Nature and waters in northern Sweden

Northern Sweden is an enormous land area with uncounted lakes, rivers and jokks, Sami for creek, all offering world-class fishing in a fascinating setting. The harsh massif, the magnificent alpine tundra, the immense taiga or boreal forest reaching down to the coast and the archipelago in the Gulf of Bothnia all join to give the landscape its special cachet. There is no counterpart in Europe for the combination of this outstanding nature experience linked to high-class fishing, making the area a unique fishing destination. The area is rightly called the last European wilderness.

 

“Native to this region, the Sami have long lived and worked here, with herding reindeer and fishing as their main sources of income,” relates Anna. “They are still highly active and offer many chances for visitors to learn about their culture and their way of living.” The alpine environs in the western parts of northern Sweden must be experienced. As you leave the boreal forest towards the higher terrain, you come into a low-growing birch forest prior where the bare tundra opens with low or no vegetation. 

     

   The forest lakes offer excellent fishing for trout, grayling, pike and perch.

  

At this point the barren higher alpine massif rises over mystical mountain lakes and untouched alpine creeks. This is a very special setting with its barren landscapes and snow-capped mountaintops. Its primary attraction is its genuine fishing for char and brown trout, often in untouched lakes and free-flowing waterways high up and sometime a kilometre over sea level. Here, north of the Arctic Circle, the nights are bright much of the summer and anyone can fish all day and all night under the light of the midnight sun in early summer and in the glow of the Northern Lights in autumn nights. Sven adds, “The flora is very varied and is lower and lower the higher up the mountain sides you go.” There is a lot of water up here and most of them are clear and cool for most of the summer. That means that since the water remains in the fish’s comfort zone, they do not disappear into deeper, cooler water. According to Anna, “Here in the forest there are lots of forest lakes and creeks, large as small, with good pike fishing, many barely visited in spite of their fine potential for sport fishing. It’s even possible to focus on perch, grayling and brown trout and even record-sized roach. Large forests are the rule here, dominated by spruce and pine.”

   

   Summer nights in Lapland are seldom completely dark and the days can be nice and sunny. 

   

Running waters

Northern Sweden boasts some of Europe’s largest unregulated rivers, ones that run freely from source to the coast. They are the Kalixälven, Torneälven, Piteälven and Vindelälven rivers – mighty waterways that start as mere creeks and rivulets in the alpine heights and end their runs in the Baltic Gulf of Bothnia. In their upper reaches grayling and brown trout dominate, in their lower flows closer to the sea you find salmon and sea trout.

“If you want to get the feel of untouched nature, its silence, its solitude,” says Sven, “you’ve come to the right place.” The coastline in northern Sweden is frequently interrupted by island shields where fishing for pike and grayling is at its best. “This fishing biotope is found in front of the mouths of the large rivers,” according to Sven. “Here you are seldom or never disturbed by other fishermen.”

 

 

Stories from north Sweden

• Nature and waters

  Northern Sweden is an enormous land area with uncounted lakes, rivers and jokks, Sami for creek,...

• Weather and seasons

  Northern Sweden and what in common parlance is called Lapland is an immense area embracing a thir…

• Species and fishing

  For anyone seeking silence and immense spaces, the alpine world of northern Sweden is a fulfilme…