Fish · Coregonus artedi
Cisco
Tullibee, lake herring, inland tullibee — the DNR says those are the same fish. A cold-water schooler that walleyes, pike, muskies, and lake trout treat like groceries.
Where they live: Cold, well-oxygenated lakes across the northern two-thirds of the state. In summer they need the deep water because the surface is too warm.
When folks chase them: Ice anglers meet them more often than open-water stories admit. The summer problem is oxygen, not a lure color.
Cisco, herring, lake herring, and inland tullibee are the same fish. The DNR’s species page is one sentence long and it is the sentence that ends the argument in the shack. (Minnesota DNR — cisco)
You tell a cisco from a lake whitefish by the face. A whitefish snout overhangs the lower jaw. A cisco’s lower jaw comes up to the tip of the snout or past it. Both wear an adipose fin, which is the trout-family tell. I have still called a whitefish a tullibee at a Baudette table because I was hungry and the fish was silver. The jaw does not care that I was hungry. (Minnesota DNR — Baudette fisheries)
What to throw
The pages that identify this fish do not name a lure. Baudette says ciscos are commonly caught by ice anglers, and lake whitefish only occasionally. That is a when, not a product. We are not going to hang a tungsten card on a fish the agency did not dress in one.
If you want the winter method the DNR actually wrote down — a flasher and a white jig — that writeup is on the lake whitefish page, because that is the fish they wrote it for. Borrowing it silently would be how a honest page goes crooked.
Rod & reel
No rod spec. Ice anglers catch them on whatever the shack is already using for the silver fish in the top of the water column, and “whatever the shack is using” is not a specification. Leave it.
The state-record cisco on the Baudette page weighed 5 pounds, 11.8 ounces, from St. Louis County. A record is a ceiling, not a promise. (Minnesota DNR — Baudette fisheries)
Where in Minnesota
They are in Lake of the Woods and other Minnesota lakes. A 2026 DNR magazine piece puts them across the northern two-thirds of the state, at the southern edge of the species’ range on this continent. The 2016 refuge story’s count was about 650 tullibee lakes, more than any other state in the lower 48, and it called them the high-energy meal for walleye, northern pike, muskellunge, and lake trout. That 650 is the 2016 article’s number, not a fresh census. (Minnesota Conservation Volunteer — the cisco squeeze, refuge for the tullibees, Baudette fisheries)
Lake of the Woods is the big room we already publish. The species is also all over LakeFinder surveys as “tullibee (cisco)” even when our lake essay never says the word. LakeFinder is the list. A shortjaw cisco is a different, rare fish. The species page points at the rare-species guide for that one. Do not lump it in because the nickname is close. (Minnesota DNR — cisco)
Here is the part to say straight. They cannot live in the warm surface. The refuge article says 76 degrees is lethal and about 54 is optimal, so from roughly June to September they need to stay deep, and the deep water can run out of oxygen by late summer. Biologists call the bind a squeeze: the top is too warm, the bottom is too thin on oxygen, and the livable band gets narrower. Across their range, the 2026 piece says, cisco are gone from some lakes where they once swam. That is not a vibe. That is the habitat. (Refuge for the tullibees, The cisco squeeze)
Seasons, including the ice
Ice is the season people actually meet them. Baudette’s line is the one to tape in the shack: commonly caught by ice anglers. Whitefish are the occasional one. If you catch a silver fish with an adipose fin, check the jaw before you name it. (Baudette fisheries)
Summer is when they are squeezed into the cold, oxygenated layer, not when they owe you a surface strike. We will not invent a trolling pass for a fish that is trying to stay in the only water that will not kill it.
The open-water and hardwater dates are the inland book, plus whatever special reg is stapled to the lake. Cisco are not a secret season. They are a fish inside the season you already have to look up.