60-years-old? You may qualify for free fishing license for life

There are some advantages to getting older. At least in Alaska if you are into sport fishing.

That’s because Alaska residents 60-years-old or older qualify for a free fishing license which is valid for the rest of their lives.

Alaska Department of Fish and Game area sport fish manager Tyler Polum explains the program which provides qualifying Alaskans with a permanent free hunting, fishing and trapping license.

 

“You can do it online now which is pretty easy. Or you can get it done in our office. The way we check for residency is using the Permanent Fund Dividend file. So the only catch is if you didn’t get a Permanent Fund for any reason, you have to submit some paperwork that proves your residency. Otherwise it’s pretty easy to get. We can give you a temporary here in the office or you can get one online. And then you’ll get a little plastic card in the mail in a couple of weeks and it’s good for life.”

And you don’t have to buy a king salmon stamp to fish for kings either—it comes automatically with the senior resident card.

Polum says quite a few Kodiak residents apply for the licenses, though about one-third of those applying in person are duplicates for people who have lost their license card.

 

“I don’t know how many people get them because we don’t track local residency by license, it’s just ‘state license.’ But I know here in the office, not as much now that you can get them online, but previous to that when you had to get them in our office, we would issue somewhere between five and 15 of those a day for the summer months. So that can tell you kinda the scale of it. Quite a few. We would issue several hundred a season here in the office.”

 

For more information on the permanent senior license you can call Fish and Game, or go the ADF&G web page.