June Weather might have adversely affected the Whitefish Bite on Flathead Lake
By Kelsey

Posted: July 15, 2012

The Captain recieved an email from Jim Vashro FWP’s Fisheries Manager for Flathead Lake back in May explaining how the Whitefish Bite on Flathead Lake was promising. Cap recently received an new one explaining that due to the weather, the Whitefish bite on Flathead Lake isn’t as good as he had hoped for. Read Jim’s email below.

 

“I see you quoted me on lake whitefish. Now, the rest of the story. I optimistically wrote that in May. Then June turned horrible. My concern is that I still think we got a decent perch hatch. But June was cold with lots of high flows and turbidity moving through the lake. That could have seriously delayed zooplankton development. Small perch don’t have any fat reserves so they could starve to death in pretty short order. So, I’m still hopeful but not as much. Keep your fingers crossed, we’ll know in a couple of weeks.

Fishing has been very slow on the north end of Flathead. Fishermen were reporting seeing lots of fish on the finder but nothing was biting. Charter captains were getting skunked and fishing wasn’t a lot better on the south end.

Wednesday was a very hot bite off the delta. Boats were catching dozens of 2-6 pound lake trout with a few slot fish. I went out Thursday morning so, of course, the bite was off. Barometric pressure dropped, the fish were real neutral. We caught 5, lost 3 others. Downrigging 40’ down over 100’-160‘ seemed to be the best. Most action was off the southeast corner of the delta, just look for the pack of boats.”

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