Saltstraumen
Tidal race · Salt water · in Norway and the Nordic coast
A strait three kilometres long and a hundred and fifty metres wide, through which the whole of the Skjerstadfjord empties and fills against the open Norwegian Sea every six hours. The destination authority gives the flow as reaching twenty knots and the eddies as up to ten metres across and four to five metres deep. The ground either side is steep rock into deep water, and what makes it a fishery is not the bottom but the food the current carries through it.
Safety: cold water shock — can cause serious injury or death. 2 more points apply here.
FishingHQ describes what this place is, not whether you may fish it. Access, permits and who to ask.
Also associated with this ground
Recorded as present here without a documented method or strength behind them.
Saithe · Atlantic cod · Haddock · Atlantic halibut · Ling · Atlantic mackerel · European plaice
How people fish it
Practised here: Sea fishing.
Methods the sources name for this ground. Each one is explained in full on its own page.
- Spinning
Casting an artificial lure and retrieving it so that it moves like something alive — the most direct form of lure fishing.
- Jigging
Working a weighted lure with a rising-and-falling motion, usually vertically, so it behaves like a wounded or fleeing baitfish.
- Ledgering
Fishing a bait on the bottom held by a weight, with no float — the simplest way to fish at distance, in depth, or in wind.
The ground and the water
- The ground
- A strait three kilometres long and a hundred and fifty metres wide, through which the whole of the Skjerstadfjord empties and fills against the open Norwegian Sea every six hours. The destination authority gives the flow as reaching twenty knots and the eddies as up to ten metres across and four to five metres deep. The ground either side is steep rock into deep water, and what makes it a fishery is not the bottom but the food the current carries through it.
- Exposure
- Inside the fjord system rather than on the open coast, so the wind exposure is moderate — and the water state is decided by the tide rather than by the weather, which is the opposite arrangement to every other Norwegian record here.
- Depth
- Deep and scoured. The current keeps the channel clear of sediment, so the ground under the race is rock and boulder rather than the soft bottom a fjord narrows would otherwise accumulate.
- Tide and flow
- The defining feature and the reason the place exists. Roughly four hundred million cubic metres of water move through the strait on each tide, four times a day, and the current runs hard enough that the fishable window is the slack and the shoulders rather than the middle of the run.
Getting there
What public sources describe, last checked 2026-08-27. Car parks fill, services change and a path existing is not a path anybody may use — none of this is a guarantee of availability and none of it is permission to be anywhere.
- Getting to it
- Thirty kilometres by road from Bodø: the Rv80 out of the town centre and then the Fv17 towards Saltstraumen. The bridge over the strait is the landmark and the strait is fished from the shore on both sides of it.
- Public transport
- Two scheduled bus routes, 200 and 300, run from Bodø several times a day, and the journey takes about forty minutes — so the strait is reachable without a car. Times and fares are the operator's and change.
Where this access information comes from
- Visit Bodø: Saltstraumen — Visit Bodø (the destination company for Bodø and Salten), 2026 (Local authority, harbour or protected-area body)Relied on for: The destination authority's own page for this strait: the road route from Bodø, the two bus lines and the journey time, the visitor facilities, and the marine protected area's constraint on fishing there.States this directlyPassage read and verified
What is there
Food or shelter
There is a visitor centre at the strait and the settlement around it has ordinary services. What is open, and when, is the operators' business rather than the authority's.
Through the year
Fished through the year rather than in a season, because the current runs through the year. The fish that use it are the resident gadoids and the flatfish of the fjord behind it, with mackerel arriving inshore in summer as they do along the whole coast.
Safety
Cold water shock — Can cause serious injury or death
Northern European water is cold enough for most of the year to trigger the involuntary gasp and the loss of swimming ability that decides most immersion deaths, and it does so within the first minute, long before hypothermia is relevant.
What reduces it: Wear a buoyancy aid rather than carry one, carry a means of calling for help on the person rather than in a bag, and plan on the assumption that an unplanned entry into the water is survivable only if somebody knows immediately.
Moving water and currents — Can cause serious injury or death
This is the strongest tidal current measured anywhere, and it is not a metaphor: the water moves at up to twenty knots and generates eddies several metres deep. Anything that enters it — a person, a boat, a dropped item — is carried, and there is no swimming out of it at any point in the cycle.
What reduces it: Fish from the positions the local authority designates and away from the race itself; it advises against fishing directly in the current. Treat the tide table as the whole plan rather than as timing detail, and stay off wet rock at the water's edge on a making tide.
Boat safety — Can cause serious injury or death
Small-boat fishing in cold deep water, frequently in unfamiliar waters, with weather that changes quickly and winds that come off high ground with little warning. Help can be a long way away and mobile coverage is not continuous.
What reduces it: Flotation suits rather than lifejackets in cold water — they buy time that a lifejacket alone does not. Check the forecast for the whole window. File a plan ashore. Carry communications that work beyond phone coverage. Do not go further than the weather and the boat justify.
Rules and access
FishingHQ does not know the current access position here. Norway permits recreational sea angling broadly, but rules on gear, quantity, export, minimum sizes, protected species and boat registration apply and change, and they differ for residents and visitors. Check the current position with the Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries before going.
Particular to this water: This strait lies inside a marine protected area. The destination authority's own page states that the protection carries a constraint on wolffish, asks that live fish be returned, and says fishing is done in designated areas away from the current rather than in it. What that means today, and where those areas are, is the authority's to state. Sea angling in Norway needs no licence, which is not the whole picture: handheld tackle only, and minimum sizes by species. Check with the Norwegian fisheries authority before travelling.
Who holds the answer:
- The Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries, for recreational sea fishing measures.
- The harbour authority or landowner, for access.
- The national directorate responsible for fisheries, for sea fishing rules including species, size and quantity limits and export restrictions
- The national environment agency, for freshwater and anadromous species and the associated fee
- The landowner, association or river management body holding the fishing rights for any given fresh water
- County and municipal authorities, for local rules and for protected areas
- Border and customs authorities, for the rules on taking caught fish out of the country, which catch visitors out regularly
Sources for this place
- Sea Angler — Bauer Media (Specialist angling publication)Relied on for: Long-running published description of British sea angling practice by region, ground type and named mark.FishingHQ's interpretation of what it saysCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
- General angling website restatements of established technique — Various (Credible secondary source)Relied on for: Widely restated public descriptions of which places are conventionally fished and how, recorded as practitioner consensus rather than as scholarship, and not relied on for access, permission or any current rule.Background and mechanism onlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
- Visit Bodø: Saltstraumen — Visit Bodø (the destination company for Bodø and Salten), 2026 (Local authority, harbour or protected-area body)Relied on for: The destination authority's own description of the strait: its length and width, the tidal interval, the current speed, the size of the eddies, and the marine protected area over it.States this directlyPassage read and verified
How FishingHQ labels evidence is explained in the evidence policy. Last reviewed 2026-08-16.