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Private ice fishing in Inari: how to get a trip of your own

Two anglers seated by a yellow ice fishing tent on a wide frozen lake at dusk, with a forest line behind

Illustration photo: anglers by a tent on a frozen lake, not Lake Inari.

Lapland Handbook Staff How we research this

The short answer

For a trip of your own in Inari, write to the hotel or the fishing guide rather than booking online: Wilderness Hotel Inari arranges most activities privately on request, and Galddoaivi Safaris takes bookings as requests with your group size and date. If you want a private price fixed before you travel, the nearest trip listed as a private group is sold in Saariselkä, with lunch at a fire. A snowmobile of your own on a shared trip gives you the machine, not the trip.

How the operators compare

Prices are the operators' own published starting prices as of the date this guide was updated, and they change through the season.

Wilderness Hotel: on requestGalddoaivi: full dayArctic Tours, SaariselkäVisit Inari: own snowmobile
Private On request Not stated Private group Your machine only
Price On request €295 per person €175 per person – the lowest printed price per person €247 per person
Length Not stated Full day; hours not stated 4 h listed; 5–6 h tour 4 h
Starts from Inari village Your hotel in Inari Near Saariselkä Your hotel in Inari

Highlighted figures are the best in that row: the lowest printed price per person. Prices as each seller prints them. The Saariselkä trip is 56 minutes from Inari by car, and its pickup covers only the area within 20 km of Saariselkä village.

Where these figures come from
  • Wilderness Hotel: on request: The hotel in Inari village arranges most of its guided activities privately, its ice fishing included, at rates it gives by email.
  • Galddoaivi: full day: A day with a full-time fishing guide, booked by a written request with your group size and date, with pickup from your hotel in the village.
  • Arctic Tours, Saariselkä: An ice fishing trip listed as a private group, with a barbecue lunch by an open fire and pickup near Saariselkä village.
  • Visit Inari: own snowmobile: Four shared hours on Lake Inari, but with a snowmobile that no other party rides on. The guide and the group are shared.

Every ice fishing trip on sale in Inari is sold per person, to whoever books it. There are three ways round that.

Ask in the village

Wilderness Hotel Inari says most of its guided activities can be arranged privately, husky and reindeer trips excepted, with rates given by email.1 Galddoaivi Safaris sells nothing online: you send a request naming the trip, your group size, the date and notes for the guide, for groups from two up.2 It does not say whether it adds other guests to a small group, so ask for your party alone when you write.

A private group with a price

The nearest ice fishing trip listed as a private group is sold in Saariselkä, 56 minutes south of Inari, with a barbecue lunch by an open fire. Its pickup covers only the area within 20 kilometres of Saariselkä village, so from Inari you drive there yourself.3

A machine of your own

On Visit Inari’s four-hour trip no two parties share a snowmobile, and a machine for one driver costs 72 euros more than a place in the sleigh. The guide, the fishing spots and the lunch by the fire stay shared with the rest of the group.

The two short trips on the booking platforms are compared on ice fishing in Inari, and the trips sold in the village on the best ice fishing in Inari.

Tours you can book

Questions people ask

Can the fishing guide take us further afield?

Galddoaivi Safaris lists more trips on its site than the two ice fishing days, among them king crab fishing and ice fishing on salt water as well as fresh, but prints no price or details for those. Since every booking there is a written request anyway, describe the fishing you want and your group size, and ask what the guide can arrange and what it costs.

Can a private trip take young children?

At the hotel the age rules stay the same on a private trip: children from four, three-year-olds only on shorter activities and nobody younger. Galddoaivi Safaris prints no age limit on its site, so give the children's ages in your request. The private-group trip in Saariselkä does not state an age limit in the listing this site recorded.

What would a private trip cost for two?

Only the Saariselkä trip prints a price: 175 euros per person, so 350 euros for two, lunch included. The fishing guide's prices are per person, 125 euros for two hours and 295 for a full day, and its site does not say whether a party of two pays more to fish alone. The hotel quotes private rates only by email.

Written by

Lapland Handbook Staff

Lapland Handbook is written by its editorial staff in Rovaniemi. Every price, age limit and group size in a comparison is read from the operator's own page and marked "Not stated" when the operator does not publish it. Each guide names who should not book, and names the operator that suits each kind of group, whichever it is.

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