Whitefish are generally a schooling fish, roaming the bottom in search of food.

Whitefish do not make noticeable noises.

Lake Whitefish are a laterally compressed fish, being taller than they are wide in body shape, with a blunt nose featuring a down-turned mouth that is specialized in feeding near the bottom.

Length: Up to 39 inches (100 cm), more commonly around 20 inches (50 cm)

Whitefish have been observed to weigh up to 42 pounds (19 kg) though many are considerably smaller as weight is affected by food availability and life expectancy due to mortality from causes like fishing.

The dorsal scales can range from brown to green to blue/black in color, while the sides are silvery, sometimes with a blueish hue which transitions to white on the underside of the fish.  The fins of the whitefish are nearly transparent.

Lake Whitefish start life as an egg often in a rocky substrate, where they hatch in the spring and are moved mostly by currents while they absorb their egg sac nutrition.  They then move to nearshore areas as juveniles where they feed until the grow large enough to move into offshore waters, where they spend much of their adult lives before returning to spawn in habitats similar to where they were hatched.

Whitefish spawn in the fall when mature fish congregate at night on rocky reefs nearshore or in rivers where waves and current keep the incubating eggs oxygenated until they hatch the following spring.  Unlike some fish, whitefish do not provide any parental care, and newly hatched fry rely on their yolk sac until they are large enough to forage for zooplankton on their own.

Lake Whitefish eggs hatch in early spring around ice out after incubating in on the bottom since the previous fall when their parents spawned.  Once the fry have absorbed their egg sac, typically in May or June, they migrate to shallow nearshore areas that absorb the suns heat and start to produce the zooplankton they need to grow.  They remain here until they grow to a size (60-70mm) that allows them to move offshore where they are less vulnerable to predators where they remain for much of their lives. Adults return to spawning shoals, often shallow, rocky areas of the lake, but sometimes in rivers, where they spawn in November.

Lake Whitefish can live to be fairly old for fish, with the oldest reported age being 50 years.  The typical lifespan for a lake whitefish is dependent on where it lives and whether it is subject to commercial or recreational harvest.

Lake whitefish is just one of the members of coregonids present in the Great Lakes and is similar in appearance to a number of it's close relatives.

Adult lake whitefish feed primarily near the bottom where they live, focused on invertebrates, small mussels and small fish.  Prior to the invasion of zebra and quagga mussels in the Great Lakes, they fed primarily on diporeia a calorie dense amphipod, but populations of diporeia plummeted after the mussels arrived.  Their food habits now include small mussels, the invasive round goby, chironomid larvae and other invertebrates. They are also known to feed on eggs of their own kind and other species.  Larval and juvenile whitefish feed primarily on zooplankton.

Lake Whitefish inhabit a variety of habitats within lakes, from foraging in shallows, to spending considerable time in the depths.  They can be found hunting invertebrates in soft sediment bottoms, or chasing small fish in rocky habitats.