Walleye and sauger size limit in Minnesota

Closes each year Closed late February through the fishing opener in early-to-mid May (the exact date is the Saturday nearest May 11 and shifts by a few days each year)

No minimum size, six a day combined, only one walleye over 20 inches. The spring closure protects the spawn.

MN DNR source page

Closes each year Closed mid-April through the fishing opener in early-to-mid May — a much shorter spring closure than inland waters

A higher combined bag than inland Minnesota (8 instead of 6), but with a protective 18-to-26-inch release slot baked in — only fish under 18 inches or the single fish over 26 inches may actually be kept.

MN DNR source page

Closes each year Closed December 1 through the open-water opener (the Saturday nearest May 11 - May 9 in 2026); winter/ice-season rules are set separately later each year and are not covered here

Mille Lacs is co-managed by the state and Ojibwe Tribal Nations under an annual harvest-sharing agreement (105,300 lbs for state-licensed anglers in 2026), not a fixed regulation like most Minnesota lakes. The DNR can tighten this mid-season - including moving to catch-and-release only - if harvest is running ahead of the state's share; check the DNR's Mille Lacs page before a trip taken later in the season. No minimum size at all is unusual for a walleye fishery this famous, but the 17-inch floor plus the 1-over-20-inch subcap functions as Mille Lacs's real protection.

MN DNR source page

Closes each year Closed late February through the fishing opener in early-to-mid May, same as the statewide inland closure - Leech Lake only overrides the bag limit, not the season dates

Leech Lake sits on the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe reservation; state-licensed anglers follow this posted possession limit regardless. No largemouth/smallmouth bass override is posted for Leech Lake, so it follows the general Southern/North-central zone bass rule this site already tracks for Lake Minnetonka (14", 6 combined, seasonal harvest window).

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.
• 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.