Charter fishing licence

About the charter fishing licence

You will need a charter fishing licence if you run fishing trips in offshore waters and you charge a fee for the service.

Charter fishing is defined as a trip where a charter or transport operator takes paying passengers to, or across, a site in offshore waters to conduct fishing activities.

Charter fishing includes:

• spear fishing
• game fishing
• tag-and-release fishing
• demersal (bottom) reef fishing
• guided fishing
• dive charters that also take fish
• any other fishing activity in offshore waters whenever a fee for service is charged.

Note: Fishing equipment does not have to be supplied by the operator, nor does fishing have to be the main purpose of the trip, to be considered charter fishing.

Apply for a new charter fishing licence

To apply for a new licence, you must submit a charter fishing licence application to Fisheries Queensland.

If your application is successful, you will receive a daily logbook. It is compulsory to record details of your daily charter fishing activities in this logbook and send it to Fisheries Queensland on a regular basis.

If your application affects an area subject to a native title claim, Fisheries Queensland may have to notify the relevant Indigenous organisation about your proposed operations. If so, you might have to supply additional information, which may delay processing of your application.

Permanent and temporary transfer of a charter fishing licence

To register the permanent or temporary transfer an existing licence to another person, you must submit a register transfer of charter fishing licence application.

If it’s a temporary transfer, this should be noted on the form. The temporary transfer period should also be included (i.e. 'transfer from' date, and 'transfer to' date).

Third-party interests

If there is a third-party interest recorded against a licence, their permission to transfer the licence is required before the application can be progressed.

Transfer duty

You may have to pay Queensland transfer duty. Contact the Queensland Revenue Office for more information.