Before you drive out
The BC fishing licence, and the rules that come with it
Two documents stand between you and a legal day on a BC lake. One is a licence you buy once a year. The other is a book of rules that changes by region, by water and sometimes mid season. This page says which is which, which number is yours, and where the real answer lives. It quotes no limit and no season for any single lake, on purpose, and the last section explains why.
Do you need one
If you are 16 or older and fishing fresh water in British Columbia, you need a basic freshwater fishing licence. The Province's wording is plain about the exception: a BC resident under 16 needs no licence and no stamps, and keeps their own quota. A visiting angler under 16 can fish without a licence while they are with a licensed adult.
Fresh water is the part this site is about. Salt water is a federal licence and a different set of rules, so if your day ends in the ocean, nothing on this page covers it.
What it costs, and the year it runs
The licence year runs 1 April to 31 March, so an annual licence bought in February is worth about six weeks. One day and eight day licences exist for exactly that reason, and an eight day costs a little over half the annual.
| Licence | BC resident | Non-resident Canadian | Non-resident alien |
|---|---|---|---|
| Annual | $41.15 | $62.87 | $91.44 |
| Eight day | $22.86 | $41.15 | $57.14 |
| One day | $11.43 | $22.86 | $22.86 |
| Annual, 65 and over | $5.71 | - | - |
| Annual, disability program | $1.14 | - | - |
There are two extra pieces beyond the basic licence, and which one applies is a question about where you are going rather than who you are. A conservation surcharge stamp is needed for some species, and a classified waters licence for certain rivers in certain months. Neither is usually a stillwater question, which is the water this site covers, but the Synopsis is where you check it.
Buy a licence, or read the Province's fee page. Sales moved into the Province's WILD system for the 2026-27 licence year, so if you are looking for the old e-licensing site and your angler number, that is where both went. A licence can also be bought over the counter from a retail vendor, which is worth knowing when you are already three hours up a gravel road with no signal.
The Synopsis is the rule book, and it is not this page
The Province publishes the Freshwater Fishing Regulations Synopsis, currently the 2025 to 2027 edition. It holds every freshwater sport fishing rule in the province: the provincewide defaults, then a section per region, then named exceptions for individual waters. On top of it the Province posts in season changes by region and by water body, which is how a closure or a quota change reaches anglers between editions.
That means a rule has up to three layers, and the most specific one wins: the provincewide default, then your region's section, then an exception written against the name of the lake you are standing on. A reader who checks only the first layer can be wrong about a lake while quoting the rules correctly.
The Synopsis and the in season changes, from the Province.
Finding your region
Every rule in the Synopsis is filed under a region number, so the first thing to know about a lake is which region it is in. The Province has eight, printed as nine because Region 7 is split into Omineca and Peace. This atlas carries 1,843 lakes across 9 of them, and each region page lists every lake we hold there with a seven day forecast on it.
| Region | Name | Lakes here |
|---|---|---|
| Region 1 | Vancouver Island | 193 |
| Region 2 | Lower Mainland | 133 |
| Region 3 | Thompson-Nicola | 342 |
| Region 4 | Kootenays | 162 |
| Region 5 | Cariboo | 328 |
| Region 6 | Skeena | 183 |
| Region 7A | Omineca | 235 |
| Region 7B | Peace | 54 |
| Region 8 | Okanagan | 213 |
Below the regions the Province works in management units, the numbers that look like 3-27 or 5-14. There are 205 of them behind the lakes in this atlas, and a unit is often the level a rule is actually written at. Every lake page here prints the unit that lake sits in, so you can take that number straight to the Synopsis instead of guessing from a map.
What this site holds, and what it does not
1 of the 1,843 lakes in the atlas carry rule text of their own, read from the Synopsis when that lake was researched, and 37 of them are catch and release water. That text is on the lake's own page, next to its depth, its fish and its forecast.
It is a copy, and a copy has a date. Where the lake page and the Synopsis disagree, the Synopsis is right and we are out of date. The honest way to use this site is the way we use it: the atlas finds you a lake and tells you what is in it, the Synopsis tells you what you may do there, and nothing here replaces reading it.
The one thing we deliberately do not publish is the Province's stocking record. That data is not ours to republish, so every lake page that mentions stocking sends you to the Freshwater Fisheries Society's own stocking report instead of carrying a figure we cannot stand behind.
This page is an explainer, not an authority
Nothing here is legal advice and nothing here is a rule. Fees, dates and the structure above were read from the Province's own pages and are linked at every step, and the Province can change any of them without telling this site. Before you keep a fish, check the Synopsis and the in season changes for the water you are on.
Open the map: 1,843 BC lakes, each with a seven day forecast
Where to go next
- All 9 regions, with every lake we cover in each.
- The fish of BC lakes, one page per species, with the lakes that hold each one.
- A year on a BC trout lake, which is the seasonal half of this question.
- The ice report and the lakes that stay open, for deciding whether there is open water to fish at all.