Ep 185: Fishing for Sheefish and the Ambler Road, with Greg Halbach
Greg Halbach is the owner and head guide of Remote Waters in Alaska. Among other species, Greg has a special place in his heart for the sheefish, a lesser-known gamefish in northern Alaska. In this episode, we talk about the sheefish as a species, techniques and gear for catching them, the remoteness of their habitat, and the threats posed by the proposed Ambler Road.
Website: www.remotewaters.com
Instagram: @remotewatersAK
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Katie
You're listening to the Fish Untamed Podcast, your home for fly fishing in the backcountry. This is episode 185 with Greg Halbach on fishing for sheefish and the Ambler Road. All right. Well, I start every episode by getting a background on my guests and how they got introduced to the outdoors and fly fishing specifically. So tell me how you got introduced to the sport in the first place?
Greg
My mom and I learned how to fly fish together when I was 10 years old. So there was, I didn't grow up in an outdoorsy household at all. My parents didn't like to camp or any of that stuff, but my grandfather on my mom's side liked to fly fish. And so she kind of had that as a background interest that she'd never really explored. And so I had an interest in fishing. I don't know where it came from, but that was kind of the two joined up and we took a casting class and that was kind of the start of it all. So, you know, here 32, 33 years later, whatever it is. And we both are the only two fly fishermen in the family. And so that's a great thing for us to share. That's cool. She comes up to Alaska. She loves it up here. She's done some boat trips with me. So that's kind of my start into it all was with her.
Katie
That's a pretty fun origin story. I've heard a lot of different versions of how people got into fishing, but I haven't heard, you know, I learned with my parent together. It's usually like parent teaching kid. And I actually wonder if the way you did it maybe has a better chance of actually following through with the child liking it. Because you hear the horror stories of, you know, dad makes kid stay out and it's like, you know, storming and the kid's just having a horrible time. They're like, I didn't enjoy it because I was just like forced to go. But, you know, both people learning together is much less, there'd be less resistance with like a mentor kind of forcing something on a kid. If there's kind of that mutual curiosity together, I wonder if that was like a recipe for success.
Greg
Yeah. It's pretty interesting actually. Cause you know, we, we did kind of did the initial casting lesson and you know, you know, fish in the pond kind of thing. And as, as any fly fisherman knows, there's a real learning curve to it. So spent years just going out and you know floundering around out there not really know what you're doing this was you know through middle school and then early high school for me and so there was like a lot of frustration with it you know because as a kid it's easy to kind of get upset and I remember ultimately we we went I grew up in Tucson Arizona and we went up to northern Arizona to fish Leaves Ferry in the Grand Canyon. And we went out with a guy because that's the only way you could really get access. And I remember he told me, and this got always kind of stuck, is when the fish aren't biting, it's not personal. They don't care that you're fishing or not fishing. Like it has nothing to do with you. And as a kid, like that really kind of like hit home for me and was a little bit of a turning point and I think less frustration. And, you know, not long after that, the fishing started to click a little more, but there was a lot of years of both of us just going out there and we didn't know what we were doing, but we were having fun. And unless I was getting frustrated.
Katie
I know not every teenager goes through this, but, you know, there's the classic like teenagers, you know, they want space from their parents. they kind of want to, you know, rebel a little bit. Do you think that having this, this kind of hobby, the shared hobby with your mom that you were both learning together, kind of like kept you closer together during that time that a lot of teenagers typically kind of want to push away from their parents? Or did you still go through something like that, even if you had, you know, fly fishing to do together?
Greg
Yeah, I don't know that I went through that in any kind of extreme. I went through it to the same extent that, I don't know if any, any kid escapes that entirely, right? But yeah, I mean, it was something to really kind of bond over. And, you know, I played a lot of basketball in high school, too. And so that was something that my dad was really into. And so I had these channels with both my parents. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah. So, yeah, I had a great childhood. I got no complaints.
Katie
Did you grow up in Alaska?
Greg
No, I grew up in Tucson, Arizona.
Katie
Oh, very different.
Greg
Yeah, yeah, very different. I like it up here. There's not so much sunshine up here. I had enough sunshine.
Katie
What took you up to Alaska?
Greg
Man, my wife and I, she was in law school. This is almost 15 years ago. And we were in North Carolina where she was in law school. And she was on a law journal that covered Alaska kind of randomly. And so she started establishing ties up here and we'd been up one summer before, you know, just working summer jobs. And she had established all these connections and we kind of wanted to move up here. And so it was just kind of, you know, why not? We got to go somewhere. We weren't going to stay in North Carolina. So we moved up here and that's when I started guiding my first year was while she was in law school down there. So that was like 2012.
Katie
Now, had you already had plans to get into like the guiding outfitting world or was it kind of the move to Alaska that spurred that interest in you?
Greg
I always had it as an interest, but just never really pursued it. And then they were related in that I was looking that direction. I was kind of looking for summer gigs because when you're in law school, law students go and get internships and stuff during the summer. And so my wife was getting jobs up here in Alaska. So I was looking for these short-term gigs. And I saw an opening for a guide at a lodge on the Sire River out in the Gulf of Alaska. And so I reached out and got hired. And that was kind of the beginning of the journey. So it was awesome.
Katie
I know you mentioned ahead of time, because we're going to get into the she fish. And you had mentioned that you were kind of, you wanted something more than just the kind of standard, you know, rainbow trout and salmon experience that everyone gets in Alaska. Is that what you were guiding for at the time, which is the, you know, the run of the mill salmon rainbow trout?
Greg
So when I started on the Tsiu River, that was basically exclusively silvers. And the Tsiu has an absolutely incredible run of silver salmon. It's right on the coast. You're fishing the very lower part of the river, you know, the first couple of miles out of the ocean. Fish are super fresh. It's a huge run. We'd have great fishing conditions, all weight fishing. Fly fishermen could hook 30, 40, 50 silvers in a day. It was crazy. And so I did that for three seasons. And, you know, there was just a repetitiveness to it that we didn't have a lot of river. And there was a couple other outfits on the river working. So you could get crowded. And, you know, and also there's a lot of Alaska out there. And so I started kind of looking at where else could I go? And float trips were appealing. And so while I was still guiding out there, I stopped doing the silver season. We did a small spring steelhead season out there, just a few guests every spring. And I did that for an additional several years. But in like 2014, maybe, my wife and I and some friends put together just a personal flood trip. And that was out in Western Alaska on the Kisaralik River, which is a tributary of the Kuskokwim. And again, didn't really know what we were doing. We just rented some rafts and equipment and set off down this river. And it was a real learning experience. We took some lumps on that one. But it was, I mean, it was fantastic. Incredible river, great fishing. And that's kind of where my first taste of the float world was. And I was like, you know, this is the direction that I want to head. And there's a, you know, when you float a river for a week or 10 days or whatever, even if you're floating the same river over and over again, it's always different. You know, throughout a season, the water levels are changing. Fish are moving different places. the weather's different, constant change. And so there's something really kind of invigorating about that, that you don't get in the lodge set up as much. Not to knock lodge fishing, there's some outstanding lodge operations in Alaska that are great experiences. But yeah, I love the float part of it. I like being out with just what you need and not a whole lot else, just cover the water and seeing what you're seeing what you come across how far would you float in you know a seven to ten day trip so at this point I'm mostly operating up north primarily two rivers the Kobuk and the Ivishak the Kobuk if if we do the full length it's about 125 miles that's going to be a usually a 10 to 12 day trip depending on kind of how the timing works out I have a shorter trip on that river as well. It's about 85 miles, and that's more like a seven or eight day trip. And the Irish shack is similar to that. Seven days, about 75, 80 miles.
Katie
And I assume it was just public land. You're just pitching camp in between each night.
Greg
Yeah. So I don't know how familiar you are. And I'm sure a lot of your listeners haven't been to Alaska. I haven't looked at maps, particularly of the Arctic regions. And so the Brooks Range runs across the Arctic region, kind of east to west. And so you have the North Slope and the South Slope of the Brooks. And the Kobuk is on the South Slope. And Ivishak's on the North Slope. Very different terrain. The South Slope is kind of the northern edge of your boreal forest. So it's still a lot of spruce, pretty heavily forested, brushy. You get on the North Slope and there's very little vegetation up there, a little bit of like willow in the river bottoms, but that's about it. And so on the Kobuk, I'm starting in Gaze of the Arctic National Park. And so I've got permits operating the park. The float starts in there. We'll flow through that for a few days until we enter state land, so owned by the state of Alaska. And then the last couple days of the trip are through Native Corporation lands. So it's kind of a constant shift through. But we mostly, on the Kobuk, we basically just stay in the river corridor. It's not really a get-off-the-river kind of trip. It's real brushy terrain. We're kind of on the edge of the foothills. And so we're camping on gravel bars and, yeah, just staying in the river and moving camp most every night, covering different water and looking for fish throughout the trip.
Katie
Thinking about, like, the National Park land and then State, or not State Park, but just State land, I was expecting to hear, like, National Forest. But with these different agencies managing the different parts of land, like, is there a lot of logistical, like, thinking around how to, like, getting permits to camp in certain places? Or is it pretty kind of like free for all? You know, I know you said you have permits to guide in the national park, but is camping pretty, like, free and loose and you can kind of do what you want? Or is there a lot of logistics that have to go into that?
Greg
In terms of choosing a campsite on any given night, it's pretty open. You know, there's conditions on the permit in terms of how close you can be to water, what you're doing with waste, you know, managing garbage, all that kind of stuff. But, yeah, it's not like a lot of rivers in the lower 48 that are very high-use rivers where you have maybe established campsites that you've got to hit. That's not what it is on the Kobuk or the Ivashak. The Kobuk in particular, very low use. I've been down the Kobuk, I think, eight times now. And I still haven't seen another float party.
Katie
Really?
Greg
Yeah. One of these days that'll change. And other people float it. It gets a little bit of just kind of private groups that go up there and fish. But it does not see a high volume. And so, yeah, choosing camp spots is not a big deal. It's kind of where are we at in the river and what kind of pace are we trying to find. And different sections of the river have different availability. You know, sometimes you're in these kind of braided channeling areas where there's basically a gravel bar around every bend you can camp on. And then other stretches, you've got to plan it out a little more. But there's not stipulations necessarily. on exactly where we need to set up any given night.
Katie
Yeah, that's definitely what I'm used to down here. National Forest Land, yeah, it is kind of a camp wherever you want, but I don't know any state land in Colorado that's not managed as a state park or is a no camping situation. I don't know state lands that are just free for all, like put your tent wherever.
Greg
No, no, it's unusual. Forest Service Land is kind of unique that way, And BLM. So in Alaska, there is a lot of public land. We have National Park Fish and Wildlife Service has national wildlife refuges. So the Iva Shack is on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. So that's that's another permanent system that I that I deal with for the North Slope rivers. But we don't really have much national forest land in the Arctic. It's mostly BLM and those other two agencies. and then state land and native corporation land. So the national forest land tends to be in the further south parts of Alaska.
Katie
I'm kind of surprised that I'm not an expert in different public land types by any means, but as far as I was aware, BLM was kind of like, as people were moving west, it was like the undesirable land that could maybe be used for grazing, but not much else. Typically down here, it's just really dry, not much going on. You can graze cattle, and that's about it. And I'm kind of surprised that there's a lot of BLM in Alaska just thinking about, it wasn't really settled with the rest of the West. It was kind of a separate thing. So I'm just kind of surprised to hear that BLM plays as big a part in Alaska as it does down here, since they were kind of two different systems, I guess, in their creation. But I also don't know a ton about the history of BLM.
Greg
yeah, honestly, I remember when I first moved up here also being surprised that BLM even existed up here because I grew up in the Western United States. And so I was used to your arid lowlands were BLM land. And when you got in the mountains, if it was public land, you were in the National Forest.
Katie
Yep.
Greg
Like that was a that was an easy delineation. And I got up here and I was like, why would BLM even exist? But yeah, I don't know what the history of BLM land designation up here is because it did come later than lots of the western United States. So that'd be interesting. But I don't know the background on that.
Katie
Yeah, I mean, the northern kind of like Arctic area does kind of sound like Alaska's version of our BLM areas. It's just kind of like not arid, but I guess it's probably pretty dry compared to like the like the southeast Alaska that a lot of people think of. and kind of empty open, kind of like our BLM. But yeah, I'm just surprised that I didn't turn into something else. But yeah, I'm glad to hear that it kind of confuses you as well, because I was like, it's just not what I picture in Alaska as BLM.
Greg
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you know, I'm used to it now. I've been up here 15 years, so it all seems normal. But yeah, it's, yeah, the northern, the north slope, once you get onto the coastal plain in particular, it's very wide open. It is pretty dry. Like the precipitation levels are low. It's very wet country. So it's mostly tundra, lots of very shallow lakes, very hard to traverse on foot. So it's not the dryness of, you know, a sage desert in Wyoming or Colorado or something like that. The ground is sponge, but it is, there's not trees. So the Forest Service, I think they needed trees or they weren't interested.
Katie
There's got to be like one tree per acre to count as a forest or something.
Greg
There's got to be some minimum amount and the north slope did not have it.
Katie
Well, I want to hear how you got introduced to sheefish. And I'd love to talk a lot about them because I've heard of them. I think I've seen some pictures, but I don't know much about them. So I want to get into the weeds on the species itself. But how did you kind of come across them and what really triggered your interest?
Greg
Yeah, I first heard about them when my wife and I came up that first summer. I think I read about them in a book or something as I was trying to figure out where to go fish and didn't really fish for them. There's not a lot of access to them on the road system in Alaska. There's a couple of places you can get out of a little bit, but mostly they're in the Yukon and Kuskokwim drainages in kind of the central part of the state. and then the Kobuk-Selowik system up in the northern part of the state. And so that first summer kind of put them on my radar. And then once I started doing the float trip stuff, you know, and this is almost a decade later, I tried out in western Alaska a little bit initially when I was moving away from the lodge trying to do the float trip thing and just realized, you know, there's already a ton of people doing the rainbow salmon thing out west. And sheefish was just kind of on my back burner. And I had a window of time one summer that I could go and basically do kind of a test trip. And so I drove up to Coldfoot and did a 12-day solo trip down the Kobuk to basically go see what the river was like, if what sheefish was all about, if it was something that was, you know, practical on a fly rod. I didn't really know. Most people that I'd seen or that you read about at that point in time had thrown spinning gear for them. And so I spent, you know, almost two weeks on the river, and that was my introduction. the first time I saw them was kind of the moment of like, Oh, this is, they're, they're big. Like, and, and the, that first trip, the river conditions were, were amazing. I had dry weather. The river was low crystal clear. And so they're not through the whole length of the Kobuk that I float. When we started a trip at Walker Lake, Uh, that's like I said, about 125 miles from Walker to our takeout point at Kobuk village. And it takes about 65 miles to get from Walker to where we'd start to see some she fish. And that depends a little bit on, on timing in the season. They move up, further into the, that middle section of the river, the later in the season you get. So if you're, if you get there in early August, there, it's going to be even a little bit further down but anyways I i got into that section and the water was super clear and I I'd taken this inflatable kayak that was a great little boat I could stand up in it and so I'm just standing basically using my my paddle as like a paddleboard and I'm I'm just scanning the water and I've been doing this for hours and I look down and I just see like a half a dozen like torpedoes just scatter below my boat because they were all like three to three and a half feet long these big old fish and you know it's kind of this moment of shock and so I i didn't even throw a fly at that point I just had seen them and they scattered and and so I rigged up and the kind of the next bend down got my first hook up and you know this big heavy pull on the on the rod and they came up jumping and yeah it was it was amazing so that was my my first like actual interaction with sheefish was was out there by myself in the middle of middle of co-buck country very memorable for me that whole thing
Katie
yeah the pictures I've seen I've been surprised at a like you mentioned how big they are and b they kind of strike me as like they remind me of a saltwater fish they almost look like a cross between like a tarpon and a snook if I had to like peg what what they look like and it's like I would not have like if someone asked where that came from I would not have picked like northern Alaska
Greg
they look like they belong in Florida. Yeah it's it's wild it's it's really a wild experience to be up in the arctic and catch a fish of that size that looks like that they have they they have total like bucket mouth like a carbon, no teeth, and just that these big glimmering silver scales and long body shape. Yeah, they seem like a tropical warm water fish, but they really thrive in that kind of edge of Arctic system. The Kobuk and Selawik rivers have the best run of sheefish in the state. Big numbers and also just really large fish. There's sheefish in the Kobuk that can push to 45, 50 pounds.
Katie
Wow.
Greg
Yeah.
Katie
What do they eat?
Greg
They're very aggressive fish eaters.
Katie
Oh, really? I also wouldn't have guessed that. I don't know why. I just picked them as kind of planty, small crustaceans, things like that. I would not have guessed that. Big piscivore.
Greg
Yeah. No, they're very piscivorous. when they're first when they first hatch out they'll mostly eat insects till they grow to maybe I think about a foot long and then somewhere in the foot to 16 inch range they start to shift over to primarily a meat diet and so that what they do is they spend most of their life out in the brackish waters of Hotham Inlet which is where the Selawik and Kobuk Rivers come out and so they there's a great forage base of fish out there and so they spend the winters and a lot of summer too if they're not running up to spawn out there just just chowing down on on fish and so I think that you know there's a richness to arctic waters and and just in terms of you know a lot of marine mammal life moves up there in the summers to feed on you know all this explosion of life that occurs and I think that's a big reason why these Kobuk fish are larger than than some of the fish like in the Kuskokwim and Yukon systems because those fish are not in in that arctic region with that same kind of forage base but but yeah they're they're aggressive meat eaters so we throw big flies trying to get their attention and and they're not shy about it
Katie
so what what kinds of flies are you throwing I assume you know looking like big bait fish but what what does that look like in terms of fly
Greg
you know I use a lot of the same stuff that I would use for for salmon up here they really like flashy colors so like pink is great so it's It's not necessarily a match the hatch situation where we're trying to, you know, throw identical bay fish patterns. Really, we want to get their attention and then they will they will move on on large silhouette. And color seems to be a big trigger. So a lot of pink, orange. Those are kind of my primaries. And then if if if it's slow, then we'll start to change it up with different colors. But the real key is to get big bunny flies, big intruder style flies, stuff you throw for king salmon in June kind of stuff. Those are very effective.
Katie
Did it take you a long time to figure out? I read in your bio ahead of time that you decided you wanted to figure out sheepish and kind of shift your focus to that. But was figuring it out a big part of the problem or was it more just learning where they are, learning how the logistics of a trip would work, things like that? But it sounds like the fish themselves are like pretty aggressive.
Greg
They're pretty aggressive. You know, they're like any fish. Any given day, it can be impossible to catch them, even if, you know, right, they're right there and you're doing everything you were doing the day before. And you do all the same things the next day and you catch all the fish on those other two days and you don't catch anything that day. So, you know, that's that's the nature of any fish. But yeah, I mean, the actual, there's always refinement, I think, to the approach. But it was not as hard as I thought it might be to get them to react to a fly. In part, I was, you know, going into my first trip down to Kobuk, I had very little idea of what the river itself was going to be. The river, it's a pretty large river. We start out and it's not like a little mountain stream that you're casting across. So it's deep water, big runs. So figure out how you're going to present to fish that are holding in some of that deeper water. Fortunately, they're pretty willing to move in a lot of cases. So, you know, I primarily have people fish in floating lines and then we'll use polyleaders like that to get a little depth on it with some weighted flies and keep things manageable to cast and manipulate, but also get down in the zone and be very flexible. It's nice to be able to change things up without having to switch out a spool or have a bunch of different rods rigged since that's impractical on a fly out multi-day trip. like there's there's limitations to to that whole thing
Katie
so do you think the conventional anglers have a leg up over the the fly anglers in this case or do you think that they're pretty evenly matched? I think of things like trout and I'm like I would rather have a fly rod if I'm fishing for trout but then the other end of the spectrum we've got things like catfish where like you you can catch them on a fly but like really they are suited more toward like a bait angler where does fish fall on this spectrum of letting themselves more to fly or more to conventional gear?
Greg
I think they're going to be similar to like silver salmon where your catch rates can be really good with either, but a conventional angler is going to outfish just because covering water is so much easier. You can get deeper. You can move things faster. You get to fish in faster on conventional gear. So even with the same number of hookups, there's going to be, you know, it's going to take that conventional guy less time to get the fish in. So there's just more opportunities. But it's not a fish where it's not like 10 to 1 or 20 to 1 where your odds are really low with a fly versus, you know, I feel like it's a pretty normal split there just in terms of the basic differences between the two, not the fish itself so much. So it's very good fish on the fly.
Katie
I feel like most fish probably fall somewhere around there, like bass, things like that, where it's like pike too, where it's like conventional people, I think, do have a little bit of a leg up, but you're not completely destroying your chances of catching one by going on fly gear. You will probably hook up and have decent success if you know what you're doing.
Greg
Yeah. And part of that's the lures too, you know, look at the, look at the wide range of lure types out there that do all these different kinds of actions and they rattle and you can do, you know, cover different levels of water so easily flies are, if, you know, if you look at them, it's a pretty narrow band of, of difference between, you know, your, your basic flies, you know, you got the ones that float and the ones that sink and a little size difference, but like there's, there's limitations. Some move a little more than others. Maybe they got eyes that rattle a little bit, but there's just so much more attractive capability with a lot of lures. So I think that's a huge part of it too. But that's part of the fun. If you just want to go catch as many fish as possible, then conventional gear is great. But I've been fly fishing. I learned to fly fish long before. I didn't touch a conventional rig until I was out of college, I think. So that was kind of a foreign world to me. And so, you know, anything that I can catch on a fly, I'd rather catch on a fly. But, you know, everybody's a little different on that, which is good.
Katie
I think in the case of a fish this large, another thing that conventional would have going for it is that you wouldn't be so exhausted at the end of the day. Like, you know, casting like a musky fly on a fly rod. It's like half the battle is just like, does your arm give out partway through the day? Um, you know, you can cast for trout all day long and not feel it, but with those big flies for big fish, like that, that's a workout to cast the fly over and over and over again.
Greg
Yeah. I mean, we're mostly fishing, for sheefish somewhere eight to nine rod. And, with that sink tip on there, big kind of heavy wind resistant fly. So, yeah, especially over the course of, you know, we're fishing out there for eight, nine, ten days. People wear out. You know, this is true of any, you know, kind of extended fishing trip. It's always real intense the first couple of days. People are like, I'm fishing, I'm fishing, I'm fishing. And then, you know, it starts to pace out a little bit more as they realize, you know, I got a little time here. And I need to conserve my energy. what season do you typically fish for them so my my Kobuk season basically starts in early august and runs through this year I'll be off the river September 23rd oh so it's pretty short it's very short this is actually I'm running later this year kind of as an experiment that's that's that kind of mid late September window is like pushing it a little bit in the arctic winter comes early up there so the the peak fishing should be right in that window but you're kind of right there when temperatures are going to start to drop out we're going to see freezing temperatures probably some snow that kind of stuff so it's it's kind of a hearty trip but I think the fishing is going to be incredible so so I'm pretty excited about that that's kind of a a new new one to test out this year for me but but yeah it's it's an it's an abbreviated season up there because the the fish are moving they don't overwinter in the the river especially up that high in the winter the fish pretty much all move out into that hot of inlet brackish water area and so starting in June when the river starts to ice out they'll they'll move up and and and there's, there's basically two groups of fish that are moving up into the river. You have your fish that are primarily moving up, to feed and those fish will get up somewhere into the Shungnak, Kobuk village range. And then you also have your, your spawning fish for that year that are also moving up. And I, I think probably to some extent feeding through that, but, but at a certain point, very similar to salmon, they'll stop feeding as they're moving up to spawning grounds. And so those are the fish that we're seeing in the upper river. They're moving kind of past the feeder fish. And we're seeing them in that we've got about 60 miles of river that we'll be on sheefish for. And their spawning is fairly late for up there, and it's a really abbreviated window. They spawn, my understanding from fish bios I've talked to is they spawn over the course of about a week to 10 days at the very end of September, early October, right before things ice up, and then they move very quickly out of the river. They don't die after they spawn like salmon. They'll spawn and then they'll out-hydrate. back to the inlet. So yeah, it's about catching them in that really short time period where they're actually up in that upper section of river. Because they're in the lower part of the river, but fly fishing for them down there would be really challenging. It's so big, real slow moving. The upper section that we float has really kind of that, just the prime conditions for being able to get after them with a fly rod at the right time.
Katie
is it typical for the fish up there to have such a short window of the actual spawning or is that kind of unique to sheefish?
Greg
it seems a little unique to sheefish at least relative to salmon salmon tend to spawn over to tend to spawn over a wider length of time depends a little bit on species in the river and all that. But yeah, it's not quite so compact as that. So I'll be interested. I think the concentrations in that mid-September range will be pretty thick. And I'll be interested to see what that looks like. I think there'll be a lot of fish. And we'll be out of there before that spawning activity hits. So we don't want to be on those fish once they're actually, you know, and they're doing their thing. And it'd be cool to see. My understanding is they're broadcast spawners. So the females will get up into the heads of these runs and they just release their eggs. And the eggs just tumble down to the bottom and they kind of stick into the rock substrate. And then the males will release the milt. And it all just kind of is this mass. And I think there's just a ton of grayling in there just going to town on eggs. so I i think the you know the big draw on the Kobuk for most people is the sheefish for good reason because it's really unique it's the best she fishing you're gonna find but what makes the Kobuk such a great float is there's great fishing throughout there's really good grayling fishing from the start and there's there's some good pike fishing in the side sloughs so we're we don't get into like real big pike you know we've got a couple that are pushing you know 35 inches that's pretty big pike from what I've seen up there but you know a lot of 25 inch pike to 30 inch pike and so in in that time period before we kind of get on the sheefish there's just a you you can always have a rod in your hand casting for for either pike in a side slough or working grayling or whatever. And so the variability of the fishing is really awesome. And when we put in on a full length trip at Walker Lake, there's opportunities for lake trout right at the outlet. So that's always kind of a fun way to start a trip off is see if you can hook up a, you know, a 25, 30 inch lake trout on a flyer on a six weight before we take off. So you never know, but we got a couple of nice ones up there.
Katie
Why are sheefish so unknown? I feel like for a fish that large and aggressive, I know it's not, it doesn't cover a huge geographic region, but I'm just surprised that a fish that's that aggressive and large doesn't draw like more of a following.
Greg
Yeah. I think a lot of it is just they're in places that are not all that accessible. You know, they're in North America, you'll find them in Alaska, but kind of Kuskokwim, Yukon and North. We don't have them here in South Central, like where Anchorage is. They're not in Western Alaska down, you know, the Alaska Peninsula, Bristol Bay. And that's where a lot of the fishing, the sport fishing concentration has happened and developed here over the last 40 years. Most of the fishing is, you know, when people come up to fish for salmon and rainbows, they're going down the Kenai Peninsula or they're going out west to do a float trip or to a lodge. And those are not places where there's there's concentrations or availability for she fish. And, and so, yeah, I think it's, it's mostly, if, if you don't see it, if, if you never run into it, it's, it's not something you think about much. And so, they, they know about them over in the Yukon territory in Canada. Uh, they got some, I think, pretty good she fishing over there. Um, but, yeah, even Alaska, you'll run into a lot of people who have never caught one before. some people you know I think most fishermen up here probably heard of them and kind of like oh yeah that'd be cool one day but if I'm talking to somebody in the lower 48 there's a very very low chance that they have heard of sheefish they'll say what is that what is that so
Katie
yeah I think I've only encountered like hearing about it in the context of like other you know podcasts or videos that have like done a trip up there and they're targeting sheefish but like I've never heard it mentioned in like casual conversation around here.
Greg
No, it's not something that kind of comes up as, your, your kind of standard, you know, here, here's, here's the, the five fish you could, you should go fish for, in North America or whatever. Uh, it's, it's definitely, it, I think it's just not on, on the radar, which, you know, in some ways that's great. Um, it's, it, it gives it a little bit of mystique and, it keeps, it, it's good to have places that are not, overexploited and populations that are not overexploited. Um, so, I think it's okay. It's, it's good to have some places that are hard to get to.
Katie
Speaking of which, I know, ahead of time you mentioned wanting to talk about kind of the remoteness of Alaska, but more from the, like the logistical perspective and what that actually means. like when you're there on the ground. So tell me what your thoughts are on that. What do you mean by like the logistics of the remoteness?
Greg
Yeah, I think particularly for people who've never been up to Alaska, it's hard to conceptualize the distances and kind of the difficult access. You know, up here, even on the road system, we don't have the kind of spider webbing network of Forest Service roads and BLM roads that you have in Colorado and Montana, all that, where, you know, that can disperse people a bit and it makes it a lot easier to get out and get to places. And so up here, if you're not on the road system, you're probably going to need to fly in somewhere. And there's places where the infrastructure for that is more developed. Western Alaska is one of those. There's a couple of hubs out there. There's a lot of lodges getting out there. It's expensive, but it's well developed. And there's quite a few avenues to do that. When you get up in the Arctic, you kind of notch that down a couple of levels. There's fewer air taxis operating up there. There's basically one road north from Fairbanks to Prudhoe Bay.
Katie
Is that the Haul Road?
Greg
The Haul Road, the Dalton Highway. And so that's what I operate off of. There's a little Hamlet town called Coldfoot that's basically a truck stop and an airstrip. And so that's where I base out of for my Arctic trips. And from there, we're flying in, you know, an hour to an hour and a half to get to any of these rivers to fish. And so, you know, for me, on the kind of planning side of things, Coldfoot has no services. so I can't restock groceries I can't I can buy a little gas for like you know last summer it was $7.50 a gallon I'm not looking forward to seeing what's going to be this not $7.50 I don't think and so I have to make sure that I have everything figured out logistically in terms of food equipment not just for one trip but for you know this season I've got August 5th to September 23rd, I've got four trips stacked where I've only got two or three days in between trips. So I need to make sure that everything is locked in there. And then just on the flying side of it, I'm lucky enough to work with Coyote Air up there. They're outstanding. They've been flying up there for 30 years. That's good a pilot. You're going to find anywhere in Alaska. And so they do all the flying for me. And everything is dependent on weather with that kind of stuff up here. And so there's a plan in advance. And then you get there and you see what happens that day. And so you've got to have the flexibility to kind of adapt because weather can do anything. And so it's having the contingencies and everything kind of in place to be ready to go when you need to go and also make the changes that can hopefully salvage a trip that maybe doesn't go right when you want it to go. And so, you know, as a guide running this kind of operation, that's a big part of what I do is all that stuff before, like, like between January and June, there's just a lot of thinking and prep and all that that goes into those trips before, you know, I've even, you know, put a raft together. The on the water part is kind of the easy part because then you're just out there on the river and you deal with what you come across and you get after fish and have a good time. But that's all based on how good a job I did in the preseason part of it.
Katie
Do you ever get people who are alarmed at how remote it is when they show up to fish with you and they don't realize there's not going to be facilities even before you get on the water? you know, your last stop is basically a truck stop?
Greg
I try and be really clear with people. So, so I, I've run small trips like this year. I'm all my trips are just me. So I'm taking two guests, one raft. Um, this is not a situation where you can just get on my website and book yourself and we don't have any contact till you show up. If you're interested in a trip, I'm going to talk to you. We're going to, we're going to go over it. I'm going to tell you exactly what you're getting into what you should expect. Make sure that you not only know what you're getting into, but that I know what you want to get out of it. And so, yeah, that really kind of heads off that situation. Not that people don't get there and are taken aback at how remote it is, because until you until you get in there and you get dropped off and you know you got this pile of gear that you've fretted over and we we've stuffed it all in the plane and it seems like this huge amount of stuff and then the plane flies you in and it's beautiful and you see all this stuff and you you get you get dropped off and all your stuff gets thrown out of the plane and plane takes off and then you realize this is all we have like this this little pile of gear that seemed like so much stuff is all we got now. And I think that, you know, I've been doing this for long enough that I'm kind of used to that. But I think that can hit people a little bit sometimes if they've never been out there before. But in a good way, I think it's humbling being out there in that country, you know, with just what you got and you got to rely on yourself a little bit.
Katie
Yeah, I mean, we obviously don't have anything even close to as remote down here in Colorado, but just like when we're on a backpacking trip and you've got what's on your back, I think it's good for everyone to experience something like that. Even, you know, for most people, a simple backpacking trip would be kind of a wake up call for like, oh, you don't have that thing. Well, I guess you'll figure out how to make something else work in its place or something like that. And then when you get back and you're like, oh, my God, warm water. Like I've never been so appreciative for like a hot shower. And so many people don't have anything even close to that at any point in their lives. Like they've never not had the services they needed. They've never not had electricity or not had warm running water. And to just have to make do with what you've got in front of you, even if it's not the perfect tool, I think a lot of people would benefit from having an experience like that.
Greg
Yeah. And I think those are things that are more daunting to think about beforehand than when you're actually out there, which is true. Like that's, that's the nature of being a human, right? All the terrible stuff that happens to us mostly happens in our own heads. And, and like, usually the reality is not as bad as we made it out to be. And so, yeah, you know, being out there on these trips, like I, I have as, as good a gear as I can take. I, I take good food. I try and keep people as comfortable as possible. And, and I want them to have a great time, but there's gonna be times when, when you and probably going to get a little wet and we're going to see wildlife and all that stuff. And so, yeah, it's I think it's really good. And I think people get a lot out of and also enjoy that. It's important to enjoy that out there. If you can't enjoy that, then it's probably not the trip for you. Right. Like if you don't want to be. If being cold a little bit is not an option, you should go to a lodge. Because on a really nasty day, you could stay at the lodge. And, like, that's cool. I worked at a lodge. There was days when I was out there, you know, standing there, getting just hammered with wind and rain. And I was like, if I didn't have to stay with a fisherman, I'd go back to the lodge. But on these flood trips, the next roof is at the end of the trip. and so when you remove the option I think you don't think about it as much you just kind of do it.
Katie
I agree I agree I feel like thinking about not having something I need when I need it before I go is like scary and then the number of times I've been put in position where I'm like oh I don't have whatever I guess I'll just figure it out or I'll just suffer through it like I don't have an I don't have the option to just like be sad about it like I have to do something
Greg
so I think as long as yeah as long as long as you cover the bases if you can stay warm enough you know up there it can be cold wet you can get hypothermia right so so you got to have a minimum basis of clothing and shelter and all that stuff but we're used to a lot of luxuries in in our lives that we don't necessarily look at as luxuries and it's it's not as hard to do without those things especially for a short period of time, as we like to think, I think.
Katie
I think you also, like, you don't have the time to just sit around being upset about it. Like, we have the luxury of, you know, something little bothers us. You know, like someone said something to you a little off at the coffee shop, and you're, like, you're dwelling on it all day because you've got the ability to sit there at your computer and dwell on it. When you're in those situations where, like, you have tasks to do, like, you need to filter water, you need to get a fire going, you need to cook food. You just don't have a lot of time to sit around and wallow in things. So even something that's not great, you either figure it out or you move on. You don't have time to just be sad about it.
Greg
Yeah. And I think another thing is that we're here talking about fishing and all that, but these trips are more than just fishing. You could go float the Kobuk and not take a rod, and it would be an amazing trip. That's true of the Ivishak too. And the Ivishak is a whole different experience than the Kobuk. But, you know, on the Kobuk in particular, my trips are very fishing focused. That's what people are mostly coming for. But what I find is that even the kind of most diehard fishermen, they end up spending a lot of time kind of sitting there with their rod in their lap, just soaking the place up because it's a really different experience to be out in a place that wild and remote, surrounded by that landscape, without phones dinging and all these distractions. And so the place itself has this absorbing effect that is very obvious to me kind of watching people. it's cool I love it when people relax and do it where they don't feel like they have to fish every second where they're out there trying to to get the most out of the whole experience not just one part of it
Katie
yeah well last thing I wanted to talk about a little bit is the Ambler Road and I don't I tangentially know some things about it but I don't know as much as I probably should and I'm also going to assume that there's a lot of people who don't know a ton so So I'm going to have you give kind of a 30,000 foot view of the Ambler Road. And we'll go from there in terms of like what's coming up, what can people do, things like that. But give us an overview of what the Ambler Road is and what like threats it poses.
Greg
Yeah. So I'm far from an expert on it. I'm not a polished guy or anything like that. And I'd point you to outfits like Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership or something like that. If people really want to dig into it, they have a lot of great information. But, you know, to give you just an overview, basically, they're looking to build a mining access road. There would be about 211 miles long off of the Dalton Highway running west through basically across several drainages, including the Kobuk drainage into the Ambler mine district, which is in the south kind of flanks of the Brooks Range. And Ambler is further down. It's a village on the Kobuk River. So it'd be further west even than like where my float trips are occurring. So they're looking to build this industrial mining road that would cross you know major river systems and through national park a national park that has no roads in it none of this area has any roads in it very disruptive to wildlife movement and you know roads have never been good for waterways right they dump a lot of silt you're talking about big heavy ore trucks moving all kinds of different materials yeah so so the overall picture is they're they're looking to to pilot's road through what's currently one of the largest remaining roadless areas in definitely in the country, if not the world. So that's disconcerting, to say the least.
Katie
Would the Ambler Road be open to other people? This is probably a dumb question. Or is it like for the mining?
Greg
So that's a good question. Like a lot of things around the Ambler Road, the answers are not exactly clear. I think it depends a little bit on who's asking and what they think they want to hear. I think initially what they're saying is that it won't be open to recreational access, similar to what the hall road, the Dalton Highway, initially was just an industrial road, but it ultimately was opened up to recreational use. So yeah, initially at least it might only be for industrial purposes. Whether that would change over time, there's a lot of debate over that, I think, and how that would affect that area. People who live in that region, I think, are pretty concerned about a big influx of caribou hunters, like we've seen in other parts of Alaska, as caribou numbers have really been in flux throughout the state. And so that's created a lot of pressure on herds that previously did not get as much pressure. And so I think that's a real concern for folks up there. But yeah, it's, I don't know. I do know. I don't like the road.
Katie
Yeah, no, it's kind of a double-edged sword. Like I obviously, I feel like most hunters and anglers and conservationists in general, like don't want to see roadless areas like that developed. But like concerning the whether whether recreationalists could use it on one hand, I see the point of the kind of the the native people of we don't want a bunch of recreationalists just like flooding our, you know, native hunting grounds and things like that. And also just the part of the beauty of Alaska is that it's not super accessible. Like that's what a lot of people like about it. On the other hand, I also kind of resist the idea of like, oh, it's for industry, but like screw you if you want to come just like use the road to to experience Alaska. Like, oh, so, you know, you get to destroy the environment, but you don't get give any benefit to anybody else who might want to come use the road. So it's like I see both sides of the coin there.
Greg
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, for sure. It would be, I think, a hard pill to swallow for people who want to get in there and hunt and fish to be like, well, you know, especially if if Alaska, as they're proposing, would foot part of that bill for that road.
Katie
Yeah why aren’t people going to be allowed to go in there if their money is spent on it.
Greg
For me, there's arguments on the economic side of it and all that stuff that I'm not well versed in. I don't try and argue those points, but we have so few places that aren't kind of under pressure and already developed. And, you know, once a road's in there, it's in there.
Katie
It never goes back to what it was.
Greg
Yeah. When you have this huge, and I say huge, it's not as big as it seems in a lot of ways.
Katie
Yeah, when you said 200 miles, I was like, oh, that's actually like a really, really small portion of Alaska. Not that I agree with the road, but in my mind, it was like crossing the whole state. I didn't realize that it was only 200 miles.
Greg
Yeah. But it's through this really intact section of ecosystem. And as soon as you fragment that, that's a permanent fragmentation. And two fragments are not equal to the whole. And I think one fragment begets more fragments. And, you know, the haul road is a good example of this, I think. There's a lot of use on the haul road at this point. Like, I'm a user of it. I take advantage of it for my guide business. And it has put pressure on resources that did not have pressure before to the same extent in terms of hunting in particular, I think, especially for people in Alaska. If you're an outside hunter, you're probably not as well versed in this, but people who used to hunt caribou up here, there used to be a Unit 13 hunt that was kind of in the middle of the state, fairly accessible for residents. That's mostly been eliminated because caribou numbers have dropped. So that's pushed a lot more hunters north. There's a lot more traffic and pressure on the haul road access for those hunts. And similar with sheep hunts, sheep populations in South Central have kind of dropped. And so that's pushed more and more sheep hunters into the Brooks Range. And so there's this kind of cascading effect to it. And that, I think, only gets enhanced when access gets easier and easier. and you know that it's on some level you want people to be able to get out there you know the more the merrier but I think we've seen the effect especially since covid of what that actually looks like in a lot of ways which is like love to death right I think you guys have seen that a lot in lower 48 with national parks and and public lands where the experience now is different than it was 20 years ago.
Katie
Yeah, that's another double-edged sword. Like you said, I mean, I want more people to love these places because I want more advocates, but at the end of the day, I don't actually want to see a lot of people out there. I want a lot of people who support them without actually visiting them. That's my ideal world. It's my selfish ideal.
Greg
And that's kind of the thing here with the Amber Road is there's a parallel to the pebble mine issue in Alaska, which is something people will be much more familiar with broadly. And that was in Bristol Bay, where there's a lot of people who have gone there to fish for decades, and there's a familiarity, and it hits home. And so there's been this very effective campaign of kind of keeping that in check. But Kobuk does not have that advocacy because people don't know about it. And so it is this thing of like, yeah, I need people to be engaged with it and care about it. But it's hard to do that if you don't have any experience with it, any reference for it. And so I think that's a big part of the battle at this point that some of these nonprofits are trying to work against is generate that interest in it.
Katie
It's okay if you're not an expert in this, but as much as you know, what's kind of the timeline on Ambler Road and what things can people do to kind of voice their opposition to it?
Greg
Yeah, the timeline is really hard to pin down, especially in the current administration. Things don't happen the way that they used to happen. It's a little more by fiat now. And so there's been these kind of moments where the administration will just say, okay, this is now permitted without having gone through the process. Or my understanding is there was just a land transfer of federal land to the state to kind of make to facilitate the advancement of the antler project. So so those kinds of things are happening. It's it's hard to to know what the timeline is, but potentially potentially shorter than than we'd like. So, yeah, I mean, I think the best thing you can do, I guess, reach out to your senators. I don't know if those people actually do anything anymore, but, you know, I guess it can't hurt. And then I get, you know, at least get on websites with, the outfit I've worked with is Hunters and Anglers for the Brooks Range. And they're associated with the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership. That would be one entry point into it, just to get information on what the road is, what's happening. There's really good folks over there. I took a couple of their staffers out on the Kobuk last year so that they could kind of get a first-hand feel for the place and what was at stake out there. And yeah, I think that's a great way to start engaging there. But I hope every one of your listeners goes and at least type it into Google and see what's going on up there. Because we need people to care about it. Same way the Boundary Waters needed people to care about it. And I've never been to the Boundary Waters. I don't think I'll ever go to the Boundary Waters, but that was like a devastating thing to hear happen.
Katie
right yeah that's one of those like just knowing that it exists is a nice thing a nice feeling to have that that a place like that exists out there
Greg
yeah yeah but even if I'm not going to go that somebody else can go there or that nobody goes there right that's okay if people aren't going there if it's if it's there it's serving a purpose that we needed to serve with without us involved in it in any way.
Katie
well, Greg, just to wrap up, where can people find you if they want to, you know, look at your website, book a trip, things like that.
Greg
Yeah. So I've got a website. It's remotewaters.com. And I'm also on Facebook and Instagram. It's remotewatersAK. And that's pretty much where you'll find me on the internet.
Katie
Awesome. Well, it's been fun learning about sheefish and like I said I hope people look into the Ambler Road because like I said once it once it's gone it doesn't come back so I hope people take you up on on that advice to look into it but I just appreciate you taking the time for this
Greg
yeah thanks for the invite this this was great
Katie
all right that's a wrap. thank you all for listening if you want to find all the other episodes as well as show notes you can find those on fishuntame.com you'll also find the contact link there if you want to reach out to me. And you can also find me on Instagram at fish untamed. If you want to support the show, you can give it a follow on Apple podcasts or your favorite podcasting app. And if you'd like to leave a review, it would be greatly appreciated. But otherwise, thank you all again for listening. I'll be back here in two weeks with another episode. Take care, everybody.
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