Zone 20 Fishing Regulations
Zone-wide open seasons for Fisheries Management Zone 20, from the 2026 Ontario Fishing Regulations Summary.
Zone 20 is Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence — the shoreline from Hamilton and Niagara through Toronto and Kingston down to Cornwall. Two things here read differently from the inland zones: brook trout and splake are not present, and bass is listed as two separate species rather than one combined row, each with an early catch-and-release window ahead of its own regular season.
These are the zone-wide seasons. Individual lakes and rivers in Zone 20 can carry their own rules on top of them, and this page does not list size limits or catch limits — those are on the official Zone 20 page, which is where you should check before you fish.
Zone 20 open seasons
Season dates only. Where the regulation is written as a rule (“third Saturday in June”), this year’s actual dates are worked out from it rather than typed in, so they cannot go stale.
| Species | Open season |
|---|---|
| Atlantic salmon | Open all year |
| Brown trout | Open all year |
| Channel catfish | Open all year |
| Crappie | Open all year |
| Lake sturgeon | Closed all year |
| Lake trout | January 1 to September 30 and December 1 to December 31 |
| Lake whitefish | Open all year |
| Largemouth bass | third Saturday in June to December 312026 season: June 20 to December 31 |
| Muskellunge | third Saturday in June to December 152026 season: June 20 to December 15 |
| Northern pike | January 1 to March 31 and first Saturday in May to December 31 |
| Pacific salmon | Open all year |
| Rainbow trout | Open all year |
| Smallmouth bass | first Saturday in July to December 312026 season: July 4 to December 31 |
| Sunfish | Open all year |
| Walleye and sauger combined | January 1 to March 1 and first Saturday in May to December 31 |
| Yellow perch | Open all year |
Largemouth and smallmouth bass each have an early catch-and-release season, January 1 to May 10, ahead of the regular seasons in the table. Catch-and-release rules and the limits that go with them are on the official zone page.
Worth knowing about Zone 20
American eel is a specially protected species and may not be caught or possessed under a recreational fishing licence.
What this page does not cover
Size limits, catch and possession limits, and the waterbody-specific exceptions are deliberately left off. They change from year to year and from lake to lake, and a number copied onto a personal website is exactly the kind of thing that goes out of date quietly and costs somebody a fine. The seasons above are the zone-wide rules; everything else belongs on the official page.
Always check the official summary before you fish. This page is a starting point, not a substitute for it — and you need a valid Ontario fishing licence.
Seasons transcribed from the 2026 Ontario Fishing Regulations Summary — Fisheries Management Zone 20. Rules last checked against the official page on September 14, 2026. Opening dates are calculated from the regulation, not typed in, so they stay correct as the years roll over.
