Posession limits and fishing different bodies of water

[tweedwolfscream]

So you mean like, if you caught a couple of whitefish somewhere else in the morning and then went to Simcoe for the evening bite with the whities still in your cooler?

I've wondered the same thing before. Simcoe is sort of a unique case of having limits/seasons that are so totally different from the rest of the zone, but zone boundaries can be crossed all the time. (In fact if you caught some whitefish on another lake on the same day as your Simcoe trip, they were probably in zone 15.) In addition to limits varying between seasons, so do seasons -- what if you caught some bows in a FMZ 15 lake and then went for whitefish on Simcoe, or any other FMZ 16 lake, where bows are closed in the winter? I guess the COs would probably have to go on how likely your story sounds. I mean, there's no limit to how many commercially-caught Georgian Bay whitefish you can buy at the fish market, yet there's no way to prove you didn't catch them.

Aside from how to prove you're following the rules, I've wondered how the rules actually apply when crossing zone boundaries. For example if I have a sport license (whitefish limit = 12 in FMZ 15, 2 on Simcoe) and I catch 4 in the morning in Muskoka, and keep them, and then go fishing on Simcoe in the evening, can I keep any there or am I considered to have limited out? What if I'd kept 11 or 12 in the morning? This is assuming I'm being honest and following the rules, provable or not.

I assume just having the 4 or 12 whities with you isn't breaking the rules? After all, if I were to catch some brookies through the ice in Muskoka and then bring them home to Toronto to grill, I like to think I wouldn't get busted for posession out of season, even though my BBQ sits in FMZ 16.