Whitefish
Whitefish in BC lakes
The fish most BC anglers catch by accident and almost nobody drives out for. Several species under one name, native, widespread, and the best ice fishing target in the province on the lakes that are open to it.
Telling it apart
Silver, nearly spotless, small pointed head and a mouth so small and low set that it looks wrong on the fish. That mouth is the identification. Against a kokanee: the kokanee has the larger mouth, the deeper body and, in autumn, the red spawning colour a whitefish never gets. Mountain whitefish is the one in most of the province, lake whitefish the bigger northern and eastern one.
Where it is
Across the province, and under reported everywhere. The Province's observation records name whitefish in a long list of lakes where nobody targets them, so the count below is a floor rather than a map of good water.
The Province does not file this fish under one name. These are its own labels, with the lakes carrying each, and every one of them is counted on this page. A lake can carry more than one of these, so the rows add up to more than the 290 lakes on this page.
- Mountain Whitefish227
- Lake Whitefish114
- Whitefish (General)75
- Pygmy Whitefish38
- Round Whitefish14
- Giant Pygmy Whitefish2
- Whitefish1
- Broad Whitefish1
| Region | Lakes | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Omineca | 84 | 29% |
| Skeena | 58 | 20% |
| Cariboo | 50 | 17% |
| Thompson-Nicola | 33 | 11% |
| Kootenays | 23 | 8% |
| Okanagan | 14 | 5% |
| Lower Mainland | 14 | 5% |
| Peace | 13 | 4% |
| Vancouver Island | 1 | 0% |
How to fish for it
Small and deep. That tiny mouth means a small hook, and the fish feed on bottom invertebrates, so the presentation is a nymph, a small jig or a single egg held just off the bottom and barely moved. They school thickly in winter and they stay active under ice when the trout have gone quiet, which is where their reputation is earned. They bite softly and most takes are missed by anglers waiting for a trout.
Of the lakes on this page, 10 are catch and release water. That is a signal rather than a rule: what you may keep is in the Province's Synopsis, and the licence page explains where to read it.
What these numbers are, and are not
The lake counts on this page come from the Province's fish observation records, plus angling reports where we hold them. An observation record says a fish was seen in that water on some date, and those dates run from this year back to the middle of the last century. A lake can appear here and no longer hold the fish, and a lake can hold it and never have been surveyed. Every lake page prints the year behind its own list, which is the honest version of this page's count.
The weights are reported figures, from guidebooks, from the Province and from anglers, gathered as each lake was researched. They are not official records and we do not claim they are.
Open the map: 1,843 BC lakes, each with a seven day forecast
Where to go next
- Every species in the atlas, with the lake count behind each.
- The trout and char of BC lakes, which tells all of them apart in one read.
- The licence and the rules, before you keep anything.