A Wyoming fishing licence runs a full year from the day you buy it
Wyoming Fishing License: $27.00 and When It Expires
Every price Wyoming Game and Fish Department prints, when the licence stops working, the age it is first needed, the days it is lifted and the stamps that ride on top of it.
$27.00
Resident annual licence
Resident 12 Month Fishing License
365 day
Which clock it runs on
runs a year from the day you buy it
365 days
A licence bought 1 December 2026
against 395 in Pennsylvania and 30 in West Virginia
8 / 1 / 2
Prices, free days and stamps here
each one linked to the page it was read from
The answer
What a Wyoming fishing license costs, and how long it lasts
365 dayWyoming Game and Fish Department
Wyoming runs a full year from the day it is bought, so a licence bought on the first of December is worth a full year. It stops on twelve consecutive months from the date of purchase. The ordinary resident annual licence is $27.00, sold as Resident 12 Month Fishing License. The same purchase on the same day buys about 13 months in Pennsylvania and about 4 weeks in West Virginia.
Wyoming sells a twelve month fishing licence rather than a calendar year one, so it runs from the day you buy it to the same date the next year, and the conservation stamp that goes with it runs on the same clock.
Wyoming charges residents $27.00 for Resident 12 Month Fishing License. Someone from over the line pays $102.00, which is 3.78 times as much. Wyoming Game and Fish Department prices 8 licences in all, and every one of them is in the table below with the row it was printed in.
In Wyoming a licence is needed from 14. The commonest threshold in the country is 16, so Wyoming is not one of the ordinary ones here. There is a senior rate from 65, and it costs nothing.
Wyoming publishes 1 day in the year when the licence requirement is lifted. What is lifted is the licence, not the rules: seasons, limits and size rules run as they always do, and a few states still want a free permit pulled first.
A licence is not always the whole bill. Wyoming sells 2 further stamps and endorsements on top of it, each covering water or a species the ordinary licence does not.
Wyoming Game and Fish Department sells licences through its own online counter.
Wyoming runs a full year from the day it is bought, which means the month a licence is bought in makes no difference at all. The same purchase on the same morning is worth 395 days in Pennsylvania and 30 in West Virginia, a spread of 365 days across the country for what is often the same twenty five dollars.
365 days
What an annual licence bought on 1 December 2026 still has in it, which is a full year.
Drawn against 395 days, the longest in the country.
When a Wyoming license expires
Wyoming sells a twelve month fishing licence rather than a calendar year one, so it runs from the day you buy it to the same date the next year, and the conservation stamp that goes with it runs on the same clock.
The license or stamp shall be valid for twelve (12) consecutive months from the date of purchase.
A state rarely sells one licence. Wyoming Game and Fish Department prices 8 of them, and the duration beside each is the half that decides what the money is actually worth: a short term licence at a third of the annual price is the better buy for a weekend in almost every state in the country, and in 10 states it is the better buy in December for a lot longer than a weekend.
Each price below carries the line it was printed in. Several agencies print a base fee and charge a larger one at the counter once an issuing or transaction fee is added, so the quoted line is the thing to read rather than the number alone.
Resident 12 Month Fishing License
$27.00
Resident annual12 month
Resident 12 Month Fishing License $27.00
2026 Wyoming Fishing Regulations, page 1, Wyoming Game and Fish Commission, read September 23, 2026. Read it at the source
Nonresident 12 Month Fishing License
$102.00
Nonresident annual12 month
Nonresident 12 Month Fishing License $102.00
2026 Wyoming Fishing Regulations, page 1, Wyoming Game and Fish Commission, read September 23, 2026. Read it at the source
Resident Daily Fishing License
$6.00
Resident short termdaily
Resident Daily Fishing License $6.00
2026 Wyoming Fishing Regulations, page 1, Wyoming Game and Fish Commission, read September 23, 2026. Read it at the source
Nonresident Daily Fishing License
$14.00
Nonresident short termdaily
Nonresident Daily Fishing License $14.00
2026 Wyoming Fishing Regulations, page 1, Wyoming Game and Fish Commission, read September 23, 2026. Read it at the source
Nonresident Five Consecutive Day Fishing License
$56.00
Nonresident short termfive consecutive days
Nonresident Five Consecutive Day Fishing License $56.00
2026 Wyoming Fishing Regulations, page 1, Wyoming Game and Fish Commission, read September 23, 2026. Read it at the source
Resident Lifetime Pioneer Fishing License (65 years of age and 30 total years of residency)
Free
Seniorlifetime
Resident Lifetime Pioneer Fishing License (65 years of age and 30 total years of residency)3,4 Free
2026 Wyoming Fishing Regulations, page 1, Wyoming Game and Fish Commission, read September 23, 2026. Read it at the source
2026 Wyoming Fishing Regulations, page 1, Wyoming Game and Fish Commission, read September 23, 2026. Read it at the source
Who needs one
A Wyoming license is needed from age 14
29 states set the threshold at 16 and the youngest in the country is 9, so this is a number worth checking rather than carrying across a state line. The agency’s own sentence usually carries a condition the number alone does not: who a child has to be with, whose limit their fish count against, and whether the age is measured on the day or across the licence year.
The age rule in Wyoming
In Wyoming a licence is needed from 14. The commonest threshold in the country is 16, so Wyoming is not one of the ordinary ones here. There is a senior rate from 65, and it costs nothing.
Fishing licenses are required - for resident and nonresident anglers 14 years of age or older. ... Resident youth under age 14 do not need a license and their creel limit is the same as those requiring licenses.
A public fishing area ramp with the state’s own board standing where the concrete meets the water. Everything on these pages works the same way: a figure is here because an agency printed it, and the sentence it was printed in travels with it. Fifty agencies were read on one day, and between them they publish 417 separate licences. “Lake Paradise boat ramp, Paradise PFA”, Michael Rivera, CC BY-SA 4.0
The days it comes off
Wyoming has one free fishing day
What is lifted is the licence and nothing else. Seasons, limits, size rules and closed water all run exactly as they always do, and several states still want a free permit pulled before the day. Nationally 42 states publish 62 of these and 8 publish none at all, so a free day in a neighbouring state does not travel.
June 6, 2026
anyone, with every regulation, creel limit and closure still in force
You can fish without a license on Free Fishing Day! We hope you take this opporunity to go fishing with family and friends. All fishing regulations, creel and size limits, gear restrictions and stream closures remain in affect.
2026 Wyoming Fishing Regulations, Wyoming Game and Fish Commission, read September 23, 2026. Read it at the source
What the licence does not cover
The 2 Wyoming stamps sold on top of a license
A stamp is a separate purchase and a licence alone does not carry it. This is the line most often crossed without anyone meaning to, usually on the first morning of a trip into water the angler does not normally fish. Where a state stocks trout, the hatchery is generally funded out of the stamp rather than out of the licence, which is why the stamp exists at all.
What Wyoming Game and Fish Department sells on top of a licence, with the water or the species each one covers. A stamp is a separate purchase: a licence alone does not carry it.
fishing the whole of Flaming Gorge on a Utah resident licence
The other half of what a licence fee buys. Agencies stock on a calendar, which is part of why so many of them run a licence year that starts somewhere other than January: eight states end theirs on 31 March, five on the last day of February, and two in late summer, after the season they were sold for has finished. “Hatchery truck at Stackhouse (22557766742)”, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Southeast Region, Public Domain
How Wyoming compares
19 states run a year from purchase, 10 run a calendar year
Wyoming runs a full year from the day it is bought. Across the country 19 states run a full year from the day of purchase, 16 run to a fixed date on their own calendar, 10 run the calendar year, one sells the same licence on two clocks, and 4 publish no rule at all.
On price, the national middle is $25.00, with Hawaii at $5 at one end and California at $64.54 at the other. A visitor pays anywhere from 1.25 times the resident price in Massachusetts to 5.71 times in Arkansas.
Wyoming fishing license questions
Wyoming charges residents $27.00 for Resident 12 Month Fishing License. Someone from over the line pays $102.00, which is 3.78 times as much. Wyoming Game and Fish Department prices 8 licences in all, and every one of them is in the table below with the row it was printed in.
Wyoming runs a full year from the day it is bought, so a licence bought on the first of December is worth a full year. It stops on twelve consecutive months from the date of purchase. The ordinary resident annual licence is $27.00, sold as Resident 12 Month Fishing License. The same purchase on the same day buys about 13 months in Pennsylvania and about 4 weeks in West Virginia. Wyoming Game and Fish Department writes: “The license or stamp shall be valid for twelve (12) consecutive months from the date of purchase.”
In Wyoming a licence is needed from 14. The commonest threshold in the country is 16, so Wyoming is not one of the ordinary ones here. There is a senior rate from 65, and it costs nothing. The agency writes: “Fishing licenses are required - for resident and nonresident anglers 14 years of age or older. ... Resident youth under age 14 do not need a license and their creel limit is the same as those requiring licenses.”
Yes. Wyoming publishes 1 day in the year when the licence requirement is lifted. What is lifted is the licence, not the rules: seasons, limits and size rules run as they always do, and a few states still want a free permit pulled first. The agency sets the first of them out this way: “You can fish without a license on Free Fishing Day! We hope you take this opporunity to go fishing with family and friends. All fishing regulations, creel and size limits, gear restrictions and stream closures remain in affect.”
A licence is not always the whole bill. Wyoming sells 2 further stamps and endorsements on top of it, each covering water or a species the ordinary licence does not. 12 Month Conservation Stamp costs $21.50 and covers required alongside any 12 month fishing licence. 44 states sell something like it.
$102.00 for Nonresident 12 Month Fishing License, against $27.00 for a resident. Nonresident annual prices across the country run from $20.00 in Delaware to $174.14 in California, and short term licences are often the better buy for a single trip.
Wyoming Game and Fish Department sells licences through its own online counter. Every price and rule here was read off Wyoming Game and Fish Department's own pages on September 23, 2026, and each one is linked beside the sentence it came from.
No. Each state licenses its own water, which is why the prices here are the prices for Wyoming alone. It is also why buying in December is a different decision in every state: the same purchase on the same day is worth about 13 months in Pennsylvania and about 4 weeks in West Virginia.
Wyoming Game and Fish Department read September 23, 2026, with every price, rule, day and stamp above linked to the page it came from. Fees change by legislation and by rule, usually with effect from the start of a licence year, and the agency page is what governs on the day.
