If you are in this area, which is Zone 20, you can see, it’s kinda just the Lake Ontario area. You know, down by Bowmanville, Cobourg, Colborne, Trenton, Picton, Oakville, Burlington, St. Catharines. Those areas, in that Zone 20, they’ve changed their fishing regulations. So, now, in that area, they’ve changed largemouth bass and smallmouth bass.
So, largemouth bass... they have opened an early season for these guys. So, early season is January 1st to May 10th. You can’t keep any of them, so there’s no limits. So, if you catch it, you’ve still got to release it, but you can at least do catch and release on that early season. And then they have a regular season after that.
So, the regular season is, the third Saturday in June to December 31st. Sport fishing, you get six. Conservation, you get to keep two. So, that’s your largemouth bass.
Smallmouth bass, you might be a little upset about this. It doesn’t affect our area. Just to reiterate, this is only for Zone 20. But they’re gonna have an early season again for smallmouth bass. Where, from January 1st to May 10th, you’re doing catch and release again. You’re keeping 0-0, right? Conservation and sport, you can’t keep them, it’s catch and release only.
But from January 1st to May 10th, you’re able to fish smallmouth. The regular season is the first Saturday in July, so it’s actually pushed back. So, the first Saturday in July. So, before it was June, now we’re pushing it back into July. July to December 31st. So, the first Saturday in July, which I believe is a week since last year’s, to December 31st. Your limits are six fish for sport, two for conservation.
Now, let me tell you, look, if you get a conservation license, you can’t fish tournaments. So, that’s just something you guys should know, right? if you guys are thinking about fishing tournaments, make sure you get your sport license, right? Because you can’t have any more than two for conservation.
So, yeah. So, if you are in Zone 20, that’s pretty cool. You get to fish… You know, if you get ice in January, you could ice fish for bass, if that’s of interest to you, and then you can kinda fish pre-spawn. But once they get right into that spawn, it looks like they’ve cut them off completely. They even give smallmouth, because… as we’re aware here, at least in my zone, Zone 16 ad 17, they’re still spawning when our zone opens up. So, I kinda hope they actually do this as well.
It will be nice to get out and do some early pre-spawn bass and then let them do their thing.