Grab your Rod: Atlantic Salomon fishing in Maine

Adults are typically silvery wiyh a touch forked tail and little x-shaped marking on the back and iper sides. Juvenile salmon have a dark red spot between each pair of parr marks. Mature males develop a kype or hooked jaw, in the spawning season.

Before 1868, landlocked salmon populations took place in only 4 stream basins in Maine, St.Croix including West Grand Lake in Washington County, the union, including Green Lake in Hancock County, the Penobscot, including Sebec Lake in Piscataquis, County, and the Presumpscot, including Sebago Lake in Cumberland County. Today, landlocked salmon give the primary fishery in 176 lakes comprising nearly half a million acres. Maine supports one of the larges sport fisheries for this species in the globe.

Landlocked salmon also provide good fisheries in 44 brooks and streams totaling about 290 miles. Hatchery stockings are required to maintain fisheries in 127 lakes. These lakes don't satisfactory amounts of acceptable spawning and nursery areas to provide wild salmon. Without regular stockings, salmon in these lakes would vanish completely, or their numbers would be very low.

About 123,000 salmon were stocked yearly in Maine lakes from 1996 to 2k. Natural reproduction supports salmon fisheries in 49 lakes. These are lakes that have enough spawning and nursery habitat to supply enough salmon to support good fisheries. Eggs are buried in gravel from 4-12 inches deep and remain there until hatching early the following spring. Fresh studies in Maine show most wild salmon spend two years as stream dweelers. Landlocked salmon may be repeat spawners, but most fish noted on spawning runs are spawning for the 1st time. Salmon populations sustained by natural reproduction regularly more older age fish those supported by stocking, wild salmon often exhibit slower expansion do hatchery salmon, so they reach legal size and cropped one or two years after. Rainbow smelts are the principal forage species for salmon in Maine lakes.

Without satisfactory numbers of smelt, salmon expansion and body conition will be poor, markedly reducing worth as a sportfish.

Intensive studies conducted in Maine obviously show that salmon expansion rates, and therefore the scale of fish available to anglers, is best in lakes with fantastic water that don't have big populations of other smelt predators, especially lake trout. From 1996 to 2k Maine open water anglers voluntarily released over 60% of their catch of legal salmon, ice anglers released about twenty five percent of their legal salmon catch. Catch and release of salmon has improved fishing in many lakes, but in others it has led to depressed smelt populations and smaller salmon, because there are too many salmon. Maine fishery biologists have responded by reducing stocking rates by implementing fishing rules built to revive a fair balance between numbers of smelts and salmon. Hatchery salmon often provide fisheries for bigger fish than do wild salmon because the quantity of smelt predators can be exactly controlled. precise management for certain types of fisheries, for example those stressing prize fish, is mostly best achieved with hatchery stocks instead of wild stocks.