I finally located the information I was looking for. Sometimes it helps to just uproot everything in the filing system. A few years ago, I picked up a chart that is about 10 pages that shows the species in the Quetico lakes. It is quite detailed. Careful study confirms a couple of observations I have made over years of Quetico fishing regarding lake trout and whitefish. Whitefish are in more Quetico lakes than most people realize. They are quite common in fact, present in over half of the lakes. Whitefish tend to stay deep, preferring the rocky bottoms. Herring tend to rise and fall in the water column. In lakes where there is either or both herring and whitefish, the trout grow much bigger than in lakes that have neither. Thus, the answer to the question about where to find hawg lakers depends on the forage base. Whitefish can grow to 2-3 lbs, or even bigger in some of these waters.

I do not know where to find this information online. I got it from the Park office in Atikokan a few years ago. You might be able to sweet talk them into a copy. Alternately, I am willing to make a few copies to bring to Copia. If you want one, let me know ahead so I can make you one. I find the info very helpful in planning which lakes to visit and fish.

The title is: Quetico Provincial Park Background Information- Fisheries Stewardship Plan Appendix 2. If anyone can find a link and post it, I'm sure it would help many of us, especially the techno misfits...of which I am one.

Old Salt wrote on Feb 15^th, 2018 at 10:02pm:

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Furtman had a what lakes contain what fish book as well.

solotripper wrote on Feb 15^th, 2018 at 11:18pm:


It didn't look searchable but what if is a bad habit of mine. Very cool ST!

db wrote on Feb 16^th, 2018 at 9:13am:


  I found both those summaries but they didn't have that 10-page fish "chart" OS was referencing?

I kept looking around and came across that link.
Without a publishing date/author, to start with it was hard to find info on the fish.

That link I provided can be downloaded many different ways, but it's a complete review similar to what you linked us too PLUS the fish info.

It's about 100 pages long, nobody wants to copy the whole thing or at least I didn't.

If you download the PDF file, you can look in the index to see the fish/lake info. Starting with page 54, you have a list of known fish species and what lakes they've been counted in.

Some really cool black and white drawings of the fish too.

The next list is in Alphabetical order by LAKE and the fish types in them. That goes to page 63.

So IF this is what OS has, that would be about 10 pages of good info. The book was published in 1976,
I'm assuming the data is older than that?

I put the PDF file in my Q folder and now can see what type fish has been cataloged at one time in all the lakes. I'm not even a serious fisherman but I'm curious so it's nice to have the info.

Thanks for searching db & st. Now I feel less of a techno misfit. None of those links is the document for which I search. The only clue I have on date is that it is in update from a table dated in 2000, making it this century. I recounted the pages and it is only 9 pages, not 10. I wish I had the info regarding title, author, date, that you seek. It covers 298 lakes in Quetico.

MP, I assume that your fishfinder will locate whitefish. My point in saying that they stay near the bottom was that a few years ago, I read a huge cloud of baitfish about mid-lake over deep water (over 100') and mistakenly thought it might be whitefish. Apparently not, I didn't catch any. According to what I read, they were most likely herring or possibly ciscoes.

I'm a novice with whitefish, but would suggest smaller lure sizes (small mouths) with lots of flash. Deep jigging on or near the bottom of deep holes would probably be productive. As has been pointed out, they are excellent eating.