Hi All,
I caught my first ever salmon- a 'landlocked' Atlantic Salmon. Two deep NJ lakes were stocked with surplus salmon fingerlings from mass. about three years ago. Most people chalked them up to bass food but i've been determined to get one all year. I was running a small flutter spoon behind a dive planer at 45 feet down. Barely saw the hit and it wasnt much of a fight but i managed to land a little 8 inch salmon. Heres a pic of my little fish, dont make fun- some guys are sensitive about the size of thier um....salmon.

congrats!


ps my first was much bigger!

That is a beautiful fish! Congrats!

Wow, nice job - what a creative and intelligent way to conquer a species.

This is so much more impressive than "I hired a guy for six thousand dollars to catch my salmon for me." Seriously. You did your research, you came up with a plan, and you did it.

Great work. Lifelister. Golden Fish Award.

What a beautiful little fish!
Congrats!

Lifers get harder and harder to get and more and more precious because of it.

Size doesn't matter in this game.

I have to concur. Catching a salmon that size can't be easy. How did you know where to fish? and did you catch any other species doing that? What kind of dive planner and rod set up did you use?

I too am interested more in your technique...what power rod did you use? I've been reading about summer techniques for whitefish and would have to use similar methods you did for the salmon.

Congrats on the lifelist addition!

I am wondering if they will work on the Kokanee in northern WI.

Ka-Blammo. I'll bet Pat's techniques might be useful for suspended whitefishes and Kokanee.

Thanks Cory- I'm honored to get the Golden Fish.

Heres what worked-
My setup is an 8'6" medium action salmon/steelhed casting rod with an okuma magda pro linecounter reel. The line counter is essential for consistent trolling and vertical fishing. Spooled with 20lb braid. I use a fishseeker dive planer that can dive down to 80feet. The depth is adjustable and it comes with a little chart that tells you the settings and how much line to let out based on how deep you want it. Behind that i use 8-10 feet of 8lb flurocarbon line as a leader. Sometimes i go down to 4lb fluro if the water is really clear.

The lake i was fishing is a 300acre 'holdover trout lake' since its deep and cold enough to sustain trout all year. I usually fish it for big brown trout. I'll troll around and watch the sonar to see what depth the majority of the fish seem to holding and then set the depth of the planer. I caught the salmon in 45 feet of water over 80 foot depths. I was using a silver shad king (hildebrandt i think?) spoon.

It'd be cool if this setup works out for some other fish as well.

Those Atlantics look so much like Brown trout. What are the distinctions between the two?

I assume the "$6000 guide" is hyperbole used to make a point that guides are only for stupid people.

No, it just means that you get a LOT more satisfaction if you find a way to do it yourself! Plus, you learn more during the mental process of experimenting and figuring it out for yourself!

You only get to catch a species for the first time ONCE IN YOUR LIFE. After that, it's over. You might as well get the most of it.

They are really very Closely related.

The way to tell is

The caudal fin is forked in an Atlantic and not in a Brown.
(Although some strains of browns can have more of a fork, this is normally the European browns, not our odd mixed up genetic soup browns)

The Caudal Peduncle is much more Narrow in Atlantic's (this gives them the Handle tail and makes them easy to grab)

The Maxillary stops before the back side of the eye on an atlantic.

There is a single row of vomerine teeth on an atlantic and a double on a brown.

Also the adipose fin is normally spotted on a brown and rarely on as atlantic.


That said
Spawning male atlantics are a pain in the BUTT to Id sometimes.
they will have spotted adipose fins. and as they spend more time in the river the tail can get scarred and swollen and the fat will build up in the caudal peduncle. If you are not looking for an atlantic you may miss it.

I missed mine and it took me 3 years before I noticed what I had.
While fishing the Pigeon river in WI for spawning browns, I was looking for a big male to mount for a display.
I spotted on big hog sitting below a riffle and he nailed the jig.
33" and ugly as sin, a beat up boot of a male, close to what I needed so I kept him.
On the trek back upstream I found a brighter male and coaxed him to hit.
So I kept them both and wrapped them and froze them. I mounted the brighter fish and kept the ugly one in the freezer.

Last year while clearing out my freezer I pulled out the ugly brown, unwrapped it and noticed something wasnt right at all.
Too long and narrow, the head was odd and the pattern seemed strange. Sure enough that old brown was an old Atlantic salmon.
I wish I would have had photos of it fresh, but I was able to make a mold and a replica of the fish.

If I was looking for an atlantic I am sure I would have noticed, but they are so rare by me I wasnt expecting it.

Hey Josh,

Thanks for the great details in the ID description. That was real helpful. Can you tell me what a Maxillary is?

C&B

The Maxillary is the upper Jawbone.

Awesome catch, Pat! I am truly jealous, that fish is beautiful and it sounds like you have done your homework to catch it. Great job, man, you deserve the Golden Fish for that.

~andy

Very impressive your plan and execution to get your salmon... the fact that you did ALL the work to get your fish certainly would make it even sweeter!

Not sure about this side conversation about guides - I've utilized guides now and then and I would hardly say it's because I'm a stupid angler - it always has to do with the guide having some type of equipment that allows for fishing I can't do on my own. My recent trip to the Atlantic Ocean is a good example - sorry I don't have anything that can take me out 40 miles off shore and catch 100# plus fish. So yep, I'll pay thousands of dollars and even acknowledge the guide is probably an equal partner in the catch - doesn't tarnish the memory or experience. Closer to home In Lake Michigan I've hired guides because I'm not equipped with downriggers and other essentials.