A whitefish story a friend shared a while back.... "We were still seeing some fish and we sat together playing tag team and as fish came up we didn’t really know who it was chasing. Normally we would separate to be more efficient at finding fish but James had the coffee and it was cold out. We were seeing schools of whitefish and every once in a while one would shoot up like a rocket, stop, turn down, then turn around and head back at the bait only to turn down as fast as it started out. That’s how I know they are whitefish. I’m not sure where they rank in the fish intelligence poll but my guess is its pretty low.
Whitefish are like tic flies with A.D.D.. They have a brain the size of a pea and only use a small part of it. I can’t imagine what they are thinking when they blast up at a bait. I know its cousin the Lake Trout can be a cagey fish with a powerful and elegant cantor. They glide through the water and can be in full thrust effortlessly. It has incredible focus able to see and target a pin for hundreds of feet through a cloud of baitfish. It is the ultimate king predator. Whitefish on the other hand swim around like drunken sailors. There is nothing about them that would make you think they belong where they are. Don’t get me wrong I love whitefish but I think it is an insult to the trout family to include them.
I can imagine the processes they go through to decide to chase something. Here the are swimming along and they see something “what’s that” and they turn up at it. I think they are humming “doe dee doe doe doe” Then they head up at full speed and somewhere along the way they forget what they were after. They turn down and then öh ya that thing up there” and they turn back up again. Something else gets their attention and they get distracted and forget about the bait. The ones you actually catch high in the water column are the ones that don’t know how to stop. They are bottom feeders because if there is something to eat in front of them they won’t forget to eat it or get distracted.
When I fish whitefish its normally in shallow water and I fish with perch baits and rarely lose one. But when I run across them in my trout spots I just use the same baits, maybe go to a white tube. When whitefish hit a bait they don’t even know which way to swim to get away. The ones I’ve been getting always seem to be swimming at me and since they don’t keep their mouths shut when the eat (boy would they hear it from my mother) I lose them after a few seconds. These Whytefish are driving me nuts. One day I’ll have to go out and target nothing else but whitefish because as stupid as they are they seem to outsmart me."
