Keeping Native Fish

[thebbqguy]

I had a bright idea a few weeks ago that it makes a lot of sense to keep native fish vs. importing fish from another continent. But then I decided to research it a little bit to see if my idea was viable. It seems only barely so.

There are some beautiful natives that I'd be proud to keep starting with a pumpkinseed. But after spending a while on the DNR website my parade got rained on pretty quickly. If you obtain a collection permit you can keep them in a home aquarium, but you can't transport them anywhere else. You cannot sell them, etc. unless you have a commercial license.

Anyone else look into this and discover something different?

[Ron]

You're correct.

I'm not qualified to provide legal advice, so I'm not certain of this, but it's also my understanding that you can obtain game-species such as pumpkinseed with a legal fishing license, provided the game fish is of legal size, during a legal season. Transporting it anywhere outside of the legal season, I believe you'd get in trouble. Of course, it also cannot be sold.

[Michael Zebrowski]

Non-game fish (forage fish, minnows, darters, etc., can be collected and kept privately under a MI fishing license.  Game fish can be kept if caught legally and in season.  Commercial collection and commercial sales are a different story.