is fish collecting legal in wa

can people collect natives lke small/large mouth bass,rock bass,blue gill,sunfish anything.if its not legal i wont but i really like sunfish

Never checked into that - when I was a kid growing up there when we went fishing and something was still alive when we got home it went in the big cattle troughs LOL we had all kinds of different fish over the years in there

i imagine its alright.. ive seen plenty of ppl do it when out fishing. now i wouldnt get caught with a dolly varden trout.. or the other endangered trout species native to WA. other then that i really wouldnt worry about it.

If it's fishing season I don't think they care what you do with it as long as it's caught legally (as long as you're not re-introducing invasive species to different bodies of water).

To the best of my knowledge it is illegal to collect anything in Washington. Including invasive species. Any fish caught has to be killed before being removed from the water way. At least this was all the info I found when I looked into it last year when I wanted to start up a natives tank.

im sure you can keep fish legally caught and take them home. people have livewells on boats which is basically an aquarium to keep fish alive while your on the water. dont get caught cast netting or seining in your local lake or river though. probably get in some trouble then.

if the five year old can take home billy (a 2 inch small mouth bass) im sure nobody is gonna care too much sure you COULD get in trouble but you also COULD get in an accident tomorrow...

After reviewing the rules and regulations. It seems as just anything worth keeping is illegal to collect. You can collect food fish only.

http://wdfw.wa.gov/publications/01185/wdfw01185.pdf

yeah i have looked in to this as well

any game fish is off limits..if they catch you its big fines...and fishing license taken away ext.


bait fish they could care less about.


after bringing home my sculpin on a cray hunting trip i called around when i found out it might be illegal. they don't care about bait fish

but i would not want to be caught with a game fish in my tanks..or taking one home in a bucket alive.

We definitely need more rules and regulations. I like to feel the loving embrace of the government at all times... and I think I didn't feel it at about 2.30pm this afternoon.

God forbid someone find some hygro or anacharis in any of our tanks...

My sons old school has a class room with about 125gal tank with a lake Washington big mouth bass and a few perch!! They had a lot of high profile ppl come his school and its stool there and so is the school

I had some largemouth bass and sunfish in a 150g for 5 years. They all got so big. Didn't ever think you couldnt keep em if there in season. Oh well.