Hitting out-of-state fishermen with higher fees would present North Dakota's hundreds of license sellers with the complex task of trying to figure out what to charge them, a state legislator believes.

"It would be a logistical nightmare," said Sen. Ben Tollefson, R-Minot. "It would be almost unenforceable, unless every (fishing license seller) had a computer and was able to use it to make the relative comparisons."

The North Dakota Senate agreed, defeating legislation that would have required fishing license sellers to charge visitors the same amount that a North Dakota angler would pay to fish in the visitor's home state. If the other state's fee was less, the angler would pay North Dakota's standard nonresident rate, which is $35.

Senators voted 42-4 on Tuesday to reject the measure. Tollefson said it was impractical to expect North Dakota's fishing license sellers to retrieve data on what other states charged nonresidents so they could figure the correct fee.

"There's a great number of vendors of fishing and hunting licenses throughout the state, but most of these vendors are not really equipped to … make a comparison," Tollefson said.

The legislation's sponsor, Sen. Dwight Cook, R-Mandan, said the task wasn't as hard as Tollefson made it out to be.

"This might create a little bit more effort to determine what the price of the out-of-state license would be, but I don't think it's that difficult," Cook said. "I don't think it's virtually impossible."

The bill is SB2332.