Salmon in NJ!!!

Originally Posted by fishingbuddies

Thx. Now that I know how to catch em... I will practice my revive n release technique.

Congrats on your first landlocks. Depth alone is less a factor for revival than time fought and how the fish is handled boat side as others have mentioned. If you want to take a pic, have camera ready and hold the fish with two hands underneath, not by the gills. Keep the fish in the water and net the entire time until your ready to take the pic. Either an automatic camera, go pro or someone else fishing with you helps here. Don't keep them out of the water, camera ready, quick pick and swim the fish until she's ready to go back down. They'll let you know when they're ready.

Salmon are like trout and your technique is a summer time technique mostly. Landlocks don't like warm water and don't like sun. In the spring, winter and fall, you'll find more feeding fish around the edges than you will deep, so adjust your technique accordingly. For two reasons, they're looking for somewhere to spawn even though the four lakes in NJ don't have proper habitat but more so because they'll pin herring up top and feed heavy. Sun comes up, they go back deep almost immediately. A lot of the fish caught ice fishing are a few feet under the ice. They feed early and late for the most part, those are the prime times to target them. Sun comes up and the switch is flipped in a blink, bite is over. Overcast days will out fish blue bird days 10:1.

Learn their pattern and you'll land plenty. They're a great fish and I hope NJ keeps up the program. State records in the New England states are almost all over 20lbs. Won't be long imo before we see a 15 lber caught in NJ as long as we don't continue harvesting all the smaller fish. There's simply not that many fish stocked between four lakes, give them a chance and this could be a true trophy fishery. A 12" fish filleted probably equates to a 6" fish stick, personally I'd rather catch it when it reaches 10 lbs. than make it into a snack.

[fishingbuddies]

Awesome advice. TY