Fly Fishing Switzerland

The thousands of kilometres of clean brooks and rivers in the alps, which are available to us all - including foreign fly fishers, mean that Switzerland is a real paradise for fly fishing.

Above all, the Cantons which issue fishing licences on the Permit Basis to all fishers and fly fishers are particularly interesting – we make special mention of those we consider the most important: Bern, Graubünden, Tessin, Uri, Schwyz, Obwalden, Fribourg, Jura and Waadt.

The licence, or as we say in Switzerland Permit Prices, are very reasonable. For example, the prices in Bern are:
CHF 190.- a year for people living in Canton Bern
(youth permit CHF 55.-) and
CHF 380.- for non-residents (youth permit CHF 110.-).
A seven day permit for people living in Canton Bern is CHF 80.- (youth permit CHF 26.-) and
for non-residents CHF 160.- (youth permit CHF 52.-).

In each of the mentioned Cantons the water systems amount to many hundreds of kilometres and, bearing in mind the world-wide fact that 90% of the fishing takes place on maybe 20% of the available water, fishers looking for that special place will certainly find something - some of the waters have rarely or never been fished. A real fishing paradise costing almost nothing.

I have personal fly fishing experience in Canton Schweiz, not far away from Zurich, where the brooks like the Alp, Sihl, Muota and many more offer fantastic sport. As Zurich is a so-called “Concordats Canton”, people from Zurich only have to pay the lower tariff to fish here and, as a result, the annual permit costs maximum CHF 230.-.

We should not overlook the fact that most Cantons have a good number of mountain lakes which offer fly fishers very special sport as our blog “Fishing the Oeschinen Flats” shows.