If you are fishing 35-45 ft of water try to fish well above the fish. A lot of times you can get those fish to come up quite a bit and you will be able to release them.
If you get a fish that won’t go back down the hole and you put it in another hole, you will be suprised that after about 20 minutes most of the fish will be gone. I believe over time they regulate their pressures and are able to swim back down. If they do not make it down, take them home to eat. I don’t fish deeper than 32 ft very often. When I do, I try to work them up.
Fishing Lake Trout if pretty cool. Man those things can burp out a lot of air. It is amazing, even when you get them up and are taking the hook out, they will still burp out more air. We took a lot of care with the Lake Trout in that show to make sure they survived, as some were as old as James 
I would guess 