Mountain whitefish have saved my butt more times than I can count. In the dog days of summer, when the sun is high and scorching through cloudless skies, and trout are either passing the time hiding in deep shadows or as nervous and tightly wound as a Doberman on amphetamines, and my guide client, despite hours of patient instruction, still believes a fly rod is a bullwhip, whitefish can mean the difference between the stink of a skunk or a big grin and the wonderful smell of fish slime all over your friend’s brand new industry-approved fly-fishing shirt.
Whitefish seldom develop lockjaw, are indiscriminate feeders, and don’t generally require the precision plating a trout demands of its meal. Whitefish can and do fight hard. Pound for pound, I’ll pit a whitefish against any brook trout and most cutthroats I’ve ever caught. Whitefish might not win any beauty pageants, but they are the kissing cousins of grayling and frequently develop the same delicate iridescence of its famously fan-finned relative. You might have to search for the beauty in a whitefish, but it’s there, if only you can ignore that goofy, rubber-lipped mouth pasted to its chin.
In waters where whitefish are found, they are often the natives, while most, if not all, other game fish exist in their presence only by the grace of man. Whitefish are salmonids, and like trout, char, salmon, steelhead, and grayling, they require fresh, cool, and very clean water to survive. Their existence is a testimony to high-quality water, and they are an indicator species that heralds the presence of mayflies, stoneflies, caddisflies, and other so-called trout food. In many waters, whitefish were eating these things long before trout arrived on the scene, and almost any trout fly imitating a local insect will catch them. Whitefish have relatively small mouths, so smaller bugs are better received. Their lips are very soft and delicate, so one must be deft and graceful to bring a whitefish to hand successfully. Actually, bringing a whitefish to net is the preferred method of landing these fish, due to their generous layer of protective slime and slippery scales.
Most often, whitefish hug the bottom of the lakes and rivers in which they dwell, and their funny-looking mouths are perfectly designed for hoovering bugs from among the cobbles, weed roots, and silt. Their lips are studded with taste buds that can distinguish a stone from a stonefly without even looking. They are not so good at eating bugs on the water’s surface, though.
Don Thomas wrote the famous and excellent book Whitefish Can’t Jump. Unfortunately, he left an entire generation with the notion that whitefish really can’t jump. They jump, but like Fosbury and his flop, they don’t exhibit the grace of a trout. Watching a pod of whitefish making spastic rises to a slick of Pale Morning Duns is like watching a group of third-graders running a 50-yard dash in size 12 rubber rain boots. Sometimes a whitefish will poke its head out of the water just high enough to allow its underslung mouth to reach the surface film, then it will slide back underwater like a spyhopping whale. At times they will roll on their sides to slurp surface bugs, and at other times they will actually jump and clear the water entirely to catch an insect. The reentries can be comical as they land on their sides, on their backs, or on their bellies. “Sloppy risers” describes them perfectly, and when a mixed pod of trout and whities are rising, you can easily decide which one to cast to if you want to avoid the trout.
In many waters across their range of northwestern North America, whitefish numbers are in decline. No one really understands why, and even fewer have spent much effort trying to glean the answers. Whitefish Unlimited has yet to be invented, and until whitefish can develop a constituency, it is not realistic to expect the relevant agencies to expend much of their limited time, energy, and resources on in-depth studies and possible solutions. Dams, water diversions, and f low manipulations rarely, if ever, have helped native species that have evolved over thousands of years around an entirely different hydrograph.
Whitefish are susceptible to whirling disease, which immigrated from Europe, and mortality is high among fry when large numbers of the parasites are present. Whitefish also become increasingly susceptible to whirling disease and other maladies as water temperatures rise. Despite vested interests that claim climate change is an international conspiracy designed to make the United States a Third World country, whitefish don’t know any better, can’t vote for their environment, and are left to deal with waters that are undeniably warming as we devote our attention to the latest crises of Caitlyn and the Kardashians.
Invasive species are opportunistic by definition and can take a toll on natives. Crayfish introduced into whitefish habitat have had a marked impact on the native fish by preying on their eggs and larvae. The truth is, in most instances, whitefish are dying the death of a thousand cuts, and pointing the finger at any single cause is simplistic, at best.
In the Truckee River, whitefish were a vital constituent of the hunting-and-gathering cycle of the Washoe Indians. In the spring, huge numbers of Lahontan cutthroats would make themselves vulnerable during their spawning runs, and the Washoe would club, spear, and even catch them by hand. After a long winter, the cutthroat run was a bellwether of spring and the seasons of bounty. In the fall, aggregations of whitefish would mass in the Truckee’s pools, where the males and females would loose sperm and eggs to the mercy of the current. The fortunate fertilized eggs would fall from the drift into protective cracks in the bedrock or under boulders, where they would develop throughout the winter. Meanwhile, the spawning adults were harvested by the Washoe and dried in preparation for the long winter ahead. It would be months before the next pulse of protein would enter their larders. Whitefish were as much a necessity for our Western Native Americans as Grocery Outlet market stores are for us today.
For thousands of years, the Washoe relished the flesh of the whitefish. It isn’t any less flavorful today. The first time I ate whitefish was with Bill and Kate Howe on the East Walker River around 1980. It was a cold, snowy, blustery midwinter day, and whitefish were far more active than their introduced rainbow and brown trout counterparts. Near late morning, Kate suggested we harvest a few whitefish for lunch. She filleted and skinned them, drizzled the flesh with white wine from a jug, squirted lemon juice, added salt and a dollop of butter, then wrapped the fillets in foil and tossed them into the fire we had built to warm ourselves. As the juices hissed and sizzled, we grew less and less interested in trying to coax trout from the freezing river and instead drank the remaining wine, heated our hands over the fire, then finally peeled the firm, sweet, hot chunks of whitefish from the foil and extolled the virtues of this wonderful beast.
