Bear Lake fishing report for 12/10/2024

[BearLakeFishGuy]

Spearing by the public is not legal and never has been, at least in my lifetime.

Spearing whitefish from a boat using an ice shanty pike spear is 100% legal in Michigan and is very popular on Crystal Lake (Frankfort, MI) in November/December.  Mostly done from the bow of a v-bottom tin boat.  Always done at night and a 12-volt waterproof light is lowered into the water to highlight them as the boat is trolled at a slow speed.  Maybe you were thinking scuba divers spearing them.  I don't know if that is legal or not.  My Frankfort friend has been spearing whitefish from a boat since before I met him in 1975.

Yes, I thought you meant underwater spearfishing using SCUBA equipment.  I have lot of friends who spearfish from their ice shacks in the winter for pike and I did that all through high school and college too.  I saw a guy get a ticket for using SCUBA equipment trying to spearfish.  At that time I was told by the CO that they can underwater spearfish but not use SCUBA equipment to do so (i.e. only using a mask/snorkel).  Maybe those regs have changed since that was 30+ years ago?  Also, Michigan has the "Designated Trout" waters rules which really complicates everything so you have to carry regs with you.  I have several good friends who are fish biologists back in Michigan and they agree the "designated trout" waters makes things overly complicated unless you are looking up the regs for each water.   If anyone thinks Utah fishing regs are complicated, then you have never been to Michigan that has trout stamps, designated trout waters for both streams and lake as well as 3-4 classifications of each designated trout lake or stream and different limits on waters when they were "inland" or "Great Lakes".  They had lots of closed seasons for different species for both inland or Great Lakes/connecting waters, and different opening days for each species depending on what part of the state you were in.  I was in college and had to study the regs every time we wanted to try another stream for steelhead/salmon or whether we could catch/keep walleye at a particular water or during a particular time of the year.