Appropriate storage systems were essential for the Tsimshian and Gitksan if their dried fish was to sustain them through the winter. On the upper and middle Skeena River, where the climate was drier, people stored their dried foods in pits in the earth called 'anyuusm yip (place of hiding in the earth). This interior technology was known from the earliest times and was also used on other rivers, such as the Stikine. Still today, there is evidence of these 'cache pits' in many locations near Gitksan and Tsimshian fishing sites upriver on the Skeena. Over a hundred of these circular depressions (about three feet in diametre) can be found in one small area, indicating the central role they played in food storage for the winter months. "At old Kuldo, a village that has not been lived in for fifty [now eighty] years, you can see neat rows of circular depressions which, to the naked eye, seem identical in size and shape."

After the pits were dug out to a depth of three to four feet, they were lined with birch bark or tree boughs and bundles of food wrapped in birch bark were layered inside. They were then topped with dried evergreen needles and layers of earth. Birch bark was used because, unlike other bark, it is watertight and airtight.

Another type of storage system among the Gitksan is the 'anyuusm gan (place of hiding on posts). The small shed on 6 to 10 foot cedar posts was made of plank or log walls, a peeled log floor, and a cedar shake roof. It was accessed by a traditional notched cedar ladder.

Food was also stored in the longhouses themselves. Bundles of dried fish hung in the rafters or were stored in bent cedar boxes that stood on the platforms along the side of the house.