Anyway, My Dad called Sunday morning. They didn't get perching on Saturday, but got an 18" & 29" eye before dark. The 18 went toward the Man Food supply & Dad's partner put back the 29 for you to play with. Said both fish fought like pike.
They fished east of the west end island. No action on cranks. Drifted & cast into the wind with 1/8th & 1/4 oz jigs with white 2" & 3" twister tails tipped with leeches. I guess the 29 came on a split/double tail body.
I'll post a soon as I hear more.
Well our 2016 trip is in the books. Perch were hard to find until day 4. Pretty much they were in shallow water by weeds. 4-5 ft. of water was the average. We only fished from come by chance and west. Lots of walleyes, lots of northern out there. No monsters but a few 12 inch perch. Kept them from 8-12 inchers. Our group of 4 got our limit but the group of 11 were struggling when we left this morning. We had lots of fun and the weather was pretty good. Good luck, let me hear what was going on up there.
I'll report when I get back. I know a crew just came back today and had good luck. I know of a crew of 11 leaving tomorrow and coming home same day we leave. They call us to let us know how it went. I also know of another crew of 11 going the same week I am. Should be interesting if there are any fish left.
Have not fished this lake in 8 or 9 years but here is what I remember. Small white jigs with small piece of crawler was the best bait for us. Caught perch most everywhere we went. One year fishing was great and it was is easy fishing. Went a year or two later and it was dead there. We ended up going over to Arrow Lake and cleaning house on bass. It was non-stop action on chartreuse jigs. We also caught one 24 inch eye there. We ended up going there and unloading at Ryan's Resort I think.
We fished West end of Whitefish on weed edges and never had much of a problem. When we were there the barometric pressure was whacky and fish were just not interested. We also fished the East dide between the island and caught many fish there one day.
Easy lake to fisn/navigate. If bored, go to Arrow, beautiful deep/clear lake.
Enjoy your trip.
Thanks for your input and comments sniper. No I didn't get there yet. Leaving the 30th of july. Glad to finally hear from someone about this lake. This will be our third trip in the summer and hope for a descent perch bite. We go the same week in the summer and walleye never disappoint us. We usually fish 8 or 10 ft of water early in the morning 2 hours and just before dark a hour or two. Have not caught anything bigger than 26 inch. During the day we perch fish. Perch fishing is alright but size is down and a lot harder to get a limit. Usually always nice weather and nice to be on vacation, but I think this will be our last trip for awhile. I think you are right about getting fished hard and the cormorants. I never got to go when it was really good fishing years ago, wish I did. I think it needs a time for regrowth. We never tried for northern but would like to. Hope to hear from more people about this lake. Thanks, good luck to all fishermen and women.
Well Peanut, did you make it up there yet? I was on Whitefish and some of the surrounding lakes this past week. I'll be interested to see how you guys do. We have a group that's been fishing the lake for the past 25 years or so. We've always fished walleyes, but remember the years of the huge perch armadas. We used to catch a fair number of incidental perch throwing crankbaits, but that hasn't happened recently. We did catch a few, but they were on the small side. We did talk to a few guys who said they did "ok" on perch earlier, but the size wasn't that great. The lake has obviously changed and probably for a lot of reasons. It did get pounded by a lot of greedy fisherman. The huge flocks of cormorants and the increasing numbers of northerns obviously doesn't help. There's also the talk of a significant winter kill during that nasty one a few years ago. Our walleye success has changed as well. I know a person tends to remember the good days, but years ago it wasn't uncommon for us to have 100 plus walleyes per boat. We also had quite a few upper 20's mixed in each year (all released). This year our good days were 20 plus fish per boat and fewer big ones. The average size was nice (17-21 inches), but very few smaller ones as well. That's a little scary too. We've always logged our number of fish over 24 inches and this was one of our worst years. We didn't have the most stable weather, but the consensus in our group is that there just isn't the number of fish there used to be (perch and walleyes). The lake is very fertile, so hopefully it can bounce back.
