Landlocked Salmon Fishing Guide
Freshwater · Water temp 36–64°F (ideal 52°F)
Quick Facts
- What it is
- An Atlantic salmon that never goes to sea. Salmo salar sebago
- Native range
- Four Maine watersheds: West Grand, Sebec, Green and Sebago
- Forage
- Rainbow smelt above all else. Growth is poor in lakes without them
- Peak season
- Ice-out through late spring, when salmon feed in the top 10 ft
- Summer
- Below the thermocline at 25-50 ft. A downrigger fish
- Spawning
- Lake inlets and outlets, mid-October to late November
- Wind
- A salmon chop is wanted. Flat calm is the harder day
Overview
Landlocked salmon are Atlantic salmon that stopped going to sea. They are the same species, given the subspecies name Salmo salar sebago, and their original home waters were four Maine watersheds: West Grand, Sebec, Green and Sebago. Stocking has since put them across northern New England, the Adirondacks and Lake Champlain, and in those waters they are the signature inland gamefish, the one the season is planned around.
Almost everything about fishing for them follows from smelt. Rainbow smelt are the principal forage in Maine lakes, and growth is poor in waters that do not hold enough of them. Salmon under about a foot eat invertebrates; past that they switch to smelt, minnows, sticklebacks and small perch and rarely look back. That is why the standard presentations are smelt imitations, why the streamer patterns of this region are shaped the way they are, and why the fishing follows the bait rather than any piece of structure.
The season has a shape you will not find anywhere else on this site. Ice-out is the peak, and it is decisive: within a week of the ice going the surface warms to the high thirties, smelt run into the tributaries, and salmon feed in the top ten feet where a trolled streamer or a spoon reaches them. Through summer they drop below the thermocline and become a downrigger fish. Autumn brings them back shallow to feed hard before spawning in lake inlets and outlets from mid-October into late November, and many of those tributaries close or go catch-and-release for the run.
Optimal Conditions
| water Temp | 36-64°F, ideal 52°F |
| air Temp | 20-80°F |
| wind | 0-14 mph ideal, tolerate up to 22 mph. A salmon chop is wanted, not tolerated |
| pressure | Moderate sensitivity, and behind water temperature by a distance |
| light | Medium. Unusual among cold-water salmonids, and the ice-out fishery is why |
| best Seasons | Ice-out through late spring (April-May), then September |
Seasonal Patterns
spring
The season, and nothing else is close. Within a week or so of ice-out the surface of most of these lakes reaches the high thirties, smelt run into the tributaries to spawn, and salmon feed in the top ten feet over deep water and around shoals, points and rock. Trolled streamers and spoons in the first fifteen feet is the whole method, and it works from ice-out until the surface pushes past the low sixties in June. This is the one part of the year when a boat without a downrigger is not at a disadvantage.
summer
A downrigger fishery, and a different sport. As the surface climbs past the mid sixties salmon drop below the thermocline and hold between twenty-five and fifty feet, following the smelt rather than any structure. They are catchable and often in good condition, but you need to get down to them and the water temperature score you see for a summer day is a surface reading that is no longer describing the water the fish is in.
fall
The second season. September brings salmon back into shallower water off tributary mouths, inlets and outlet currents, feeding heavily ahead of the spawn, and it earns a real lift in our scoring. Then from mid-October into late November they spawn in those same inlets and outlets, and the fishing falls away sharply. Check the rules before planning an October trip: many spawning tributaries close for the run or restrict it to catch-and-release, and the dates vary by water rather than by state.
winter
Limited and local. Some New England lakes hold an ice fishery for landlocked salmon and others close entirely, so this is a case where the regulations decide more than the fish do. Where it is open, salmon keep feeding through cold water, which is why our winter reduction for this species is on the milder end. Post-spawn fish in December are still recovering and are the exception.
Best Times to Fish
dawn
The peak, and the traditional start. The first three hours of light over a shoal or a drop-off is the classic ice-out window, and the difference between dawn and midday is largest in spring.
midday
Better than the reputation of cold-water fishing suggests. Landlocked salmon keep feeding through the middle of the day in cold water in a way the same fish will not in August, so our curve gives spring middays a shallow dip rather than a collapse. If you can only fish the middle of an April day, go.
dusk
Strong, the second-best stretch, and often the more comfortable one to fish. Salmon move higher in the column and closer to shore as light falls.
night
Effectively nothing, and it is not merely that nobody is out. This is a visual predator chasing individual smelt, so darkness takes away the mechanism. Overnight scores for salmon are low on purpose.
solunar
Moderate solunar sensitivity. It reads as a genuine but secondary factor here, well behind water temperature, and in spring behind wherever the smelt are.
Weather Response
Less damaging than for warm-water species. A spring front that drops surface temperature keeps salmon high in the water column for longer, which extends the ice-out fishery rather than ending it. The pressure change itself matters little.
A mixed signal, and worth understanding. Early in spring, warmth accelerates ice-out and starts the season. Late in spring, a warm stretch pushes the surface past the low sixties, drives salmon below the thermocline, and ends the shallow fishing for the year. The same weather is good news in April and bad news in June.
Fine, and rarely the deciding factor. What decides a landlocked salmon day is surface temperature and where the smelt are, and both change on a timescale of weeks rather than hours.
Neutral to mildly positive, and mostly through the wind that comes with it. A chop on the surface hides the boat and the leader from a fish feeding within a few feet of daylight, and flat calm is the harder condition for trolling a streamer shallow. The rain itself does little.
Proven Techniques
Trolling Streamers at Ice-Out
The classic, and it is a regional tradition as much as a method. Long-shank streamers tied to imitate a smelt, pulled on a long line in the top ten or fifteen feet, often on a fly rod off the back of a boat moving at two to three miles an hour. Work the shoals, points and drop-offs where smelt are staging, and cover water rather than sitting on a spot.
Spoons and Smelt Imitations
Thin flutter spoons in silver and blue, or anything else that flashes like a four-inch smelt. Effective through the whole open-water season and the mainstay once you go deep, because a spoon can be run behind a downrigger ball at the depth the fish are actually holding.
Working the Thermocline
From June through August the useful question is not where the structure is but where the temperature break is. Salmon stack along the thermocline following smelt, so a downrigger or lead core plus a depth-and-temperature reading finds them far faster than casting will. Twenty-five to fifty feet is the usual window on these lakes.
Fishing the Smelt Run
When smelt push into tributary mouths to spawn in spring, salmon follow them and concentrate in a way they do at no other time. Fishing the mouth of a smelt stream in the first weeks after ice-out is about as close to a sure thing as this fishery offers, and it is over quickly.
Tributary Mouths in September
The autumn version of the same idea. Salmon stage off inlets and outlet currents ahead of the spawn and feed hard while they do it. Fish them before the season shuts, which in many waters happens at the end of the month.
Landlocked Salmon vs Lake Trout
These two share most of the same lakes, spawn in the same months, and are frequently caught on the same troll. What separates them is how high in the water they live and how they hunt.
| Landlocked Salmon | Lake Trout | |
|---|---|---|
| Where in the lake | Top 10-25 ft in spring and autumn | Deep most of the year, briefly shallow at ice-out |
| How it hunts | By sight, running down individual smelt | Opportunistic, and far less dependent on light |
| Light | Medium. Feeds in bright surface water at ice-out | Low. A deep, dim-water fish |
| Night | Effectively nothing. It cannot see | Reduced, but genuinely productive |
| Peak season | Ice-out, decisively | Ice-out and again in autumn |
| Fight | Fast and airborne. Jumps repeatedly | Deep, heavy and dogged |
Chasing the other one? Read the lake trout guide.
Landlocked Salmon Fishing Questions
What water temperature is best for landlocked salmon?
Our profile runs 36 to 64°F with an ideal of 52. That ideal sits below the roughly 61°F growth optimum reported for Atlantic salmon generally, and the reason is worth knowing, because for this species our temperature factor is answering a slightly different question than it does elsewhere on the site. The reading available to us is a surface reading. For a fish that lives in the top ten feet in spring and autumn and at thirty to fifty feet in summer, a surface reading is mostly a statement about where the fish is. Cold surface water means salmon up high chasing smelt, which is the entire ice-out fishery. A 72°F surface reading in July means the same fish is under a thermocline and out of reach of anything but a downrigger.
Why is ice-out the best time to fish for landlocked salmon?
Because it is the short window when the fish and the bait and the angler are all in the same few feet of water. Within a week or so of the ice going, the surface of most of these lakes reaches the high thirties, rainbow smelt run into the tributaries to spawn, and salmon follow them into the shallows and the top of the water column. A trolled streamer in the first fifteen feet reaches them, which it cannot do again until autumn. It is also brief: once the surface pushes past the low sixties in June the fish go down and the fishery changes completely.
Why does the spring not get a seasonal bonus in your scoring?
Because landlocked salmon spawn in autumn, and our seasonal model keys its pre-spawn and fall-feeding bonuses to the months around spawning. For this species those land in August and September, which are genuinely good, while April and May fall outside every seasonal category. Rather than mislabel the spring as a pre-spawn phase, which would have the site telling you these fish are feeding ahead of a spawn six months away, the ice-out peak is carried by the water temperature factor instead. That is a bigger lever anyway: water temperature is 23 percent of a freshwater score, more than double what any seasonal bonus is worth.
Why do smelt matter so much?
Because they are the whole food supply. Rainbow smelt are the principal forage for landlocked salmon in Maine lakes, and fisheries managers treat smelt abundance as the limiting factor on salmon growth: a lake without enough of them grows small, thin salmon no matter how many are stocked. Practically, it means you fish where the bait is rather than where the structure is. In spring that means tributary mouths where smelt are spawning, and in summer it means the depth the smelt are holding at, which is why a temperature-and-depth reading finds fish faster than a map does.
Is wind good or bad for landlocked salmon?
Good, within reason. Plenty of fish on this site prefer some chop, but the reason is unusually specific here: an ice-out salmon is feeding within a few feet of daylight while you drag a streamer past it on a long line, so broken water is what hides the boat and the leader from a visual predator looking up. Flat calm on a bright spring day is the harder condition, not the easier one. That holds until wind stops you fishing the lines you want to fish, which on these lakes is somewhere north of twenty miles an hour.
Can I fish for them during the autumn spawn?
Sometimes, and you need to check the specific water rather than the state. Landlocked salmon spawn in lake inlets and outlets from mid-October into late November, and many of those tributaries close for the run or restrict it to catch-and-release, with dates that vary water by water. Our scoring applies a real penalty across those months, which reflects both that spawning fish are less interested in a streamer and that a good number of the places you would fish for them are shut. September, immediately before all this, is the better plan.
Best Months for Landlocked Salmon
These are the months our scoring lifts landlocked salmon activity for pre-spawn or autumn feeding. Open one for that month's calendar.
Related Species
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