Fishing Licenses

To fish in Norway's rivers or lakes requires purchasing the proper licenses. Here are a few things to know:

• To fish in rivers or lakes for Salmon, Sea Trout, or migratory Char, you need both a license from the state (the fiskeravgift) and one applicable to the individual body of water. You can buy the state license at a Norwegian post office, or online at the Norwegian Environment Agency. The cost for an individual license as of 2019 is 272 NOK (Norwegian Kroner), about 32 US dollars at 2019 exchange rates.
• Licenses to fish in specific bodies of water are sold by private property owners, or by the state for waters within state lands. There are a huge number of different license areas and sellers. While some fishing licenses cover numerous bodies of water under a single license, others cover only a single section of an individual river, sometimes just one beat on the river. Unfortunately, this can make researching where and how to buy licenses a challenge. A single river can have a dozen different license areas and sellers.
• The cost of licenses for a specific body of water vary greatly depending on the specific river and beat on the river. Looking at my own receipts from a 2007 trip, Salmon fishing licenses I bought ranged from 200 to 350 NOK (about 30-50 US dollars) per day depending on the river I fished. Daily costs for Trout fishing licenses will generally be lower.

Online Resources

A number of Salmon and Sea Trout rivers have beats for which you can buy licenses on the Inatur website. This includes for example beats on the Målselv, Orkla, Driva, Namsen, and Gaula rivers. They also sell licenses for trout fishing and other types of fishing. To date Inatur is the best online resource I have found for purchasing Norwegian fishing licenses.

Our database of Norwegian Fishing Rivers has profile pages for several hundred rivers, and for many of these rivers we provide links to websites with license information. You can also search online in search engines for license information. Searching on the river name plus fiskekort (Norwegian for "fishing license") is a good start.

Useful Books

In addition to online resources, I've found information about fishing licenses in the following books as well:

• Salmo Verlag publishes some nice books, in English and German. Salmon and Sea Trout in Norway (2004), in English, covers 65 rivers. Lachse und Meerforellen in Norwegen (2012), in German, covers 73 rivers. Both can be purchased on the Salmo Verlag website.
• For Salmon and Sea Trout, I also have found Den Store Elveguiden (2003) to be quite useful. The book is in Norwegian, but would be useful even for an English speaker, as it includes many maps, phone numbers, website URLs, email addresses, and other information, organized by individual river. If can be found in Norwegian bookstores, including online at Norli, a Norwegian bookseller that ships books worldwide.

Reporting your catch

When you buy a license for a particular area, you are required to report your catch to the owner. This is required by the state and allows the annual catch statistics to be produced. In my experience the license itself has had a spot to enter your catch information, and then you can drop it in a drop box provided by the landowner.

Disinfection

In addition to the right licenses, freshwater fishing in Norway requires disinfection of your gear to avoid bringing fish parasites to Norwegian waters. This disinfection is required even when moving from one waterway to another in Norway. Norway has been hit by a devastating fish parasite called Gyrodactylus Salaris, which has had a major impact on Salmon populations in certain Norwegian rivers.

Treatment of affected rivers can be even more devastating than the parasite itself in the short term — a substance commonly used for its treatment, Rotenone, can kill every fish in a river system. The sight of a flood of dead Salmon flowing down a cherished river can bring a Norwegian to tears, both from the sight itself and from the prospect of many years of anxious waiting for the river to recover. It takes a long time for Salmon to be successfully reintroduced and a sustained, healthy population established again.

Disinfection is not so burdensome for a fisherman, because the necessary disinfection gear is available at the same locations where you purchase a license to fish in specific waters. This involves a liquid sprayed on rods, reels, line, or other gear that have been fished with in other waterways. You wait for this liquid to dry, then you are ready to fish. A fee beyond the license's cost may apply to have your gear disinfected, but it is not a major cost.

While Salmon are seriously affected by this parasite, Sea Trout are not harmed by it. The reduction of Salmon populations in some of these rivers has resulted in a boom in Sea Trout populations in some rivers.