TOPIC:

Couldn't sleep last night, my brain kept jumping around trying to solve numerous odd questions. One that came across my bow was, "If I buy an Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan license and go fish at the point where the state lines meet, can I fill a limit in each state?"

I can't imagine how it would play out, probably something with possession limits when you got back to port. I certainly wouldn't do this as I have enough work cleaning a single limit of fish, but it was a curious thought. I'm just throwing it out there for fun.

J-

That gets brought up every so often. Technically maybe yes but practically no. I wouldn't want to be caught fishing in one state and have more than the legal limit. Almost certainly a ticket.

I'm not a CO but I tell folks that want to pull multiple states limits in a single day to return to the dock with the first state's limit, put in a cooler, take a pic and label it with the proper state, time, date, then go back out with no fish on board and fish in the 2nd state

I have done it once for coho, fishing out of Michigan City in the morning and New Buffalo in the afternoon. Made it a lot simpler as it was fishing in different ports in two different states

I asked a CO this in regard to Perch since I like to go out of MC because it has a cleaning station. If Perch are biting in New Buffalo I like to fish there because of the 35 fish limit. So what if I leave MC, Fish NB and return to MC with my 2 man limit and someone at the cleaning station calls the CO. He said if I can show him my trails on my graph proving i caught the fish in NB it would be no problem. He also said if it appears I fished in Indiana for any period of time it could be a problem. How does he know how many I caught in Indiana vs MI? He doesn’t and can possibly write a ticket. So if I know they are on over the state line I stay there until limit. If it’s slow there and I come to indiana to finish I make sure the limit is an Indiana limit. Probably a good practice bringing limits in that jive with your port. In the case of Perch if you bring more that 15 per guy you better show you fished Michigan water.

Baron2150 wrote:

I asked a CO this in regard to Perch since I like to go out of MC because it has a cleaning station. If Perch are biting in New Buffalo I like to fish there because of the 35 fish limit. So what if I leave MC, Fish NB and return to MC with my 2 man limit and someone at the cleaning station calls the CO. He said if I can show him my trails on my graph proving i caught the fish in NB it would be no problem. He also said if it appears I fished in Indiana for any period of time it could be a problem. How does he know how many I caught in Indiana vs MI? He doesn’t and can possibly write a ticket. So if I know they are on over the state line I stay there until limit. If it’s slow there and I come to indiana to finish I make sure the limit is an Indiana limit. Probably a good practice bringing limits in that jive with your port. In the case of Perch if you bring more that 15 per guy you better show you fished Michigan water.

Yep... one correction though, as of April 1st, Michigan limit is 25 perch!! Going to be an adjustment for a lot of people that fish over the line and don't re-check the regs every year

I used to fish Walleye with my grandfather in the St Louis River between MN and WI. He had senior licenses in both states and I was young enough not to need one. The nearest launches were in MN and there were days that we'd limit out in WI, go back to the landing, he'd run the fish home and we'd head back out and fish MN. COs didn't question an older guy and a 13-year-old in a 14' rowboat with a 9.9HP.

Used to be legal to fish IL then fish in Indiana. No longer without dropping off the fish. Can't have more than one day's limit on the boat. That CO who would believe your "trails" on the sonar is unbelievable. He may be trolling for a pinch.

BNature wrote:

Used to be legal to fish IL then fish in Indiana. No longer without dropping off the fish. Can't have more than one day's limit on the boat. That CO who would believe your "trails" on the sonar is unbelievable. He may be trolling for a pinch.

I have to agree with BNature - specially since the trail does not show how long you spent in any spot or even if you stopped at all (other than maybe some heavier trails in one spot) but it still does not truly tell date, time or anything other than at some point you were there. I would not risk the fines - I always figure there are two places you get checked that you need to be legal - on the water while you have lines in the water and at the port. I have never been check on the water in Lake Michigan but have been checked several times at the ramp and I would not want to have to try to explain why I was over limit.