HbP - Whitefish lend themselves better for smoking instead of traditional fish recipes. I've had lots of river whitefish (which are smaller than lake whitefish) and the best way for them was to catch a bunch... and brine them for smoking. It's lots easier to separate out the bones that way.

Just had a thought and wondered if this would work for shad too...

Also would think that certain slow cooked shad recipes would work for whitefish. The slow cooked shad recipes were to soften up the many bones in shad. I think shad have even more bones than whitefish.