I am slipping into a deep depression.

It really began to set in when a fellow came up to me in Stewart's and asked if a cisco and a whitefish were the same thing. However, my angst has nothing to do with fish; it is more related to the season and dogs.

The first part of the issue relates to the fact it is November.

One never knows how many Novembers are left, so it is important to not waste the one you are in at the time.

This is the season when I should be cutting wood, getting the bees buttoned up for winter and working on little outdoor fix-ups before winter. This is what I should be doing. What I typically do is take the dog and go hunting.

For the past three weeks I have been piling wood and helping with the shopping because on every free day I had it rained, and when the weather cooperated, the dog was laid up.

After a $350 operation and a week's worth of pills, he seems back to his old self, so if the weather holds we may put on a few miles this weekend.

The reason the question about fish set me off was because a friend of mine used to plan for foibles in November. His secret weapon was his "spare dog," a black and white spotted thing named, Cisco.

If he found himself faced with a sick or injured dog, we would just take the spare. Cisco's claim to fame was that he did virtually nothing right. This made him a multipurpose animal and he was taken on every sort of hunt from pheasants to raccoon.

Cisco had a thin, reedy, unpleasant voice, he got stuck in fences, could not swim, was deathly afraid of cattle and housecats and got lost really easily. Turning him loose was a recipe for disaster which my friend welcomed since he said it would make us appreciate the other dogs more when they returned to service.

In all the times we went with Cisco there was only one instance when he put any game in the pot.

One night, we heard him begin to bark and headed in that direction, not because we thought he had found something but because we figured he was caught in another fence. We were nearly to him when he shut up and the next thing we knew he was retrieving what turned out to be a large Rhode Island Red rooster.

We never did find out where it came from because when it was delivered to hand, it drove one of its spurs through that hand and escaped into the dark.

Cisco had lost interest and disappeared; we did not find him for two days.

However, my depression and long-dead hunting dogs are not the fault of my questioner so I probably should apply myself to the real issue. To wit, are the cisco and the whitefish the same thing The answer is no, yes and maybe, depending on where you live and who you believe.

There are three varieties of whitefish, the lake, mountain and round. There is overlap in the range of these three and they even may be found in the same waters.

The mountain whitefish is found only in the western part of this continent, in high, cold mountain waters. In some areas they provide good sport on a fly rod in place of trout, but they are generally not regarded as much of a pan fish.

The round whitefish is, as the name implies, more round in profile than its rather flattened cousins. It is a fish of the north, being found predominately in Arctic waters of North America and Siberia, where it often provides a major source of winter food for some indigenous peoples.

The lake whitefish is the species familiar to most people. Found throughout lower Canada and the upper portion of the United States, the lake whitefish vary greatly in size, depending on the racial stock from which they spring.

While Lake Huron grows specimens up to 21 inches in length, a lunker from Lake Openago in the Algonquin Park will measure no more than 5 inches.

The lake whitefish is a small-headed, silver-colored fish, deep from belly to back but quite narrow when viewed from above. They are caught for sport by a few anglers willing to learn how to take them (mostly by chumming) but it is their commercial value which brings the most take.

Called high-back whitefish, buffalo fish, bow-back whitefish, and, in central New York state, "Otsego bass," they make up a significant portion of the smoked fish market. Today, Canada processes about 25 million pounds of smoked whitefish per year.

The cisco is related to the whitefish but is a member of the salmon family. Some taxonomists feel they are quite close.

Others find the whitefish to be quite significantly removed from salmonidae, mostly based on their scales. There are eight species of cisco which include the deepwater cisco, longjaw cisco, shortjaw cisco, shortnose cisco, blackfin cisco, Kiyi and bloater.

All the ciscos share a more streamlined appearance than the flattened whitefish and the head is much larger in proportion to the body. Some species of cisco can tolerate much warmer water than the whitefish and are found quite far down the eastern seaboard.

Some travel in great schools in relatively shallow water while others inhabit the depths, much like the lake trout, which preys on them. The largest ciscos are found in Lake Champlain and at the mouth of the Niagara River where it enters into Lake Ontario.

Little is known of the habits of the cisco, except that they are fall spawners that drop their eggs with no care of the hatching fry.

Ciscos are generally caught ice fishing, often when targeting lake trout, although there is a small number of anglers who seek them specifically. Since they are most active in subdued light, ciscos are often taken when a die-hard angler stays beyond the late afternoon when the lake trout stop biting. There is no significant commercial market for cisco.

There was no market for the other Cisco either. He wound up living at my friend's house for the next 17 years.

Bob Henke writes a regular Outdoors column for The Post-Star.