It is absolutely heinous that we cannot offer out of state residents access to a temporary fishing license online in 2026, while we could last year… This is an insidious and incredulous move by FWC leadership to subvert the proper channels by going through legislators. The FWC cannot change pricing for fishing licenses and they have been pushing for this increase for years, specifically for out of state residents as Florida has incredibly low prices compared to other states. However, they have been met without support for increasing prices from legislators as it’s viewed as an increase in taxes and everyone is concerned about that. While we agree that FWC as a whole does important work and we feel strong fishery science and management should be well funded and I personally support increasing prices on out of state resident fishing licenses, the temporary license was less than $20 which is a little low in my opinion. However, instead of going about this properly and engaging with stakeholders and working with folks to push for the increase, they decided in the dark of night, behind closed doors, without talking to anyone outside or even inside their own organization, they simply removed the option for out of state folks to get a temporary license online… so now their only option is to get to a DMV or tax collector office which isn’t realistic!