As for whitefish, good luck! Ciscos and lakers are plentiful depending on the time of year. And location. We catch hundreds of ciscos and lakers each year, but only about 5-10 individual whitefish is all. We jig lakers and ciscos, as for trolling it's mostly a laker thing with the occasional Cisco by catch.

 

This exactly. Search through this forum for the 2015 and the 2016 Grand traverse bay threads and you'll get all the information you need. Good luck out there its a riot when you get into them. We put the riggers away two years ago and havent put them back on yet.

 

Early in the year, before the surface hits 50, I get lakers and whitefish along steep breaks from 3'-30'. Casting small 1/4 oz blade baits in silver and gold and tube jigs that imitate gobies worked across the shallows and down the drops are my favorites. Small spoons work if numbers of fish are up in 10' or less. ML spinning rods that I normally use for smallmouth are a blast for 3#-7# fish.

When the water warms I would use small jigs like swedish pimples vertically for suspended whitefish and something a bit larger for lakers. Works for me I Canada, anyway.

 

Do they tend to suspend?

 

I look for resting schools a few feet off the bottom so "suspended" might imply a little higher in the water column than they are. Depending on depth though they can get up 10' or more. Moving schools feeding on the bottom are too hard to stay on top of with small jigs in 40+ fow. Through the ice you don't have any choice and wait for the school to come to you. This kind of fishing is something I do in Canada; bluebird day, mid afternoon, we're tooling around looking for new walleye structure and happen on a school of whitefish. Change of pace when I'm totally kicking back. Sometimes I'll see them hanging just below the thermocline, waiting to feed on shrimp? This is usually where there is a tiny bit of current. I've never tried it on TB.

 

When the water is cold trolling at 10 to 20 feet of water is a blast. I used flat lines off the outside planer boards and one & three color lead core inside of that. With two fishermen we couldn't keep all the rods in the water. Cisco and Lakers were main targets but caught small mouth bass by accident as well. Later we move out to 25 to 30 feet of water. It all depends on the water and the day.