Smallmouth season on the St Croix

Does smallmouth season start on the regular opener or is Hudson considered the Northern zone according to WI regs?

The key to remember is that the Northern zone you need to be concerned with is above Hwy. 70. Otherwise, stay with the River regs as posted by the DNR. I think this year is the same as always, so when the inland waters south of hwy. 70 open up to bass, so does our part of the Croix.

looks like May 25th then. Are we allowed to catch and release between May 4th and the 25th? Is it legal to target them?

If someone else doesn’t answer this question before I can check the regs myself, there is open bass as of the first weekend in May, south of Hwy. 70. The Croix, if I remember right, has some exceptions to it, but I can’t remember what they are. I could’ve sworn we were able to target them right away in 2001, but the flood prevented us from getting on them.

I checked the WI-MN boundary waters regs on the WIDNR website. It says the season from St Croix Falls to Prescott opens on May 25th. I’m really not interested in keeping any bass. Never do. I have a friend coming up from Dallas on the 16th of May. I want to make sure it’s legal to target them. I still don’t know the answer.

It is illegal to target a species until the season is open so you can not target smallmouth on the croix until may 25th.

Check and see what the Southern Zone inland water opener is SteveO……………there’s plenty of good bassin’ right there in town on Lake Mallelieu, which is really the Willow River. I can take you around and show you some really good spots (there’s many!) and toss for some crappies at the same time! I can get you familiar with that water quickly and we could do it anytime after ice out…………….which isn’t long for that dark water! About a week ago I noticed the ice getting real dark and I saw open water in a couple spots…………if this “sissy” winter holds out, Mal. will be freed up by the 3rd week of March…………..seen it before, it can happen again! Little white 1/64oz. Flu-Flu’s, no bait, with or without scent, will bring in some crappies while I show you some really good bassin’ areas. There are Sm and Lm bass in there and many will run 3lbs. and bigger. Game on? LMK

you’re on. I’ve never fished that much except for crappie through the trestle. I’ve seen photos of nice bass come out of there. Let’s keep in touch.

wizz, do you have a link to that reg.?

Here is a link to the Wisc. 2002-2003 regs. I could only find them as a PDF so you will need Adobe Acrobat to view them (which is free on the web) . I could have sworn I was able to find them as HTML in year’s past but this is the best I could do this morning. Look on Page 6 under “Seasons, Bag Limits, and length limits’ for the rule about no catch and release out of season. Also, look on page 52 for the MN/WI boundary waters seasons: http://www.dnr.state.wi.us/org/water/fhp/fish/regspdf/hook02/02fishregs.pdf

i guess we’ll just have to chase walleye and pike on the river and try the bass on inland waters.

thanks