This weekend anyone is allowed to fish in Iowa without a valid fishing license.

It’s Free Fishing Weekend in Iowa June 1st through the 3rd. In Iowa, anyone under the age of 16 must have a valid fishing license to fish, but this weekend anyone can fish without having a license. Greene County Conservation Director Dan Towers says there are several areas people can fish publicly. One place is Spring Lake Park and another is along the Raccoon River.

“We’re lucky to have 40-miles of it running diagonal through the county. We’ve got seven accesses with pretty easy access to get to (the river) with boat ramps and some of them have fishing riffles that are very popular spots.”

Towers notes another public area in the county to fish is Pound Pits, which is two miles north of Grand Junction.

“There’s a series of gravel pits that we renovated. We killed out the carp and bullheads that were in there three of four years ago and stocked it with bass, bluegill and catfish.”

Towers says the Free Fishing Weekend is to encourage those adults to fish and parents to take their kids fishing without having to have a fishing license.