Lake Whitefish Fishing on Lake Michigan

The bay that changed the fishery

Most Great Lakes whitefish fishing is an ice fishery, because most of the places whitefish live in winter are only reachable when the surface is solid. Grand Traverse Bay broke that rule. It is deep, protected from the open lake by the Leelanau Peninsula, and it holds whitefish on flats and drop-offs that a boat can work all winter in a year with no ice — and in October, November, March and April in every year.

The result is that Traverse City has a whitefish fishery that runs six or seven months instead of eight weeks, and a generation of anglers who learned to jig them in 90 feet of open water from a boat.

Deeper than Huron, shallower than nothing

Lake Michigan whitefish use deeper water than the Les Cheneaux fish do — 60 to 120 feet from a boat is normal in Grand Traverse Bay, and 30 to 80 feet through the ice. That depth argues for heavier lures (1/2 to 1 ounce), braided line for feel and hookset, and a graph that can actually resolve a fish two feet off bottom at 100 feet.

The West Arm of Grand Traverse Bay exceeds 600 feet. Ignore that number. The fish are on the flats and the breaks, in the depths listed above, and a boat that follows the contour will find them.

The northern bays

Big Bay de Noc and Little Bay de Noc at the top of Green Bay are the other significant Lake Michigan whitefish water. They are shallower and more protected, make reliable ice, and hold whitefish alongside walleye and perch — the sort of place you can catch three species in an afternoon. Wisconsin’s Door Peninsula and Sturgeon Bay carry a fall reef movement and a winter fishery on the Green Bay side.

Little Traverse Bay at Petoskey is essentially a smaller Grand Traverse and fishes the same way.

The stop is the technique

Repeat this until it is automatic: lift, then stop. Whitefish come to the flash of a rising lure and eat it when it stops moving. On a graph or a flasher you will watch a mark climb off bottom and stall three feet below the spoon. That stall is the moment. Hold absolutely still. If the mark sinks back, one small lift resets it.

Tip the spoon with a waxworm, spikes or a minnow head. Whitefish have small, soft, downward-facing mouths and they inhale rather than strike. A soft rod tip and a light drag save more fish at the hole than any hookset does.

A changing food base

Quagga mussels reorganized Lake Michigan’s bottom, stripping the plankton and crushing the Diporeia amphipod population that whitefish historically ate. Growth rates in parts of the lake declined as a result, and the fish have shifted toward round goby and other prey. Practical effect for an angler: whitefish are more willing to eat a minnow-profile bait than the invertebrate-feeding fish of thirty years ago were, and a small jigging minnow bait is a legitimate first choice alongside a spoon.

Ice and water sense

Grand Traverse Bay makes ice in the bays and arms but not dependably in the middle, and it can go out fast in a warm wind. The Bays de Noc are more reliable. Wherever you fish, carry picks, check local reports, and treat pressure cracks and current areas as unknown regardless of how thick the ice is elsewhere. From a boat in November, the hazards are simpler and no less serious: 45-degree water, short daylight, and wind that comes up while you are anchored on a school.