It’s time to begin planning your 2025 fishing trips, with fishing licenses available to purchase for this year’s adventures on the water.
Licenses valid April 1, 2025, through March 31, 2026, can be purchased through the new DNR Fish & Wildlife Activity Hub at GoOutdoorsIN.com, via the mail, or thorough in-person retailers listed at on.IN.gov/HuntFishLicenseRetailers.
Licenses can also be purchased at the 70th Annual Ford Indianapolis Boat, Sport and Travel Show, Feb. 19-23 at the Indiana State Fairgrounds.
With your 2025 fishing license, you can aim for a new state record, as was recently confirmed for Lafayette angler Isaac Switzer. His shortnose gar weighed 2 pounds, 15.9 ounces, beating the previous record by more than 10 ounces.
Switzer caught the fish on June 17, 2024, while using a Carolina rig and cut baitfish. It’s the second time in less than four years the species’ record has been broken, both times by catches on the Wabash River.
“I was fishing with my older brother on the Wabash River at night as we had done a hundred times before, targeting gar and catfish,” Switzer said of his record catch.
He said he instantly knew the fish was a shortnose gar record, having researched the record and catching similar size fish of the species previously.
Switzer considers gar one of the best Hoosier fish and hopes that the recent broken records raises awareness about them.
Gar are common throughout Indiana in rivers, streams, creeks, inland lakes, reservoirs, sloughs, and marshes. Anglers who want to target the species or another Indiana sport fish can use DNR’s Fisheries Status & Trends dashboard to find lakes and reservoirs where they are most abundant.
The previous shortnose gar record was set by Kyle Hammond with a 2-pound, 5.6-ounce fish caught in Wabash County in 2021. Hammond also holds the spotted gar state record, which he caught in 2024.
Learn more about the Indiana Record Fish program at on.IN.gov/recordfish.
Learn about purchasing a fishing license at on.IN.gov/fishinglicense