Can you keep a largemouth and smallmouth bass in Minnesota?

Closes each year Catch-and-immediate-release only from September 8 through May 23 — the combined 6-fish harvest window runs roughly May 24 through September 7 each year. Minnesota's own regulation table words the largemouth and smallmouth rows slightly differently; this is our best-faith reading, see uncertain[] for the exact source wording.

14 inches, six a day combined — but only inside a roughly 15-week harvest window in early summer. Outside that window, bass fishing is legal but every fish must go back.

MN DNR source page

No minimum size and no closed season at all — a real contrast to the roughly 15-week harvest window that applies on the inland waters this site also tracks (Lake Minnetonka).

MN DNR source page

What we left out on purpose

• Minnesota's own bass table words the largemouth and smallmouth rows slightly inconsistently — the smallmouth row clearly closes the combined-harvest window on September 7 (catch-and-release only afterward), while the largemouth row describes a longer window 'when smallmouth season is open' that reads as extending further. We modelled the combined harvest window as the clearly stated May 24 – September 7 range; if Minnesota intends something more permissive for largemouth specifically, our figure is conservative rather than wrong in the risky direction.
• Season open/close dates tied to 'the Saturday nearest May 11' or similar floating rules are set to the 2026 calendar date and will drift by a few days in other years — flagged in each affected region's notes.
• Minnesota's northern pike, muskellunge and walleye zone and named-lake exceptions run for dozens of pages beyond Rainy Lake and Lake Minnetonka, the two waters this site actually reports on — the same restraint used for Colorado's, Kansas's and Michigan's named-water exceptions.
• Lake sturgeon, burbot, whitefish/cisco (both under separate netting-season rules), bullhead, gar, smelt and rough fish (bowfin, buffalo, carp, suckers — no limit) are not modelled here; none are the finfish this silo focuses on for either Rainy Lake or Lake Minnetonka.