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Minnesota Trout Fishing Regulations 2026

2 Chapter 6264 trout stream designations, 434 named waters and 319 classified stream segments — MN DNR's own data, compiled here so you can search it.

Last updated 2026-09-24 · rebuilt nightly from MN DNR data

415 of these waters have a full BirdTrout page with live water temperature, access and public land.

Fishing this week? The Minnesota fishing report carries live water temperatures from every reporting gauge in the state, updated hourly, broken down by region.

Season dates

Minnesota Department of Natural Resources publishes Minnesota's trout season dates in the Minnesota Fishing Regulations and does not publish them as data. We do not retype them here, because a season date typed from memory is the one error on a page like this that costs the reader a citation — read them at MN DNR. What MN DNR does publish as data is the designation each water carries, and that is the section below.

Limits by species

MN DNR does not publish Minnesota's stream trout limits split by species in any machine-readable layer: the statewide bag and the season come out of the fishing regulations booklet. What is published as data is the special-regulation layer below, and several of those rules do name a species — the south-east Driftless package is catch-and-release for brown trout with statewide rules for rainbow.

Chapter 6264 trout stream designations

Every class MN DNR uses, the waters in it, and what the class means. Counts are of named waters in our copy of the state's data.

Designated trout stream 415 named waters · 4,152 mi

Designated under Minnesota Rules Chapter 6264 — the state's legal list of trout water. The designation is a land-use protection, and MN DNR's own stated purpose for the layer is watershed and timber-harvest planning; the trout regulations then attach to it.

All 415 named waters

Designated trout stream tributary 98 named waters · 2,125 mi

A tributary protected under Chapter 6264 because of the designated stream it flows into. The rule makes no claim that trout live in it, and this page makes none either — but the water is legally protected and MN DNR says so.

All 98 named waters

Special regulations

Water carrying a rule of its own — a closure, a gear restriction, or a named regulation — with the water it applies to.

Recent changes

Nothing has moved since the previous build. This page is rebuilt nightly against MN DNR's data and this section fills in the night a season, a limit or a classification changes.

Coldwater and warmwater rules

Minnesota's trout rules attach to water designated under Minnesota Rules Chapter 6264, which is a protection statute rather than a habitat survey — the designation says the legislature protects this water, not that a biologist found trout reproducing in it. The special regulations below are a separate MN DNR layer and cover 319 segments; everywhere else the statewide stream trout season and limit apply, and those are in the digest only.

Trout fishing near a town in Minnesota

The same classification, asked the other way round: what MN DNR classifies as trout water within forty miles of one place, ranked by how much of it is in range. 57 towns in Minnesota have one — a town is on this list when the water near it is not the water near a bigger town down the road.

Licence and the official documents

We do not reproduce MN DNR's licence pages or its digest. These are the originals.

Verify before you fish. This page is our best-effort compilation from Minnesota Department of Natural Resources data, rebuilt nightly and current as of 2026-09-24. It is not legal advice and it is not the regulation. Emergency orders, in-season changes and the stretches an agency describes in words rather than in data will not all be here. Check the current rules at MN DNR before fishing, and tell us what is wrong here — hello@birdtrout.com.
Open the trout map →Every trout stream near you, with the regulation that applies drawn on it.