Minnesota Lake Depths

Salmon family

Lake whitefish

Coregonus clupeaformis · also called humpback

Native to MinnesotaRecorded in 43 Minnesota lakes
Illustration of a lake whitefish in side view
AI-generated illustration, not a photograph and not to scale.
Spawns
Fall, mid-October to early December, at night over gravel and rock below 45°F
Eats
Young fish eat zooplankton; adults take scuds, snails, clams, midge larvae, opossum shrimp and small fish
Needs
Cool, well-oxygenated water in summer
Found in
Lake Superior and many deep, cool lakes of northern Minnesota
Minnesota record
13 lb 9 oz, 29½ in — Lake of the Woods, Lake of the Woods County, 2019

Where lake whitefish have been recorded

43 of the 1,788 Minnesota lakes on this site with fish records list lake whitefish, across 8 counties. Tap a dot to open that lake’s depth map.

Leech Lake (Main Basin), Cass CountyEast Vermilion Lake, St. Louis CountyNamakan Lake, St. Louis CountyKabetogama Lake, St. Louis CountyCass Lake, Beltrami CountyWest Vermilion Lake, St. Louis CountySand Point Lake, St. Louis CountyLower Whitefish Lake, Crow Wing CountyBurntside Lake, St. Louis CountyRainy Lake, St. Louis CountyTenmile Lake, Cass CountyDeer Lake, Itasca CountyBall Club Lake, Itasca CountyLoon Lake, St. Louis CountyKabekona Lake, Hubbard CountyTurtle Lake, Itasca CountyGreenwood Lake, Cook CountyDevil Track Lake, Cook CountyTurtle River Lake, Beltrami CountyCross Lake Reservoir, Crow Wing CountyJohnson Lake, St. Louis CountyElbow Lake, St. Louis CountyPerent Lake, Lake CountyAlice Lake, Lake CountyBig Trout Lake, Crow Wing CountyIsabella Lake, Lake CountySilver Island Lake, Lake CountyOttertrack Lake, Lake CountyLeech Lake (Kabekona Bay), Cass CountyPike Lake, Cook CountyPoplar Lake, Cook CountyRush Lake, Crow Wing CountyLower Hay Lake, Crow Wing CountyWindy Lake, Lake CountyTom Lake, Cook CountyMcFarland Lake, Cook CountyGaskin Lake, Cook CountyBertha Lake, Crow Wing CountyHatch Lake, Itasca CountySpring Lake, St. Louis CountyClamshell Lake, Crow Wing CountyIsland Lake, Crow Wing CountyPig Lake, Crow Wing County

Recorded here Other lakes with fish records

How we know

  • 42lakes where a DNR fisheries survey caught them
  • 3lakes the DNR has stocked since 2016; 1 of them are listed on that stocking alone

A lake can appear in more than one line. A lake that isn’t listed may still have them: records exist only where someone caught, netted or stocked them.

Inland lakes on this list run from 182 to 102,081 acres (median 1,702) and from 15 to 200 ft deep (median 75 ft).

How many turn up in DNR surveys

Minnesota DNR lake surveys use standard gear: gill nets set offshore for 24 hours (the main gear for walleye, northern pike, yellow perch, cisco, whitefish and trout), trap nets set near shore (the main gear for bluegill, crappie and bullheads), and on some lakes electrofishing, most often for bass. The DNR reports each gear separately, as fish per net set. These rates come from the newest standard survey of each lake on this site, 1959–2025 — a measure of how many fish a lake holds, not how many an angler will catch.

Found in
33 of 1579 lakes surveyed this way
Typical rate
0.67 per gill net where found
Highest
6.6 per gill net
Method
fish per gill net set

“Typical” is the median across the lakes where the survey caught at least one. Each gear catches different fish, so the rates are not added together. A single survey is a snapshot of one season.

Highest survey rates on this site

  1. Johnson Lake, St. Louis 2022 6.6
  2. Isabella Lake, Lake County 2016 6.0
  3. Lower Hay Lake, Crow Wing 2024 4.7
  4. Perent Lake, Lake County 2019 3.1
  5. Silver Island Lake, Lake County 2020 3.0
  6. Tom Lake, Cook 2023 2.6
  7. Pike Lake, Cook 2023 2.2
  8. Kabekona Lake, Hubbard 2023 2.0
  9. Big Trout Lake, Crow Wing 2024 1.8
  10. Hatch Lake, Itasca 2013 1.8

Fish per gill net set, with survey year. Survey effort and season differ between lakes.

Often found with

Share of these lakes that also list each fish.

How to recognize it

Slender and silvery-white with an olive to greenish-brown back, a small head, a deeply forked, dark-edged tail and an adipose fin. The snout overhangs the lower jaw.

Don’t confuse it with

Cisco — The lower jaw reaches to or past the tip of the snout.

Life in a Minnesota lake

Lake whitefish live near the bottom, feeding on small bottom animals. They occur in many lakes of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area and of the Upper Mississippi drainage.

Small groups of spawners rise toward the surface and drop back down as they release eggs, which settle into gaps between rocks; each female lays 10,000 to 130,000. The eggs develop over winter and hatch early in spring. Lake trout, pike, walleye and burbot all prey on young whitefish.

Source: the sources below.

Rules and eating

Check the rules before you keep fish. Each lake page shows the regulations that apply there, and the Minnesota DNR fishing regulations page is the official source. Before eating fish from a particular lake, check the Minnesota Department of Health’s fish consumption guidance.

All 43 lakes with lake whitefish

Show every lake, by county

Beltrami County 2

Cass Lake, Turtle River Lake

Cass County 3

Leech Lake (Kabekona Bay), Leech Lake (Main Basin), Tenmile Lake

Cook County 7

Devil Track Lake, Gaskin Lake, Greenwood Lake, McFarland Lake, Pike Lake, Poplar Lake, Tom Lake

Crow Wing County 9

Bertha Lake, Big Trout Lake, Clamshell Lake, Cross Lake Reservoir, Island Lake, Lower Hay Lake, Lower Whitefish Lake, Pig Lake, Rush Lake

Hubbard County 1

Kabekona Lake

Itasca County 4

Ball Club Lake, Deer Lake, Hatch Lake, Turtle Lake

Lake County 6

Alice Lake, Isabella Lake, Ottertrack Lake, Perent Lake, Silver Island Lake, Windy Lake

St. Louis County 11

Burntside Lake, East Vermilion Lake, Elbow Lake, Johnson Lake, Kabetogama Lake, Loon Lake, Namakan Lake, Rainy Lake, Sand Point Lake, Spring Lake, West Vermilion Lake

Sources

← All fish of Minnesota