The Mountain Whitefish, aka Short Fin Grayling thread

I'll be making note about stream conditions and date. Time to pause the fishing for a bit. Got a couple, but I left after this one. This guy had such beautiful subtle colors that just don't show with one photo, but he let me know how much he enjoyed being caught by .......... well, you know, spawning time. Time to let 'em be for a while to make more.
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Low, crystal clear, cold enough for shore ice.
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I'm gonna get one of those whitefish stickers for the car :)
 
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clarkman said:
I shoulda taken a pic of a foul hooked whitey from yesterday. Imagine the largest gut circumference ever on a whitefish and you'd understand why he (or she) was foul hooked there. It was actually pretty comical.
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And hard to pull in…
 
I couldn't even begin to get my hand around this fatty... Pushing 20" Just sat on the bottom like a dead log.
I alwasy catch them on sz14-16 perdigons. Usually a 3.8mm tungsten bead, blue body, maybe a pink hotspot or short pink tail. Usually faster, deeper pools. Sometimes just tossed straight in to random whitewater hail mary kinda stuff...
My wife is annoyed i never bring home fish... Now that i hear these are good smokers i just might bring some of the bigger ones home to toss on the green egg.

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mattsavage said:
I couldn't even begin to get my hand around this fatty... Pushing 20" Just sat on the bottom like a dead log.
I alwasy catch them on sz14-16 perdigons. Usually a 3.8mm tungsten bead, blue body, maybe a pink hotspot or short pink tail. Usually faster, deeper pools. Sometimes just tossed straight in to random whitewater hail mary kinda stuff...
My wife is annoyed i never bring home fish... Now that i hear these are good smokers i just might bring some of the bigger ones home to toss on the green egg.

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Youre def invited to the club with that hog
 
I like big guts and I cannot lie.....

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I need some. I felt a lot of tugs today yet I was disappointed each time a trout showed up instead of a whitefish.:(
 
Tom Butler said:
I need some. I felt a lot of tugs today yet I was disappointed each time a trout showed up instead of a whitefish.:(
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In fairness, yesterday was a over 50/50 whitefish/redside. I just don't really take all that many pics of trout (or even the whitefish) any more unless it's too small, too big, too absurd in some manner, or too colorful....guess that leaves a lot of doors open.
 
A friend and I were fishing a trib to the Yellowstone this fall, and I caught a couple whitefish while swinging streamers on a sink tip... obviously not targeting whitefish, but was a humorous way to catch them. We caught a few bigger ones on nymphs, but this one got its picture taken because it was such a mean streamer eater!

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One time I broke a rod tip while landing a whitefish. While I’m fully aware it was user error, it’s still fun to say I broke a rod landing a whitefish.
 
One of the best days of fishing in my entire life involved nothing but whitefish. My good friend and I fished a tributary of the Big Hole over 4th of July 2019. Green drakes and yellow sallies were everywhere. I missed quite a few fish on the drake pattern, thinking these were large brook trout. Once a #14 yellow Sally with no hackle was on my line, the dry fly action was non-stop. Between me and my buddy, we caught about 50 fish that day, before a thunderstorm chased us back to the car. The beer at the bar in Wise River tasted great that evening.
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