Wisconsin · Walleye, sauger and hybrids
Can you keep a walleye, sauger and hybrids in Wisconsin?
Yes, with limits
Lake Winnebago (and the wider Winnebago Chain: Lake Butte des Morts, Lake Poygan, Lake Winneconne, Partridge Crop Lake, Partridge Lake, Cincoe Lake)
Open year-roundNo minimum size at all on this system, unusual for a walleye fishery this well known - the WDNR's own lake-regulation lookup confirms it explicitly rather than the general handbook's statewide default. Catching a limit here and then fishing another Winnebago Chain lake the same day does not grant a second bag - the DNR's total-daily-bag rule caps the combined take at 5 walleye/sauger/hybrids across all waters fished that day.
Geneva Lake
Open todayCloses each year Closed March 8 through May 1 to protect spring-spawning walleye; season reopens May 2. Unlike this lake's bass rule, there is no catch-and-release carve-out during this closure.
An 18-inch minimum here, well above Lake Winnebago's no-minimum rule 65 miles north - two very differently managed walleye fisheries within the same state and the same Fangregel-Silo.
What we left out on purpose
- Lake Winnebago's own site data (data/reports/lake-winnebago.json) tracks Walleye only as a target species, so its largemouth/smallmouth bass rule (14-inch minimum, 5/day, open all year) is not modelled here even though the DNR page lists it - out of this site's tracked scope for that water. Northern pike was added despite neither water listing it as a tracked target either, specifically because Wisconsin's two-lake, two-species scope otherwise left each species page under the site's three-sibling-link minimum (see SESSION-ANLEITUNG.md, Silo-Regel) - pike is genuinely DNR-regulated at both waters, not invented to pad the count.
- Wisconsin's 'total daily bag limit' (a same-day, cross-water cap, e.g. 5 walleye/sauger/hybrids combined no matter how many lakes are fished) is genuinely different from the possession-limit multiplier concept (KS 3x, ND/UT 2x) used elsewhere in this silo, so no possessionLimit value is set for any Wisconsin region - inventing one would misrepresent how Wisconsin's rule actually works. The statewide 'total daily bag limit' table also lists a separate north-of-Hwy-10 (5) vs. south-of-Hwy-10 (2) default for northern pike; the per-lake numbers here come directly from each lake's own regulation page and are treated as authoritative over that general zone default.
- Muskellunge and flathead catfish carry their own seasons and, on Lake Winnebago, real minimum sizes (muskellunge 50", flathead catfish a 30"-minimum/36-42"-protected-slot combination) - not modelled since neither tracked water lists these as target species on this site; northern pike, by contrast, is modelled (see above) despite the same caveat, purely to satisfy the site's internal-linking minimum.
Other species in Wisconsin
Where to try today
- Geneva Lake 8/10 · Good
- Lake Winnebago 8/10 · Good