Arctic Char

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Was looking at my January 2026 Trout of North American calendar and there is a beautiful Arctic char. That illustrator is so good at reproducing them in his artwork.

Anyone ever get way up north to fish for these?

c/22
 
Depending on your perspective, you dont have to get too "far north" to find them. There's a pile at and slightly below my latitude (58°N), just way west of me in Bristol Bay. The Kenai Peninsula has a pile of lakes with char, and ADFG has a char stocking program for southcentral lakes.
They're fun, but I prefer their anadromous cousins in AK.
A trip to a particular river in northern Nunavut for their gigantic anadromous Arctic char is on my bucket list.
 
Worked on Baffin Island (Lake Harbor and Pangnirtung) in the late 70's - caught by locals, best tasting fish I ever ett. Would love to go back.

Iqaluit Arctic Char Fishing Polar Outfitters

Charter Flights To Iqaluit and Arctic Char Fishing Adventures.
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Canuck from Kansas said:
Worked on Baffin Island (Lake Harbor and Pangnirtung) in the late 70's - caught by locals, best tasting fish I ever ett. Would love to go back.

Iqaluit Arctic Char Fishing Polar Outfitters

Charter Flights To Iqaluit and Arctic Char Fishing Adventures.
www.charterflightstoadventure.com
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I’ll second that, living on the Kenai I never kept a rainbow, always plenty of Dollie’s/char if I wanted. Mostly ate halibut and king crab, cheaper than hamburger. Dollies are milder than salmon, just a bit different and delicious.
 
I fished out on the Alaska Peninsula and was told that one of the rivers we fished had both Arctic Char and Dolly Varden. I was told I was catching both. But G Smolt’s comment made me wonder, Wait, are Alaskan Arctic Char even anadromous? (I was catching these fish about a quarter mile or less from the Bering Sea.) AKFG sez:

Migration​

In Alaska, all known populations of Arctic char appear to spend their entire lives in lakes and do not migrate. Anadromous populations of Arctic char have not been observed in Alaska, although anadromous forms of the species do exist in on the Chukchi Peninsula and Kamchatka in far east Russia.

So, I don’t know. Maybe the native guide was wrong, or maybe the state site is overly generalized about fish that do all sorts of things I don’t think we know all about.
 
Matt B said:
So, I don’t know. Maybe the native guide was wrong, or maybe the state site is overly generalized about fish that do all sorts of things I don’t think we know all about.
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Currently, from both the literature and observational side, if it's an anadromous char in in AK it's a Dolly Varden.
Having said that, I think at some point when char are cool and fundable 🤣 (or the last abundant salmonid left), in-depth research will probably tease out an incredible amount of "genetic plasticity" between Northern and Southern form Dollies, bull trout, and arctic char. A fella I know just got his masters from UAF with a well-defended thesis about external meristic traits of dollies/bulls showing some evidence of anadromous bull trout in AK...
 
G_Smolt said:
Currently, from both the literature and observational side, if it's an anadromous char in in AK it's a Dolly Varden.
Having said that, I think at some point when char are cool and fundable 🤣 (or the last abundant salmonid left), in-depth research will probably tease out an incredible amount of "genetic plasticity" between Northern and Southern form Dollies, bull trout, and arctic char. A fella I know just got his masters from UAF with a well-defended thesis about external meristic traits of dollies/bulls showing some evidence of anadromous bull trout in AK...
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Meristics like counting fin rays? Or..? I love that anything other than molecular analyses of population characteristics are still happening.

I have to agree that there’s a lot we don’t know we don’t know.
 
I concur with Canuck From Kansas. Fantastic eating, even the ones that are farm-raised in Manitoba.
 
Matt B said:
Meristics like counting fin rays? Or..? I love that anything other than molecular analyses of population characteristics are still happening.

I have to agree that there’s a lot we don’t know we don’t know.
Click to expand...
Sorry, meant to type "morphometric".
Post-holiday fatigue.

At any rate, yeah, his analysis included maxillary curvature as a defining characteristic. I'll see if I cant dig it up...he was also drawn into commenting on an Insta photo of mine a few years ago by a couple adfg bios good-naturedly arguing species possibilities - the pic was of a chonky semi-salty char he felt might have some confluentus in its family tree.
 
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