It’s been a few years since I deliberately fished for winter whitefish.
The last time, I joined some friends at a café in Darby for a late breakfast. The object was to fuel ourselves up with enough calories to withstand a chilly afternoon on the river, where we planned to catch a mess of whitefish.
After that, the plan was to cook a few for an early dinner according to one of Mike’s all-time-great whitefish recipes (he’s a great cook) and if enough were left over, to smoke them. Who would do the smoking was uncertain. Both Jim and Mike are great hands with the smoker.
My contribution to the day, as it were, was to supply the flies. My payback would come later in the form of some delicious whitefish – grilled filets or smoked.
As things turned out that day I had to leave early, right after Mike and Jim spilled their newly-tied flies out on the breakfast table and we talked about how each one might be rigged in a one or two-fly system, where to set the indicator, and so on. They expressed their regrets that I couldn’t join them; I finished my coffee and left.
Smoked whitefish were a sought-after delicacy in the Marcus Daly era. The miners in Butte could make a meal of one along with a chunk of good hard-tack bread and a tall beer.
Those miners were reputed to pay up to one dollar apiece, daily wages for other workingmen, for a smoked Bitterroot whitefish.
The Butte miners made a lot of money during that era, and the cost of living in Butte was correspondingly high. The company store got back a big piece of what the miners made, and the rest was spent on other things.
Some of it went for smoked whitefish.
Tales are told that when the road over Skalkaho Pass opened in the spring, loads of 200 or more smoked whitefish went out of the valley over Skalkaho Pass to Butte.
Whitefish do well in icy cold winter water. They tend to gather in marginal trout habitat, the slow-moving lower thirds of pools and deep slow eddies. They’re easy to target if you’re fishing for them.
During winter, they don’t go off their feed as much as a trout would. They’ll take small red midge larvae patterns regularly. My most popular old-time whitefish fly consisted of nothing more than fluorescent red thread and a few wraps of ostrich herl on a small dry fly hook.
They’ll also take small red Copper Johns, and just about any small mayfly nymph with a bright bead up front.
When the water is cold, their flesh is firm. They tend to get soft when the water is warm, but the smaller fish taken in summer do well in the pan when fried briefly over high heat. Mustn’t overcook.
And please, please, don’t toss them on the bank if you happen to catch one accidentally. They’re natives that benefit the ecosystem, not trash fish. And on some days for the fly fisherman in late summer, they’re the only game in town.
When the barometer is high or on a steady rise in the winter, the whitefish will feed.
I use my longest rod, a ten-footer with a delicate tip that I usually use at Georgetown Lake. It does well for whitefish, or summer nymphing on the Big Hole.
You don’t see many of the Bitterroot’s old-time white fishermen these days. They used to fish together in small groups at favorite runs, build warming fires and fish with 16’ long telescoping green fiberglass poles. They’d bait their flies with maggots that they held in their mouths to keep them from freezing.
If you’re not up for a pinch of maggots between your cheek and gums, you can still rig up for whitefish: Don’t add extra weight if you can get by without it, and use only as much indicator as necessary. The valley’s old-time whitefish fishermen preferred porcupine quill floats. In place of the quill (no longer available) use a small tuft of wool or poly knotted into the leader.
That’s how Mike and Jim were equipped to fish on the day I couldn’t join them. Just as they started fishing the barometer dropped like a sack of bricks when a sudden storm moved in.
They told me later how the conditions tanked, and they got skunked. I was relieved that they didn’t blame it on my flies.
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