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Ohio Trout Fishing Regulations 2026

9 Ohio EPA aquatic life uses, 2,424 named waters — Ohio EPA's own data, compiled here so you can search it.

Last updated 2026-09-24 · rebuilt nightly from Ohio EPA data

Season dates

Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Division of Wildlife publishes Ohio's trout season dates in the Ohio 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 ODNR Division of Wildlife. What Ohio EPA does publish as data is the designation each water carries, and that is the section below.

Limits by species

Ohio's trout and salmon limits are written over the two groups together — “five trout and salmon”, “two trout and salmon combined” — so there is no per-species bag to print. The one species rule Ohio does write singly is the brook trout prohibition on the four eastern rivers, which is in the table above.

Ohio EPA aquatic life uses

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

Special regulations

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

• Daily limit · 5 trout and salmon
  The statewide limit. “It shall be unlawful for any person to take or possess singly or in the aggregate more than five trout and salmon daily, from any waters in this state.” OAC 1501:31-13-08(E). The four waters below and Lake Erie's drainage are cut to two.
• Daily limit · 2 trout and salmon combined
  “The Mad river or its tributaries in Clark, Champaign and Logan counties.” OAC 1501:31-13-08(E)(1)(a). Ohio's one substantial wild brown trout river.
  Mad River
• Daily limit · 2 trout and salmon combined
  “The Clear Fork branch of the Mohican river and its tributaries in Ashland and Richland counties.” OAC 1501:31-13-08(E)(1)(b). Note the county list: the length-limit rule below names Richland alone for the same water, and both are carried here as published rather than reconciled.
  Clear Fork Mohican River
• Daily limit · 2 trout and salmon combined
  “Clear creek located in Fairfield and Hocking counties from the first Fairfield county road 69 bridge East of the junction of county road 26 and county road 69 to U.S. route 33 Highway bridge in Hocking county.” OAC 1501:31-13-08(E)(1)(c).
  Clear Creek
• Daily limit · 2 trout and salmon combined, 1 September – 15 May
  “Lake Erie and its tributaries from September first through May fifteenth.” OAC 1501:31-13-08(E)(1)(d). That window is the steelhead run, and it is close to — but not the same as — the October-to-May window Ohio EPA's seasonal salmonid habitat use runs on. Two agencies, two dates, both carried.
• Closed · No brook trout
  “Take or possess brook trout from the Ashtabula river, Chagrin river, Conneaut river, Grand river, and their tributaries.” OAC 1501:31-13-08(E)(2). Unlawful on the four eastern steelhead rivers and everything that feeds them.
  Ashtabula River, Chagrin River, Conneaut Creek, Grand River
• Length limit · 12 inches, trout and salmon
  “The Mad river or its tributaries in Clark, Champaign and Logan counties” and “the Clear Fork branch of the Mohican river and its tributaries in Richland county.” OAC 1501:31-13-09(B)(1)-(2).
  Mad River, Clear Fork Mohican River
• Length limit · 12 inches, trout and salmon — the whole Erie basin
  “Lake Erie or its direct or indirect tributaries, including all the streams in the entire drainage basin, excepting therefrom Cold creek upstream of state route 2 located in Erie county.” OAC 1501:31-13-09(B)(3). The exception is the one piece of Ohio water that runs cold all summer on its own — the spring at Castalia.
  Cold Creek

Recent changes

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

Coldwater and warmwater rules

Ohio does not regulate trout fishing by classification. The Division of Wildlife's limits attach to four named waters — the Mad, the Clear Fork of the Mohican, Clear creek and Lake Erie's whole drainage — and everywhere else in the state the statewide five-fish limit applies. The class column above is Ohio EPA's aquatic life use under OAC 3745-1, which is a different agency describing what lives in the water rather than what you may keep, and no rule on this page turns on it. Ohio publishes no thermal classification at all, so nothing here should be read as a statement about how cold a stream runs.

Trout fishing near a town in Ohio

The same classification, asked the other way round: what Ohio EPA classifies as trout water within forty miles of one place, ranked by how much of it is in range. 71 towns in Ohio have one — a town is on this list when the water near it is not the water near a bigger town down the road.

• Trout fishing near Columbus
• Trout fishing near Cleveland
• Trout fishing near Cincinnati
• Trout fishing near Toledo
• Trout fishing near Akron
• Trout fishing near Dayton
• Trout fishing near Youngstown
• Trout fishing near Springfield
• Trout fishing near Middletown
• Trout fishing near Newark
• Trout fishing near Mansfield
• Trout fishing near Mentor
• Trout fishing near Delaware
• Trout fishing near Lancaster
• Trout fishing near Findlay
• Trout fishing near Marion
• Trout fishing near Brunswick
• Trout fishing near Lima
• Trout fishing near Bowling Green
• Trout fishing near Troy
• Trout fishing near Xenia
• Trout fishing near Athens
• Trout fishing near Zanesville
• Trout fishing near Sandusky
• Trout fishing near Oxford
• Trout fishing near Chillicothe
• Trout fishing near Alliance
• Trout fishing near Sidney
• Trout fishing near Steubenville
• Trout fishing near Ashtabula
• Trout fishing near Aurora
• Trout fishing near Tiffin
• Trout fishing near Portsmouth
• Trout fishing near New Philadelphia
• Trout fishing near Defiance
• Trout fishing near Mount Vernon
• Trout fishing near Washington Court House
• Trout fishing near Bellefontaine
• Trout fishing near Marietta
• Trout fishing near Greenville
• Trout fishing near Conneaut
• Trout fishing near Coshocton
• Trout fishing near Van Wert
• Trout fishing near Vermilion
• Trout fishing near Galion
• Trout fishing near Cambridge
• Trout fishing near Columbiana
• Trout fishing near Hillsboro
• Trout fishing near Martins Ferry
• Trout fishing near Georgetown
• Trout fishing near Blanchester
• Trout fishing near Montpelier
• Trout fishing near South Point
• Trout fishing near Lordstown
• Trout fishing near Delta
• Trout fishing near Gallipolis
• Trout fishing near West Union
• Trout fishing near Oak Harbor
• Trout fishing near Loudonville
• Trout fishing near Williamsburg
• Trout fishing near New London
• Trout fishing near Woodsfield
• Trout fishing near Edgerton
• Trout fishing near McArthur
• Trout fishing near Pomeroy
• Trout fishing near Jackson Center
• Trout fishing near Andover
• Trout fishing near Bainbridge
• Trout fishing near Junction City
• Trout fishing near Matamoras (New Matamoras)
• Trout fishing near Malta

Licence and the official documents

We do not reproduce ODNR Division of Wildlife's licence pages or its digest. These are the originals.

• Buy a Ohio fishing licence →
  Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Division of Wildlife, official portal
• None →
  The document this page is a searchable compilation of
• ODNR Division of Wildlife fishing regulations →
  Including any in-season change