Minnesota · Fishing license · Cost
How much is a fishing license in Minnesota?
$25 a year if you live here, $51 if you don't.
Just passing through? Angling, 24 hours costs $14 — the annual pays for itself from about 4 of those.
Every license price
| License | Who | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Angling, annual (age 18 and over) | Resident | $25 |
| Angling, annual, combined license for a married couple Cheaper than two individual licenses. | Resident | $40 |
| Angling, three years | Resident | $71 |
| Angling, 72 consecutive hours You pick the period. | Resident | $14 |
| Angling, 24 hours You pick the period. The cheapest legal day of fishing in Minnesota for a resident. | Resident | $12 |
| Angling, ages 16 and 17 | Resident | $5 |
| Angling, annual, disabled veteran Under Minn. Stat. 97A.465, subd. 9. A resident veteran with a 100 percent service-connected disability gets a permanent angling license free instead — see the exemptions. | Resident | $5 |
| Angling, annual (age 18 and over) The statutory fee is $46 plus the $5 nonresident surcharge that Minn. Stat. 97A.475, subd. 7(b) adds to every nonresident fishing license except the 24-hour and the 16-to-17 youth license. | Visitor | $51 |
| Angling, seven consecutive days $38 plus the $5 surcharge. | Visitor | $43 |
| Angling, 72 consecutive hours $31 plus the $5 surcharge. | Visitor | $36 |
| Angling, 24 hours No surcharge on this one. The cheapest legal day of fishing in Minnesota for a visitor. | Visitor | $14 |
| Angling, annual, family $63 plus the $5 surcharge. Covers one or both parents and dependent children under 16. | Visitor | $68 |
| Angling, married couple, 14 consecutive days $49 plus the $5 surcharge. One of the two licensees picks the period. | Visitor | $54 |
| Angling, ages 16 and 17 No surcharge. A nonresident aged 16 or 17 must buy this to angle. | Visitor | $5 |
What comes on top
These are separate from the base license. Buying the license alone is not always enough.
| Trout-and-salmon stamp validation On top of the angling license. Minn. Stat. 97A.475, subd. 10 sets the fee at $10. | $10 |
|---|---|
| Walleye stamp validation Voluntary. The statute says a person "may agree to purchase" it; the money goes to walleye stocking. Nobody is turned away for lacking one. | $5 |
Fees inside the price
An issuing fee of $1 comes on top of each fishing license (Minn. Stat. 97A.485, subd. 6). The seller keeps it as commission. A stamp validation bought at the same time as a license carries no issuing fee; bought on its own it can carry 50 cents. So the checkout total is a dollar or two above the figures in the table.
How long your money lasts
A license year begins on the first day of March and ends on the last day of February (Minn. Stat. 97A.411, subd. 1). A three-year angling license is valid for the license year you buy it in and the two that follow.
What we could not pin down
Rather than fill these in from somewhere else, they stay open until DNR states them plainly.
- www.dnr.state.mn.us sits behind a bot check that refused every automated request at retrieval, in the browser as well. Prices, the license year, the age rule and the exemptions here therefore come from Minnesota Statutes chapter 97A — the schedule the DNR itself charges by — rather than from the DNR’s own summary pages.
- Nonresident prices are published here as the amount you pay: the statutory fee plus the $5 surcharge from Minn. Stat. 97A.475, subd. 7(b). The DNR’s own tables may show the fee alone.
- The $1 issuing fee on top of each license is in the statute but is not part of the license fee, so it is kept out of the table and named under the table instead.
- The commissioner picks the dates for Take a Kid Fishing Weekend and Take a Kid Ice Fishing Weekend each year. Those announcements live on the DNR pages that were unreachable, so the rule is published here without dates.
- Minnesota also sells lifetime angling licenses under Minn. Stat. 97A.473, priced by the age you buy at. They were not read at retrieval and are left out rather than published from memory.
