a few other guys who were interested and willing enough to fly about as far north as you can go to chase a fish we did not know very much about.

From our research, we knew that sheefish are the largest members of the whitefish family, reaching up to 60lb. They are only found in a few drainages mostly north of the Arctic Circle in North America and Russia. They spawn in fresh water but spend their lives in the salt. When they return to the rivers to spawn, they like holding in deep pools and can be taken on big baitfish patterns fished deep. They also taste delicious. That was almost the sum total of our research (done online), and that made them even more intriguing.

After about nine months of planning and five consecutive flights later, our group (Travis, Cliffy, Joe, Jason, and I) touched down on a high alpine lake a few degrees north of the Arctic Circle in a 1956 Otter float plane. Our plan was to float for 90 miles over eight days, starting off on a relatively high headwater and then reaching our takeout at the first of five native villages on the lower river close to the Arctic Ocean. The 90 miles of river was in pristine Arctic tundra – no civilisation, no roads, just the occasional bush plane.

We offloaded the gear out of the Otter, said goodbye to the bush pilot, and were lucky enough to get the seventh word he’d spoken to us the entire trip in reply. It sounded like “luck” but it was anyone’s guess. As the plane flew away, the quiet set in. With the quiet came the realisation that it was just us, our gear, and this river for the next eight days. Being immersed in civilisation was not something that I fully grasped until I stepped out of it completely. It was utterly exhilarating and unexpectedly disconcerting, all at the same time. We were here by the grace of this land.

We inflated our two rafts, set up our rods, stowed our gear and started rowing towards the outflow. We had spotted a large weed bed from the air and had heard that the lake held some good-size pike. The first fly landed close to the weed bed and was immediately smashed by a 35” pike. These were hard-fighting, mean Alaskan pike and we soon discovered that our 6” wire-traces needed to be three times longer to keep our line away from their teeth.

After tangling with those big pike for a couple of hours, we set up camp on a gravel bar just inside the outlet. We cooked some pike over a fire, drank whisky in the two-hour twilight, and settled in for the night.

The next morning, we floated down to the main channel and got hit by a gale-force upstream wind. Thankfully, the river was heavily braided, and we tried to shelter through the side channels. As we came out of one of the braids, one of the crew looked back up the main river and spotted a school of chum salmon at the entrance to a creek (no easy feat with one-foot waves). The chums were thick and tight into the bank – perfect to wade fish. Once they reenter the rivers, they get a gnarly black, green, and red camo pattern – punk salmon, basically. We swung big, weighted, flashy streamers which they hit hard. Mixed in between the salmon were Arctic char and grayling too, which were a welcome surprise.

Summer is especially short and very intense this far north. It was mid-August but the days were still 20 hours long. Instead of the usual five species of Pacific salmon that most Alaskan rivers contain, the Arctic drainages predominantly have chum salmon. As a result, the bears were smaller on average. It also meant the resident fish were not as concentrated around spawning salmon as is normal in Alaska and, in some cases, salmon eggs and flesh were not even their main forage, as they focus on fry and voles instead.

Most of our prior grayling fishing in other Alaskan rivers had been with beads and flesh flies. In researching the trip, we found someone who had floated this river before. He was not much of a fisherman but mentioned that some of the grayling that they had caught had voles in their stomachs... Interesting! We tied up some deer hair mouse patterns and decided to give them a shot. After a grayling slammed the mouse on the third cast, we fished them exclusively. These grayling were looking for voles and would hit them so aggressively.

I grew up fishing for smallmouth bass on the Olifants River in the Western Cape and the smallies there would jump above and then come down on the fly using the water tension to help get the fly into their mouths. Amazingly, these grayling were the same. Their mouths were way smaller than a typical smallie but they were determined to gouch this hunk of mouse protein into their mouths at all costs. The takes were explosive and made for pretty constant action.

On a backcountry float, existence becomes defined by the river. The terrain, the flow, the fish, the conditions become your civilisation. There is no guide, no phone-afriend, no fly shop. There are no distractions: no phone, no internet. You just take in each bend as it comes and figure out the river as it changes along the course you are floating. Life settles into an easy routine. Around 5pm, everyone’s attention would inevitably shift to looking for a long gravel bar on an inside bend to set up camp for the night. The next salmon caught would be swiftly dispatched for dinner. Once we found a good gravel bar, we’d pull up, secure the rafts, and haul all the gear off the boats. Without discussion, everyone would separate into various camp setup tasks: fetching firewood, making a fire, setting up the kitchen tent, heating some water for tea. After all, we are not barbarians. We’d strip out of our waders and get our personal tents organised. Then it would be time to pour some whisky, sit in front of the fire, and talk through the day.

That’s when the real magic set in, sitting in the long Alaskan twilight with a night sky none of us had ever seen before, in front of the fire with the river flowing close by. Conversations ran the gambit from fishing tactics to life decisions but, throughout, there was always a deep sense of gratitude that places like this still exist and we got to visit them for a short while.

We fished the next several days having no wind but instead we had the famed Alaskan bugs. Thankfully, there was frost on two mornings which killed off most of the insects. It was only late August, which is just the beginning of autumn, but then again in the Arctic it starts snowing by October. We continued to have incredible grayling and chum salmon fishing yet, weirdly, after getting those big pike on the headwater lake, we had not seen any pike since, even though we tried in most backwater sloughs we’d seen.

But we were there for sheefish, and they were always in the back of our minds. From our research, we knew that they favoured the big deep pools in the river. Among the three people fishing at any one time (with two on the oars), someone always had a sinking line with a well-weighted baitfish fly. We’d seen no sign of them over the first three days, but the river was getting bigger and the pools deeper.

“AROUND 5PM, EVERYONE’S ATTENTION WOULD INEVITABLY SHIFT TO LOOKING FOR A LONG GRAVEL BAR ON AN INSIDE BEND TO SET UP CAMP FOR THE NIGHT. THE NEXT SALMON CAUGHT WOULD BE SWIFTLY DISPATCHED FOR DINNER.”

On the fourth day, we were floating through a deep, boulder-strewn pool. A long bar of silver followed a fly up to our raft from deep down but turned away before we could get a good look. A few minutes later, Jason went tight. SHEEFISH! Once we’d stopped hollering enough to think straight, we beached the rafts to finish fighting the fish from shore. After some big runs, strong headshakes, and dogged fighting, we landed it. And there it was… Sheefish! We’d come a long way for this and here it was finally – relief! And then excitement to catch our own kicked in.

Just ahead of us was a major confluence that we had read was a prime spot. Excited, we came to the confluence about half a mile downstream only to find it was six inches deep. What a let-down. We drifted on in disbelief but, thankfully, the next river bend was deep and stacked with sheefish. We pulled the rafts over and fished from shore, swinging big flies through the pool. The action was constant for about two hours only stopping when we got tired. It’s likely that these fish had never seen a fly before.

We eventually got back on the river as we needed to make more mileage. We picked off sheefish over the next few days specifically targeting the long deep pools, but it wasn’t crazy as it had been at the junction pool. Runoff from recent fires had tainted the water dark on the 30mile braid we were on, which seemed to turn the fish off.

On the second-last day, we had about 15 miles of river to go. We found a few back sloughs that held pike which were fun on poppers. We floated down a few more miles and our tainted channel met up with the main river again. The junction pool was deep and slow… Perfect! All rods went tight on the first drift. We were not far from the takeout spot so we decided to make camp on the gravel bar close to the tail out of the pool. With most of the gear offloaded, the rafts were light and we were able to paddle them back upstream in the slack water on the edges of the pool to re-drift it. The pool was absolutely loaded with sheefish, and we had a blast drifting through it for several hours. We took a break to set up camp, make a fire, and have dinner.

We woke up on the last day and faced the reality of the trip home, re-joining civilisation and the promise of a warm shower. We only had a short float to our takeout which meant we had a few hours to fish the junction pool. The fishing hadn’t slacked off at all and we got into fish from the first drift. We all took turns fishing over the following hours until it was time to start getting ready.

On the last drift, Cliff was on the bow and hooked into a fish. This fish was taking a little longer than normal to land so Cliffy was starting to cop some good-natured grief. The ribbing continued until we got a glimpse of the fish Cliff was fighting – the energy changed in an instant. It was big, very big! We were too far from the inside bend gravel bar to paddle over there so we had to head for the outside bend which was filled with downed trees and debris. Cliff kept the fish close to the boat and we managed to manoeuvre into a tight clearing among the trees. All focus was on landing the fish, just waiting to get it into the right position and have a clear shot with the lip gripper among the snags. The planets aligned and we got a clear shot at grabbing the fish. What a slab! We’d caught a lot of fish this trip but this one was truly big. It measured out at 45” and a solid 31lb – 5 lbs heavier than the current 26lb record on 20lb tippet. What a fish to finish the trip.

Sinking into the airplane seat on the way home, I felt a mixture of tiredness, relief, and a tang of sadness. Tiredness from a physically demanding week, relief that our trip into the unknown was successful, and sadness because the sheefish was not as mysterious as it had been before. Maybe it was not my one fish anymore. But that’s how our love of fishing and fish themselves evolves. Besides, sheefish and I would always have that summer of ’21 together.