In March, New Jersey’s Landlocked Salmon program began stocking salmon averaging 15.6 inches and 1.65 pounds each.
Crews from the NJDEP Division of Fish and Wildlife’s Hackettstown Hatchery stocked more than 1,400 holdover landlocked salmon into three New Jersey lakes.
Wawayanda Lake (Wawayanda State Park, Sussex Co.) was float stocked with 800 salmon, and Tilcon Lake (Allamuchy Mountain State Park, Morris Co.) and Lake Aeroflex (Kittatinny Valley State Park, Sussex Co.) received 280 and 325 respectively.
These waters remain open for catch-and-release fishing during the trout stocking pre-season closure which begins March 21.
These stockings continue to build on previous stockings. The 2015 stockings consisted of 4,147 salmon in the three water bodies, almost doubling any prior year’s stockings. The 2015 stockings included 1,087 holdover fifteen-inch and 660 eight-inch spring stocked fish, and 2,400 fall fish averaging 12 inches.
Arrangements have been made with the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife’s’s Roger Reed Salmon Hatchery to continue trades of surplus New Jersey Northern Pike fingerlings for Massachusetts Landlocked Salmon.
For more information on Landlocked Salmon in New Jersey, visit: www.njfishandwildlife.com.
source: DEP Division of Fish and Wildlife