Yessir. Milwaukee boy here. Our opener is this Saturday.
Our bass season is only closed for like a month and a half, and ice out isn't generally until late March, so we only have a month of down time. It still sucks, we should at least be able to catch and release.
All gamefish in Wisconsin except for a few bodies of water is closed from sometime in March through the first Saturday in May. If you're fishing with a spinner, crank, anything like that, you're obviously not pan fishing, so it's pretty easy to tell you're poaching.
Also, DNR here play hide and seek. A few times I've been fishing a bank and a game warden comes popping out of a bush as soon as I pull in a fish and ask's for my license etc.. It's pretty annoying, it seems like they are more interested in hassling the good guys instead of catching snaggers, or people netting in the rivers...
