Anybody every fish Soda Lake for the whitefish that gang up there in the late winter/early spring? Keith.... I have you in mind when I ask that question.

I tried it once years ago and must have been there at the wrong time, or was using the wrong method as I didn't get a bite. But, no one else there did either.

If anyone's fished it and wanted to talk about it, we could either do it on or off line.

I have fished for the whitefish,at the inlet to Soda lake. I havn't done it in a few yrs,cause I got tired of watching all the snaggers. They figure the fish won't bite so they cast big lead jigs and rip it thru the schools. It took me a couple tries to figure out how to hook em'. I had my best luck,with a small wedding ring spinner,and some worm. The best color was chartruese,with a silver blade.Cast out and slowly retreive along the bottom,watch out cause you'll lose some spinners.
I also caught some on a set-up similar to drift fishing for steelhead. Go up the inlet 20-30yds and drift a couple salmon eggs thru the inlet into the lake.

If you decide to take a couple home to eat,watch out cause they are really bony. They have a good flavor,but IMHO they aren't worth mesing with,I just catch and release.

OK, bubba-- Here's what I know. In the spring and fall, the lake whitefish will come out of the depths of Soda and head toward current. You'll find them mostly where the canal dumps into the lake. If you're in a boat, try jigging with a Swedish Pimple or a jigging spoon. Considering the size of the fish, the spoon doesn't have to be too small, but if the water is down, small is better.

From a boat, just vertically jig as if you're ice fishing. you can tip the Pimple with bait-- maggots are probably best, but nightcrawler chunks will work or maybe eveen a single salmon egg-- and the biggest difficulty is finding the schools.

From the bank, you can do well fishing a balanced float and either an ice-fly type of spoon, crappie jig or probably just a hook with bait. Although I haven't tried the last. You can also fish up into the canal to intercept the fish, but be careful, because you might end up hooking nasty trout or walleyes instead of whitey.

If the fish aren't there or aren't biting, I'd head up the canal if on foot, or if in a boat, I'd use my electronics to find schools of fish in the upper end of the lake and jig those. A jigging spoon will catch all you want, but here again you need to be careful as lake whitefish are very strong and will do their best to pull you out of the boat.

Having said all this, I should point out that lake whitefish are all through the system from the Canadian border down, so anywhere you find current in the spring and where there is blocked passage, i.e. a dam, you should find whitefish. For instance, you should be able to find whitefish in the Crab Creek channel in the Potholes, which means that you should be able to catch some at the dam on the south end of Moses.

Looking at this, I see that I haven't mentioned the possibility of fly fishing for them, but I would expect that at the mouth of the canal in Soda you could do well with a sink tip and some kind of fly. I'm thinking a small, bright streamer or flash fly might work or a Zonker or a nymph, or... They'd be a hoot on a fly rod.

Good luck.

HbP - Whitefish lend themselves better for smoking instead of traditional fish recipes. I've had lots of river whitefish (which are smaller than lake whitefish) and the best way for them was to catch a bunch... and brine them for smoking. It's lots easier to separate out the bones that way.

Just had a thought and wondered if this would work for shad too...

Also would think that certain slow cooked shad recipes would work for whitefish. The slow cooked shad recipes were to soften up the many bones in shad. I think shad have even more bones than whitefish.

Zen,
Would you use a brine,similar to one for salmon or steelhead?

HBP, It's been a couple of years since I last kept whitefish (but have plans for this weekend), but as my memory goes I used the exact same brine for whitefish that I did for trout and salmon. I did make changes to the length of brining time because I was putting in whole fish and not fillets or steaks. I also had to juggle around the smoking times as not all the whitefish were the same length and also variations because of shelf location (top, middle, bottom).

Results after smoking were very satisfactory as the bones would just "zip" out.

The smoking time is key as one time I made a bunch of "whitefish darts". They were overdried in the smoker.

The lake whitefish smoke very well. In fact, if I didn't have salmon, I would be tempted to make a couple of runs a year for whiteys from the Columbia system.

As for your ideas on shad/whitefish-- you might have something, Zen, with the slow-cooking idea. However, the lake whitefish I've kept were pretty oily, probably why they were great smoked. Don't know how they would be cooked fresh. The flip side of that is in the Midwest, folks hold fish boils where they cook massive quantities of lake whitefish as well as the assorted veggies that go with the boil. So the whitefish can't be too bad.

You've got me thinking about smoking shad as well. I've been doing a bit of research after the AP ran that warning about parasites in the Puget Sound shad. It seems the Snohomish has some shad, according the WDFW, but the Columbia is still the mother lode. May have to travel down there as the shad we have are the species that was named "delicious" as part of its scientific name.

Keith

Keith - some guys on another board I'm on trade trips. I offered to trade some fly fishing trips to eastern WA lakes and was to receive a fly fishing salmon trip and another that was a combo shad/sturgeon trip.

The sturgeon guy would fish for shad and then when he had enough, use them for bait for sturgeon. Said he was able to use whole shad for some jumbo sturgeon. I wasn't able to make the trip last year because of home projects... also I told him I'd be perfectly happy just fishing for "bait". He's got a good sturgeon spots over on the Columbia below one of the dams. Said it's real good for shad too right there.

I used to live on the east coast and fished light tackle shad in the rivers there. Always wished I could do it again. American shad are lots bigger than Hickory shad and should be lots more fun. I used to target the Hickory runs back there.

Shad roe was very tasty once the concept of eating fish eggs was gotten past. This was in the early 70's and I was more finicky then than now. I consider squid excellent fare now... and back then it was just stinky flounder bait.

heard that whitefish also pickle up real well.

Only thing I know that pickles good is asparagus.

One year I pickled up some trout and found out I didn't care for it. Previously tried herring and salmon. The salmon was tolerable.. and the trout was the same. Had to eat three jars of it. Did. Haven't had the urge to do that again.

We hit the mother lode of trout that year at a lake up in BC. It was 3 pounders on every cast. After a while we started testing out different lures to see what they wouldn't bite on. They hit just about every fly in the box and also would even take little black rubber jigs off the bottom. Never did find out what bug was emerging that they were so hot on. Must have been a very active bug as they hit were like sledgehammers and threatened to yank the rod out of our hands.

Nope... no pickled whitefish... not this year.

Did get to try trout sandwiches made just like tuna sandwiches... tuna is better.