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Mountain Whitefish - wont' bite?

westbranch

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Joined
Sep 11, 2017
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Location
ID Panhandle
I saw some big schools of mountain whitefish this past fall when trout fishing and tried to get them to bite on a few different things and had no responses. Even a small jig tipped with maggots. It sounds like they bite better in the winter, so hopefully get out in the next couple weekends to try again. I am thinking I will try some of the baited jigs again and maybe buy a couple nymphs to rig up on my spinning rod to float through some of the holes I found them in. Hoping to get some for the smoker.

I see articles that talk about catching a couple whitefish for every trout caught, which has not been my experience at all. I was trying to keep those cutthroats off my hook ;) Any tips from someone with more experience?
 
I used to catch a lot of whitefish on a jighead tipped with green Berkley 1” crawfish.
 
Where I fish a lot in Oregon, it’s hard to keep the whiteys off a size 16 or 18 bead head prince nymph.
 
Caught and smoked hundreds when I lived in Missoula. My experience targeting whitefish is really limited to a few stretches of one river and was primarily a summer/fall thing but this was my methodology:

Find a hole
Sink a worm to the bottom
Put beer on hand
Repeat

If I recall, after Dec 1 the river became artificial lure/maggots only and it was more difficult, but I’d load a hook up with maggots and sink those and have success.

Hope ya catch a pile. They are under appreciated.
 
We use to fish for them in the winter use a little fly made out of peacock hearl with a couple maggots on it . Would use a slip bobber setup and try and drift through holes setting the depth so was just bouncing bottom with a sinker a couple inches below the fly.
 
Caught and smoked hundreds when I lived in Missoula. My experience targeting whitefish is really limited to a few stretches of one river and was primarily a summer/fall thing but this was my methodology:

Find a hole
Sink a worm to the bottom
Put beer on hand
Repeat

If I recall, after Dec 1 the river became artificial lure/maggots only and it was more difficult, but I’d load a hook up with maggots and sink those and have success.

Hope ya catch a pile. They are under appreciated.

Sounds like my kind of fishin.
 
Thanks for the tips! Fishing plans were put on hold due to injury. But I might try to limp out to the riverbank on a Sunday afternoon in March. I swear the one hole I was looking at last October had 100+ fish in it.
 
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