You cannot fish for any fish in Michigan that is not in season. That is a general statewide regulation. For bass, that means no bass fishing at all until the catch and release season opens the last Saturday in April for the Lower Peninsula Great Lakes and inland lakes. The Upper Peninsula catch and release season starts May 15.
You can fish for bass until December 31 on non-designated trout waters. Some designated trout waters close to all fishing or something like that around the end of November. I'd have to check to be exactly sure because I rarely fish any designated trout waters so I don't check the latest lists or remember them well. It is not a ton of lakes of rivers. I have to read the new guide every year to refresh my memory about more localized regulations.
It does suck but we are working on it. Change is hard for some people but I have seen a large number of the bass anglers of all kinds now more accepting than ever of more bass fishing.
There are a few special bass seasons in Michigan on specific lakes and areas that are different like catch and release only (Wakeley Lake) or lakes in the UP limited to 1 bass and a shorter season, the season around Beaver Island and the other islands off of Charlevoix that are close to any bass fishing until July 1 each year. There are very few lakes or areas like this.
These few exceptions generally tend to be remote. We have 11,000 lakes and most of the Great Lakes set at the statewide bass seasons so the vast majority of the water is the overall catch and release season, and regular Memorial weekend catch and keep opener. The catch and keep opener doesn't accomplish a lot anymore since 80 to 90% of all bass anglers voluntarily release all or most of their bass.
The Lake St. Clair system is maybe the biggest exception because it does not open to catch and keep until the 3rd Saturday in June. It has the same catch and release opening day as the rest of the Lower Peninsula so all this really does is limit the catch and delayed release tournament season to 3 or 4 less weeks than the rest of the Lower Peninsula. This later opener appears to be from some very old ideas that started all the way back about 1904, and supported again by a local movement around 1970 before catch and release bass fishing took hold.
I hope one of these days we can just go bass fishing whenever we want in most of the state but for now, there is a closed season. I keep having to remind myself that it has only been 6 years since we even had the extra few weeks of legal catch and release bass fishing. Before 2006, you couldn't legally fish for bass anywhere in Michigan before Memorial weekend other than 6 test lakes for a while. Yet people have been practicing catch and release bass fishing before Memorial weekend for around 30 years. It's pretty much the same in most of the other states and provinces that have closed bass seasons.
Statewide closed seasons are not commonly used for bass. Definitely hard to argue they can be effective if lots of people ignore them anyway but that isn't the main reason closed bass seasons are not common. That is just one of the many reasons.
I used to think maybe it would never change in Michigan but that is overlooking the main principle of change. Which is: change is going to occur no matter what. It does seem to be the only thing you can really count. Change comes whether you want it not. All the time.
Now I do know we are going to get more bass fishing. It is just a matter of time - maybe limited only to how stubborn a few holdouts against change want to be. I guess we will all find out together one of these days. Meanwhile, make sure you check out the latest MDNR fishing guide. They change stuff in there every year too!
