Stumble It ! 

Is it Legal to fish for Salmon in the Salmon River? 

After an encounter with a local DEC officer here in Pulaski, New York, I have to wonder if Salmon Fishing is legal in the Salmon River. Why?
2 Customers who  were fishing at the establishment I am working at were ticketed for "Snatching" which apparently is attempting to snag fish. Now here is my problem. The officer when asked to explain the law stated " You can not possibly feel a bite on 20 straight drifts, if someone is setting the hook on every drift he is obviously trying to impale a fish illegally" ( Quote from memory)
Now I realize that New York is not Alaska, but during a run in Alaska this past summer, I hooked and landed 40 fish in 50 straight casts and had fish on the other 10 times.
Still the other problem is that there are thousands of fish in this pool. The definition of a run means that there are thousands of fish to catch.
The same officer asked me if I would bass fish like that, setting the hook each time I cast? Well yes I have. If you are bass fishing with a worm and you get a bump you set the hook. If you do that in the Salmon River it is apparently snatching.
What made this particular incident a bit more distasteful was the simple fact that on the opposite bank is a wall that is about 15 feet high and guys stand on the wall pointing at fish hooking them any way they can and then KEEPING the fish, while at the same time the ticketed men were returning any and all foul hooked fish to the water and shaking them off if they saw they were foul hooked.
Instead of ticketing the men who were fishing from the south side and then going over and ticketing the men on the other side of the river, the officer simply took the 4 men to court up the street. Now I have to question why citing was not more efficient and in this case would have afforded the officer the opportunity to cite several people with POACHED fish since they were snagged and kept.
What concerns me more is another statement the officer made.
"You can not clothes line the fish either" now if clothes lining means that the fish gets the line in its mouth and turns into the current and hooks itself then more than likely it is next to impossible to catch a fish in New York Legally. My only experience with Salmon is in Alaska, and while getting a king bite is very hard it can be done, but HOW do you know the fish did NOT get the line in its mouth first and turn into the hook? With this in mind, must you return ANY fish you catch back to the river? Am I taking this to an extreme? I do not think so. I believe that officers have too much discretion on this issue, and can appear to abuse the law as it reads, especially when they ignore obvious violations of the law, by citizens of the town they are in, in order to ticket out of town visitors.
I have decided not to fish for the rest of my stay here in New York. I have never violated a game law and the line here is just to thin to take the chance.
The real problem in New York, is the big elephant in the room no one wants to talk about. The revenue from tickets given each year to out of state anglers who do not or can not understand these regulations. The other elephant is the fact that salmon bite very seldom, and not aggressively. At the end of the run, the Department according to locals takes the salmon that come back to the hatchery, and slice them open alive and then toss the bodies in dumpsters to be hauled to a fertilizer company.
The question of what is a lift and what is not is just too fine. If you snag your line and lift 2 times is that a violation. IF a large fish is at the end of your line but it feels like a snag and you lift 2 or 3 or 4 times is it a violation. If you lift to get your weight off the bottom to reduce snags you are ending each drift with a lift and the officer told me that was an indication of snatching. You can not get a bite 20 times in a row, but you can snag, get bites, think you got a bite.. etc.
The tourists who were ticketed left town. Not spending more money locally, and not contributing to the tax base. While at the same time locals as the ones below were ignored. Laws must be enforced equally and without regard to where they are from and what they can afford. Selective enforcement of game laws is a serious issue, and in this case it was glaring, that violators were ignored.

Jim Dicken

Jim Dicken
Owner FishingTripInformation.com
FGHP.com