Collect your fish ahead of time to make taming easier. I use fish baskets to catch them and immediately toss them out and cryo them to store for when I find a high level Shadowmane. This way allows me to keep them indefinitely from expiring. I keep an eye out for 1.4x and above. When you trap a shadowmane, toss your fish out (no need to wait for cryo cooldown, it doesn’t matter) in a nearby water source and trap them with fish baskets to feed to the shadowmane. I usually toss out 5-6 at a time if I know I have enough daylight to feed them all to the shadowmane. Make sure there it’s a safe area before tossing out your fish, otherwise you’l have a bad time and your fish will get killed.

You can only tame shadowmanes during daytime, they don’t lay down at night, save yourself the headache of trying.

Wear Ghillie

Take Cactus Broth, that way you can run almost all the way up to the shadowmane and crouch for the last few feet, feed it, then back up and run away from it about 10-15 foundation lengths.

Approach the shadowmane from its tail/back side, if you approach facing its head it will notice you more often. I use a spyglass to watch where the tail end is when it lays down and then run my mount around to that side, jump off my mount and run up to it.

They are easiest to tame on Genesis, since you can hover above them in your suit (no need for ghillie if you take a cactus broth) and drop down right behind them when they lay down, (remember you don’t take fall damage in your suit) crouch immediately, and feed it the fish, then double jump away and fly up above it. Rinse and repeat. Make sure you are high enough that you are out of the range of its teleport attack.

Although Shadowmanes do not have saddles, they can be one of the toughest mounts in Ark if leveled up correctly.

And easy way to load up on fungal wood in Fjordur is to find one of the dried mushroom looking things that sit near enough to the surface of the water that you can use a chainsaw on it. There is a spot on Fjordur at 73.6, 45.9. It’s somewhat tricky to carry it all, however if you lay down a sleeping bag and have a Fjordhawk, just fast travel back to your base and your bird will bring your bag, or keep enough fiber and thatch on you so you can make the baskets right where you get the fungal wood.