Montana · Fishing license · Cost
How much is a fishing license in Montana?
$21 a year if you live here, $100 if you don't. Montana sells no licence on its own: with the conservation licence and the AIS Prevention Pass that every angler must hold, a season comes to $31 for residents and $117.50 for visitors.
Just passing through? Fishing licence, one day (conservation licence and AIS pass extra) costs $14 — the annual pays for itself from about 8 of those.
Every license price
| License | Who | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Fishing licence, full season, ages 18 to 61 (conservation licence and AIS pass extra) Nobody fishes on this alone. With the $8 conservation licence and the $2 AIS Prevention Pass that Montana requires of every angler, a resident season costs $31. | Resident | $21 |
| Fishing licence, full season, ages 12 to 17 (conservation licence and AIS pass extra) With the $4 youth conservation licence and the $2 AIS pass, $16.50 in total. | Resident | $10.50 |
| Fishing licence, full season, age 62 and over (conservation licence and AIS pass extra) Same half rate as the youth licence. With the $4 senior conservation licence and the $2 AIS pass, $16.50 in total. | Resident | $10.50 |
| Fishing licence, two consecutive days (conservation licence and AIS pass extra) The same $5 for every resident age band. With an adult conservation licence and AIS pass, $15 in total — so the season licence pays for itself on the third outing. | Resident | $5 |
| Fishing licence, resident with a disability (conservation licence and AIS pass extra) You must be permanently and substantially disabled. Applications are on the FWP site but can only be certified at a regional FWP office or by post. | Resident | $10.50 |
| Lifetime fishing licence for the blind Application on the FWP website. | Resident | $10 |
| Fishing licence, full season (conservation licence and AIS pass extra) With the $10 nonresident conservation licence and the $7.50 nonresident AIS pass, $117.50 in total. | Visitor | $100 |
| Fishing licence, five consecutive days (conservation licence and AIS pass extra) With conservation licence and AIS pass, $73.50 — against $117.50 for the season. | Visitor | $56 |
| Fishing licence, one day (conservation licence and AIS pass extra) The base fee is cheap, the two compulsory extras are not: $31.50 for a single day. | Visitor | $14 |
What comes on top
These are separate from the base license. Buying the license alone is not always enough.
| Conservation licence, resident adult Required alongside the fishing licence. FWP: "To fish in Montana, most anglers need two licenses: Conservation license" and a fishing licence. It also gets you onto most state land, fishing access sites and wildlife management areas. Ages 12 to 17 and 62 and over pay $4. | $8 |
|---|---|
| Conservation licence, nonresident Same requirement for visitors, at any age. | $10 |
| Angler AIS Prevention Pass, resident FWP: the Aquatic Invasive Species Prevention Pass "is required for all individuals who fish in Montana". | $2 |
| Angler AIS Prevention Pass, nonresident Same pass, higher rate for visitors. | $7.50 |
Fees inside the price
Montana charges in three parts and all three are compulsory: the fishing licence, the conservation licence and the AIS Prevention Pass. A resident season therefore comes to $31, a resident two-day to $15, a nonresident season to $117.50, a nonresident five-day to $73.50 and a single nonresident day to $31.50. Anglers 11 and under need none of the three.
How long your money lasts
FWP: "A valid fishing license enables you to fish from March 1 through the end of February of the following year." Buy in January and you get six weeks.
What we could not pin down
Rather than fill these in from somewhere else, they stay open until FWP states them plainly.
- The 2026 regulations booklet read at retrieval still carried a DRAFT marker on its licensing pages. Every figure taken from it was cross-checked against the live FWP licence pages, which agree.
- Whether the conservation licence and the AIS Prevention Pass are charged once a year across all licence types, or again with each short-term licence, is not stated on the pages read. The totals given here assume once per licence purchase.
- FWP publishes no transaction or issuing fee on the pages read, so nothing of that kind is named here.
- Montana also sells paddlefish tags and a bull trout catch card, which the free weekends explicitly do not waive. Their prices were not read and are left out.
