FLF ry

Mikä FLF? - What FLF?

FLF ry (Finnish Lake Fishers - registered association) is an angling club founded in March 2016. The club belongs to the Finnish Federation for Recreational Fishing. The mission of the FLF is to support responsible angling culture across Finland and provide professional support to any fishing right owner organization upon request. The club is registered to the city of Joensuu, and as such it also belongs to the North Karelian regional association of the Finnish Federation for Recreational Fishing. The acronym of the club, FLF also stands for our slogan "For Living Fish".

Originally, the idea to found a new angling club was born at Keihärinkoski rapids on 4.7.2015 when ichtyologist Janne Narkiniemi, forester Lauri Herlevi and two biologists, Heikki Laitala and Anssi Vainikka were discussing how to create interesting angling destinations in Finland. The founding document for the association was signed in Puumala on 14.2.2016 during ice fishing trip of former and current active members of student angling club Kala ja Kulaus ry. The actual founding meeting was held in Helsinki on 15.3.2016.

The founding members of the club represent professionals working in various fishy fields from fisheries science to fishing tackle sales. All the founding members are avid anglers, and many of them have background in different student angling clubs, and many founding members even have an academic degree in fisheries or some related field. However, we don't expect the members to have any special degrees. Instead, the only important thing is interest on aquatic nature and fishing. We welcome especially all young anglers to our club to learn fishing methods and become better anglers. In our club the open among members information exchange is one of the cornerstones for our functions.

The special aim of FLF is to promote stillwater fly fishing in Finland. Anyhow, FLF is not only a fly fishing club, but we do all kind of active rod fishing including ordinary and vertical jigging, specimen angling, ice fishing, sea trout fishing and even non-motorized trolling. Despite our name, we do fish also on coastal areas and rivers. We fish mainly percids and salmonids, but also pike and cyprinids are often included on the menu of targeted species. We even have members who do not fish themselves, but work or have an academic degree in fish ecology and fisheries. Our professional members help us in running any sort of research and development projects.

FLF aims to develop especially the fishing opportunities of its members by developing angling destinations using the latest knowledge-based management methods. By our rules, we only develop waters with native species, i.e. we do not develop any put and take waters nor waters stocked with rainbow trout. In any potential stockings we only use local, native strains of fish. We aim to develop high quality fishing locations both by renting full fishing rights and in collaboration with fishing right owners. We offer knowledge and advice for any inland fishery upon request, and through our professional members, we can organize even various professional services for water owners and fisheries managers. Our rules allow us to even run various development projects and apply public funding for them.

FLF organizes both domestic and international fishing travels for its members and supports also participation in ecologically sustainable angling tournaments. As such the aim of FLF is to partially work as a trademark and support team for highly skilled and competitive anglers. In competitive angling the main sports are predator fishing, fly fishing and ice fishing. We aim to develop angling competitions more sustainable both in ecological and ethical terms.

In order to be able to assure high quality fishing opportunities for all our of members, we only accept new full members in relation the surface area of waters we manage. However, we accept new representative members without any quota, and the representative members are otherwise equal to full members, but they do not have free fishing rights on the waters managed by the club. We require that our members have a responsible attitude towards fishing, which however, doesn't mean that we wouldn't eat fish at all. It is self-evident for our members that all large, valuable brood fish are released, and we appreciate our catch in every situation.

Finally, the aim of FLF is to bring together professionals in fisheries and other biological fields to not only enjoy fishing together but to develop Finnish fishing culture and fisheries management. Only by working for common goals we can make things better. With our operations we also support modern, responsible tackle sale stores, fishing destinations and professional angling guides.

You are very welcome to join our club that aims to become one of the most well known angling clubs in the country.

Among us you won't be left without fish or advice!