Salmon Snagging Slow in 2017

A few die-hard salmon snaggers brave the cold wind and slow fishing at Navajo Lake in mid-October.

Northern New Mexico's salmon snagging season has gotten off to a slow start with anglers reporting much fewer fish being caught this year.

"Some locals had a little luck  a couple weeks ago but its been real slow since," said Mike Bowman, park ranger at Eagle Nest Lake State park.

And anglers interviewed at Navajo Lake in mid-October also reported reduced catches.

That leaves Heron Lake where long time fishing guide Don Wolfley reports that salmon stocks have been way down over the past several years.

"It's been terrible," he said. "I haven't guided in three years now."

The snagging season at Heron Lake opens on Friday, Nov. 10, and it remains to be seen how well anglers will do.

"We've been expecting the populations to be pretty low," says Eric Frey, sport fish program manager for the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish.

Kokanee Salmon are stocked in these northern New Mexico reservoirs where the cold deep waters produce plankton upon which the fish can feed.

The fish are landlocked, sockeye salmon that upon reaching sexual maturity, usually at the age of about four years old, will mass in schools during the fall in a futile effort to spawn.

Because salmon typically need a river and other proper conditions under which to reproduce, these spawning fish will not enjoy much success.

Then they’ll begin to die which is And why the department created a special snagging season to allow anglers to catch and keep up to 12 salmon a day.

An angler shows off a salmon he caught at Navajo Lake in 2015.

Heron Lake's salmon snagging season is delayed to allow state Department of Game and Fish personnel time to trap and milk spawning salmon for their eggs and sperm.

The collected eggs are fertilized, sorted and then reared at the department’s nearby Los Ojos Fish Hatchery so they can be used to restock the state's deep water lakes with the popular sport fish.

The salmon stocking program is very dependent upon the annual salmon milking operation at Heron Dam to produce more fish.

But several years drought, low reservoir levels and poor water quality have harmed the salmon population and much fewer eggs have been collected, Frey said.

The department is obtaining additional eggs from out of state this year and hopes to have a decent amount of fry to replenish populations.

Wolfley says he guardedly optimistic that Heron Lake's salmon population will rebound sometime in the next few years so he can return to guiding.

In the meantime he expects the die-hard salmon snaggers to turn out on opening day at Heron Lake if for nothing else than to have a good time with family and friends.

Don Wolfley