Just Under the Ice

When the shallow bays look like farm fields, what do you do but bore a hole in the ice and while away the time catching perch? That's what most of us do, but a few innovative fishermen go after the larger, and yes, tastier, lake whitefish seen in this photograph of young Hunter Hendrix showing off his Dad's fresh winter catch.

Long-time North Idaho fisherman, George Hendrix, caught these in early February fishing a large flat of ice over the shallows off Sunnyside on the east end of Pend d'Oreille Bay, Lake Pend Oreille.

The bay, full of perch that time of year, retains the original French spelling, though history has dropped the small-case d' in favor of simpler spelling from North Idaho's now famous and certainly largest natural body of water, Lake Pend Oreille. Despite the fact that Lake Pend Oreille has a dam down river at Albani Falls, just east of the Washington State line, it still qualifies as a natural lake because the dam serves to regulate the potential of flooding while generating a significant amount of energy for the Pacific Northwest.

These whitefish are Lake Superiors, planted in Lake Pend Oreille in the early 1900s as a food fish. For the most part, they inhabit deep water and are seldom sought by area fishermen. They are larger than the more common Mountain Whitefish which also inhabit this lake system. Though these fish are roughly a pound to a pound and a half, many will gain weight to five or six pounds and for the most part inhabit depths of 90-feet or greater. In the winter and spring, however, as George has learned, they come into the shallower waters to feed on the large mayfly nymph known to trout fishermen in this bay. These whitefish were "stuffed, literally stuffed" according to George who saved a few samples for the record. The nymph lying next to this pencil was one taken from the stomach of one of these whitefish.

George told me he caught the whitefish "jigging hard and fast just three inches below the ice cover." Thanks, George, for showing us this incredible food fish can be caught when the winter months are dragging on.

### Dwayne K. Parsons