Lake Whitefish (new lifelist addition)

A trip for lake whitefish had been in the works for a while, and yesterday it finally came together. We set off on a two hour drive to Manitoba\'s Riding Mountain National Park where a good population of whitefish can be found in one of the two lakes that remain open to ice fishing. We tried a couple of areas and found a few fish in each spot. The fish weren\'t found at any specific depth, and the ones that we caught came in water ranging from 2\' to 35\' of water. The ones in deeper water were suspended almost 20\' above the bottom. It didn\'t take much to tempt these fish into biting. They were aggressive and usually hit on the first pass. If I missed on the hookset, they were quick to grab the jig again when it dropped back down. It was quite exciting to watch the tube jig completely disappear into their mouth with one quick gulp, even when they took it on head first. My dad also caught a 30-something inch pike on his ultralight. It looked like it must have just swallowed a whitefish of its own, judging by the huge bulge in its stomach. It was wrapped up in the line and took some untangling, so we quick released it without a picture. < img src = "http://s95.photobucket.com/albums/l130/sk_justin/2008-01-27_02.jpg"> < img src = "http://s95.photobucket.com/albums/l130/sk_justin/2008-01-27_03.jpg"> < img src = "http://s95.photobucket.com/albums/l130/sk_justin/2008-01-27_04.jpg"> < img src = "http://s95.photobucket.com/albums/l130/sk_justin/2008-01-27_05.jpg"> < img src = "http://s95.photobucket.com/albums/l130/sk_justin/2008-01-27_06.jpg"> < img src = "http://s95.photobucket.com/albums/l130/sk_justin/2008-01-27_07.jpg"> < img src = "http://s95.photobucket.com/albums/l130/sk_justin/2008-01-27_08.jpg">
fishingwithpole's picture

Wow, nice whitefish! I envy that it is only two hours for you to go to the promising whitefish lakes. For me it is 14 hours to go to Alberta and it is even not promising because they usually turn off after a couple of weeks after the first ice. They pay no attention even I put the bait in front of their mouth. But I thought there were many whitefish lakes in Saskatchewan. FWP
SK Justin's picture

[b]fishingwithpole wrote:[/b] [quote]But I thought there were many whitefish lakes in Saskatchewan.[/quote] There are many good whitefish lakes in Saskatchewan, but they are located a fair bit north of where I live... too far for a day trip. In Manitoba I can find a couple of whitefish lakes at a two hours drive. Then it\'s a few more hours to find others. [b]Quattro wrote:[/b] [quote]Another great post by Justin. Are those large for the species? I always thought whitefish were a smaller kind of fish.[/quote] The ones that we caught ranged from 16 to 21 inches - I would say that they are probably about average size.

Very nice fish...I\'m still waiting for mine. I got 2 trips in this year so far.

Great Pictures as well. Thanks for sharing......