April 12 WCC Trout Proposal

1. First Saturday in March would be the official Wisconsin opener. Locals do not fish the pre-season, otherwise known as “play with your food” season. In Wisconsin bait is not allowed. this is not fair. There are plenty of trout to go around. Harvest can begin first Saturday in April.

2. State wide five bag limit of trout. This would not apply to streams that drain into Lake Superior and Lake Michigan. Wisconsin is the only Midwest state that does NOT have a five bag state limit for trout. Take a look at the western Wisconsin electrofish results and tell me if there is a lack of trout.

APRIL 12 WISCONSIN CONSERVATION CONGRESS MEETING INFO

Locals do you want a five bag across the entire Driftless area?

Do you want the opener to be first Sat in March versus first Sat in May? Give you the same opportunities as the catch and release crowd?

If the catch and kill season was to open earlier….why the need for a 5 fish limit? Why not just stay with the 3 fish/day? Personally, I think some streams do have too many fish in them and the size isn’t what it use to be maybe the 5 fish limit would help them.

Ozz that is a good point. Most don’t harvest trout anyway, especially fly anglers. So the impact would be minimal. Right now first Sat in March catch and release artificial only season. Many locals are wormers or spin fishermen that fish mainly so they can have a trout dinner. Yet they are
excluded! So making the opener first Sat in March would include all types of anglers.

There has been a ton of buzz going on about this on other boards including my own. I want this to be clear. The proposal is as follows for western and southwest Wisconsin:

1. First Sat in March would be the opener.
2. Streams that have a three bag limit would be changed to five.

The second item is critical. This does not change category 5 special regulation streams. Special regulation streams stay as they are!

Meetings are next Monday at 7pm. Get out and vote.