IceShanty.com's Ice Fishing Community
Ice Fishing Tips -Check your local regulations! => Whitefish => Topic started by: fisheyefool on Jan 16, 2012, 08:04 PM
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alright we have all seen in-fisherman and other ice fishing shows where they catch tons of whitefish on spoons, jiggin raps and other artificials. where i am from, east side of lake michigan I fish in the big lake on bays and some inland waters. The fish wont even look at anything unless it is on bottom. i have been fishing whities for a few years now and fish with a vexilar and aqua vu and i can watch whitefish come in and pay absolutely NO attention to any kind of jig. Most people around here fish by chumming, conditioning the fish and use a single egg with slip bobber or cork. i can catch whitefish like that. i just want to know why the whitefish around me arent as aggressive as the whitefish on the western part of lake michigan and parts of canada. whats goin on here?
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Just guessing but I would say it is more dependent on the local forage base than anything else, in the bay of green bay they eat a lot of perch minnows and gobies along with other things on the bottom.
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you are probably right. i have caught whitefish in petoskey, MI with very small gobies in their belly's but no matter what i jig with they dont pay any attention to it. thanks for the reply.
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They just get in a non biting mode sometimes. I hate those days when they are stacked up on the vex and wont even nibble on anything, then some days you cant keep them off the line. Still lots of fun to fish for them and all of the lakes up here also have lots of lake trout that keep you busy when the whities are having an off day.
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alright we have all seen in-fisherman and other ice fishing shows where they catch tons of whitefish on spoons, jiggin raps and other artificials. where i am from, east side of lake michigan I fish in the big lake on bays and some inland waters. The fish wont even look at anything unless it is on bottom. i have been fishing whities for a few years now and fish with a vexilar and aqua vu and i can watch whitefish come in and pay absolutely NO attention to any kind of jig. Most people around here fish by chumming, conditioning the fish and use a single egg with slip bobber or cork. i can catch whitefish like that. i just want to know why the whitefish around me arent as aggressive as the whitefish on the western part of lake michigan and parts of canada. whats goin on here?
We cant do any pre baiting or use anything additional while fishing here. I think it is more important to be on a good spot that has catchable fish on it than anything else. Went sat for first time this year to a lake that has a lot of whities in it, had to hit 5 different spots before I got on catchable fish. Got these ones and they were not real aggresive, just "catchable" with some work.
(http://i711.photobucket.com/albums/ww117/ca1119/DSC00995-1.jpg)
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i fish in areas that are really big, tough to locate them and i dont think there is a lot of whitefish around here and everyone i have ever seen fishing whitefish around my area chums and fishes with a single egg. i think maybe if i could find the whitefish and not have the whitefish find me i could maybe catch them jigging. maybe they are just feeding on peoples chum and not paying attention to whats above them.
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the one looks like a menominee or round whitefish. cigar shaped