Minnesota · Northern pike
Northern pike size limit in Minnesota
You can keep one today — within these limits
Southern Zone inland (includes Lake Minnetonka)
Open today| Size limit | 24 inches and up | total length |
|---|---|---|
| Daily bag | 2 | per person per day |
| Possession | 2 | total you may hold |
Closes each year Closed late February through the fishing opener in early-to-mid May
24 inches, two a day — Minnesota splits pike into three angling zones (Northeast, North-central, Southern) with different rules in each; Lake Minnetonka falls in the Southern Zone, the simplest of the three. A statewide possession cap of 10 pike applies regardless of zone.
Rainy Lake (Canada–Minnesota border water)
Open year-round| Size limit | No size limit stated | total length |
|---|---|---|
| Daily bag | 3 | per person per day, of which only 1 may be over 40 inches; pike from 30–40 inches must be released immediately |
| Possession | 3 | total you may hold |
No minimum size and open year-round, but a protective 30-to-40-inch release slot — only smaller fish or the single trophy over 40 inches may be kept.
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.
- Minnesota's 2026 season introduced a genuinely continuous bass season statewide (no true closure anywhere, ever - catch-and-release fills every gap between harvest windows); this was cross-checked directly against the DNR's own February 23, 2026 press release and does not change the harvest-window dates already modelled here, only confirms there is no true closed season to correct.
Other species limits in Minnesota
Where to try today
- Gull Lake 6/10 · Biting
- Lake Minnetonka 6/10 · Biting
- Lake Winnibigoshish 7/10 · Biting
- Leech Lake 6/10 · Biting
- Mille Lacs Lake 6/10 · Biting