There is so much to share from this trip I decided to break it down into section...kinda chronologically. I will post the actual river float and scenery pictures soon. But for now, here's the three main highlights of the trip. The caribou pictures got pushed over to the second page, so click on the older posts link at the bottom to see those.
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WOW!!! Who knew we were going to have so much fun fishing on this trip! We fished a lot in the first half of the trip and it was absolutely amazing!
Before we even got to the river, at the mouth of Beaver Creek which linked us from Minnie Lake to the Kobuk, we caught a bunch of northern pikes. Didier said this is a great spot for pikes, so Andrew and I casted there and we both hooked a fish on that first cast! That was the beginning to some incredible fishing!
Andrew with his first pike!
As soon as we reached the Kobuk River we started catching arctic grayling...trophy size grayling.
I think Didier fished non-stop the entire first half of the trip.
A true photographer snapping a picture of his own fish in the water! :)
Grayling
Then, we got into catching the monster fish...sheefish. It's a type of whitefish. They run up rivers in the north just like the salmon do down south. The main run is in August, and we were there in mid-September and were catching so many. 
These beauties weighed between 20 and 40 lbs.
We spent two and a half days at this spot just fishing and hanging out. You would catch a fish at least 6 out of 10 casts. The phrase of the day at one point was, "Let's see who can cast the most times without catching a fish!"
Happy guy!
My first one of the day was so big it took Andrew and I both to hold it up. I wish we would have gotten a picture of the first one I caught the day before. It was so big I couldn't lift it out of the water.
We sure did eat our fill of fish. It was delicious!!!
And even though we were fishing with three quarter ounce crocodile lures for sheefish the grayling continued to bite the hooks.
These wonderful native women shared a piece of their culture with Andrew and I on the river one day. We have read so many many Alaska bush books and a staple food that is always mentioned is dried whitefish and seal oil. Well, they gave us a whole fillet of dried whitefish since we had never had it before and let us dip some of it in their seal oil. The whitefish is deboned and the scales are shaved off then its air dried. You eat the entire fillet as is. The seal oil (melted down seal blubber) is to keep you warm, and that's exactly what it does. It was all very good and something we'll always remember and cherish.