Rules & code

While free fishing cannot be found in Finland there is actually no such thing as trespassing here; as long as you stay out of the immediate vicinity of habited houses and tilled fields etc., you can walk and even camp quite freely in the wild. Be careful with open fire though. During a dry summer season there is a high risk of forest fires and it's quite common that only special sheltered fire-sites may be used. You can gather and eat all the wild berries and mushrooms you like. Special nature reserves are of course an exception. This public access principle is called "everyman's rights", an unwritten code of true sportsmanlike behavior derived from the ancient Finnish hunting and fishing tradition. Respect and study nature at its own terms and it will reward you again and again.

As a rule, there are only a few restrictions for fishing once you have your licenses and permits ready. Most fish species have a designated minimum size and/or limited season (see below). The size of flies and lures might be limited in order to protect small fish. However, this is not common. Some fisheries may have bag limits while some have not. Waters managed by Forest and Park Service have most often a bag limit of three fish per day. Catch-and-release fishing is no longer a novelty, but accepted as a correct practice by many environment-conscious fishermen on most waters. While some rivers and a few lakes have been designated as fly only, spinning is usually allowed but worms and other such baits are strictly forbidden on all rivers (not lakes) having populations of trout, salmon and whitefish.
 

Trout & other salmonids

 
Fishing for trout is the backbone of Finnish flyfishing. In Finland, a trout is usually the common European brown trout (Salmo trutta). In Finnish, it's called "taimen", but note that this is not the Siberian Hucho taimen, an entirely different fish. We have just the good old brownies, although some of them grow quite big. A good sized fish is hard to define, but anything above 1,5 kilos (3 to 4 lbs) should put a happy smile on your face. You can find brown trout practically everywhere, even in the Baltic Sea, where some of the biggest seatrout (sea-run browns) in the world live. They can be difficult to identify properly, due to their great size (up to 15 kilos/30 pounds) these fish are frequently confused with salmon.

Some riparian owners, e.g. F.P.S. together with many small stillwater managements, stock with sizeable rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss), which cannot usually reproduce naturally in our conditions. Even more rare is the pretty brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis), which is also stocked in a few places. To further confuse you dwarf brown trout living in the smallest creeks and ponds in Lapland is called "purotaimen", which roughly translates to brook trout. So usually, if brook trout is claimed to be found in any particular piece of water, you'd better to check out what the species in question really is.

In the north you may encounter a couple of other char, usually our original arctic char (Salvelinus alpinus) or the stocked lake trout (Salvelinus namaycush), both of which are primarily lake dwellers. Lake trout is very difficult to catch with a fly as it prefers very deep water but arctic char regularly feeds on top and takes dry flies and nymphs eagerly. You have to be fast because flies are rejected immediately when the steel deception is felt. You can also meet char in rivers flowing in and out of some of the best high elevation char lakes. It's a very beautiful and challenging fish and well worth the long journey to the remote areas where it dwells. All northern chars grow rather slowly and a typical fish of ½ kg (1 lb) can be quite old.

Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) is the king of fishes in Finland also. River Teno is one of the premier salmon rivers in the world. Many southern rivers have no longer enough natural reproduction and so they have to rely heavily on hatcheries. Some select waters have populations of landlocked salmon (Salmo salar sebago), which has survived since the last Ice Age. It is nowadays a rare and endangered fish. This freshwater salmon (also known as "Saimaa salmon" after the big Lake Saimaa) is highly appreciated as a gamefish and some hatcheries produce fry and smolt of this fish for stocking purposes.

Grayling (Thymallus thymallus) is another of our native gamefishes. Note that our grayling is of the common European type, not of the arctic one. It has less broad range than brown trout, being more or less limited to the north of the country. Some fine populations can be found in central and eastern Finland, too, but in Lapland it is a very common fish. Most grayling caught weigh between ½-1 kilos (1-2 lbs), but specimen fish up to and over 2 kilos (4,5 lbs) can be found.

Most lakes and many rivers in Finland also have good populations of several species of whitefish (also known as sik, powan, gwyniad, Coregonus spp.), which are eagerly fished with flies and highly appreciated as delicious eating. They usually demand very small flies in their small, soft mouths and skilful angling is needed to catch a trophy (above 1 kg/2 lbs) whitefish. Whitefish in lakes are often very selective to fly size and presentation and anglers new to this sport are known to frustrate easily with them. Whitefish also reject artificial flies very rapidly so fast reaction time helps a lot. River fishing is considerably easier.
 

Minimum sizes & seasons

Based on the current Fisheries Law, common brown trout and seatrout have both minimum size of 40 cm (16 inches), grayling is legal above 30 cm (12 inches) and salmon above 60 cm (24 inches). In the north of Finland the limit for brown trout is nowadays also 40 cm (16 inches) and for grayling 30 cm (12 inches). Arctic char has a law-defined minimum takeable size, too, which is 30 cm (12 inches) in the north. However, the limit is 40 cm (16 inches) in the Lake Inari. Dwarf browns (above mentioned "purotaimen" or "brook trout") don't have any size limit at all. This may cause some confusion, but usually it is rather easy as long as you remember that practically nowhere do true browns and these dwarf browns exist together. Treat all fish that look like brown trout as true brown trout, that keeps you out of trouble. There are often some local variations to the above mentioned rules, so it's advisable to check what is legal when buying your permit.

Rainbow trout and other introduced species don't usually have any closed season or minimum size at all, but most waters close totally after 10th of September. Reason for this is that season for all autumn-spawning trout, char and salmon is closed between 11th of September and 14th of November. Some riparian owners allow grayling fishing in the autumn and some others don't have any closed season at all.

Many faster waters in central and southern Finland remain open through the whole winter, so it is possible to have some fishing even then. Be warned, it is likely to be fairly cold. Splendid dry-fly fishing can be had when the early stoneflies hatch in late March or early April. Most fisheries open officially after becoming ice-free (late April or early May in south/central Finland), quite often 1st of May, in the north 1st of June.