April 8th Whitefish, Fishing during the eclipse

Got out yesterday for some solar eclipse fishing targeting whitefish. We weren't certain the effect it would have on the fish however the weather was stable enough with mostly low winds for the day. After Nicholas' productive outing on Sunday we were keen to get out and try for ourselves. We set up at the end of a deep basin working our way along a drop off from 30' into 90'. Fish were scattered along the break, most occupying the bottom third of the water column. Our first fish was caught in 40' over 55' of water.

My first open water whitefish, a smaller one:



The whitefish seemed to be spread out so we continued moving in search of larger schools to get on top of. The behaviour of the fish throughout the day was odd. Some would move towards us aggressively only to stop just short of biting. Others would slowly rise to our level and stay there unmoved by anything we did. Mixed in with the whitefish were two lake trout in the slot that we both thought were whitefish on the way up.

We did eventually land two smaller whitefish before we started to lose light from the oncoming eclipse.



Nicholas joined along with his son just before the total eclipse. Right as he arrived in his boat we had a quick doubleheader on two larger whitefish. Maybe it was the eclipse, or maybe Nick pushed them towards us. Either way, we were relieved to have landed a few larger ones after several missed hook sets and uninterested marks on the sonar.



My friend's whitefish, the largest on the day at 22 inches:



About 30 minutes after the eclipse had completed, Nicholas landed a quick whitefish himself:



Overall it was an interesting day of fishing but we did manage to fill the cooler with five whitefish and you can't complain coming home with fresh fish.

Nice fish and beautiful weather yesterday. I love fishing flat water in the spring and fall. When the bugs come it's time for a nice breeze around 10 to 15kph.

Can't beat fresh fish way to go

some nice fish and it looked like a great day on the water

Nice post! Sounds like a great day,while some of us unfortunately had to work....

Great job Mike. Looks like you got the report posting format down - nice work.

When the bugs come, the whitefish will be on the surface eating bugs and more difficult to jig for, on these days a stiff breeze pushes them back down and makes jigging them way easier. When the water is like glass they will be jumping all around the boat but very difficult to catch. The windier the better when those bugs come out.

I’ll have to get a lesson on that formatting as well!

Nice catch!

Thanks Joe, starting to get the hang of it. Definitely becomes an easier process once you’ve gone through it a couple times.

When the bugs come, the whitefish will be on the surface eating bugs and more difficult to jig for, on these days a stiff breeze pushes them back down and makes jigging them way easier. When the water is like glass they will be jumping all around the boat but very difficult to catch. The windier the better when those bugs come out.

Might have to consider bringing my fly rod and strip some flies during the hatch!

Nice. Love those smaller whites to eat.
Interesting about the bug hatch and whitey behaviour. Mike, I would really like to hear how you do with flies if you run into that situation.
Wasn't able to get out during the eclipse....it was too dark outside