Jänkäkoira is a fishing and wilderness-guiding outfit based in Vuostimo, in the shadow of Pyhätunturi fell.

The company grew out of its founder's decades-long devotion to fishing. That devotion hardened into a business when Junnu enrolled in guide training at the Lappia Vocational College's Muonio campus, graduating as a certified fishing and wilderness guide in 2022.

"My father Martti was, I think, the one who first took me down to the banks of the Kyrönjoki to fish with a rod and check the trap-nets. I must have been six or seven. Those summers were spent, among other things, watching the river run past the old church and the rapids of Reininkoski beside it. When I finally got to try Martti's own well-worn closed-face reel, something clicked into place. There was real commotion when the first spirited pike of my life struck the end of my line. From that moment — the flash on the water, the bend of the rod — a hunter's instinct was kindled that has never left me since: the same fire that still keeps us fishermen awake at night, drawing us back to the lies, morning, noon, and night."

"When we bought Vuostimo's old village school beside Pyhätunturi fell in 2010, the pieces fell into place. The Kemijoki — mighty, deep, and unpredictable — ran a few metres behind the schoolhouse. There wasn't much deliberation needed after that. Tourism had long been my livelihood in one form or another, but standing on that riverbank, I understood something almost like a premonition. Could guiding be the way to fuse my greatest passion with my living? I wanted to build something I'd value myself as a fisherman: honest encounters and guidance, unpretentious, from one river-man to another."
"In 2014, I founded the company. That was the start of a journey guided by one wish: to give others that shuddering, elemental thrill that only a strike from Finland's biggest river's great pike can deliver."

"Plenty of skilled, self-sufficient anglers come to Lapland — trollers, lure-casters, fly fishers. Many are hunting for the fish of their life. I feel strongly that they deserve something far better, and far more genuine. I believe I can offer something built from years of accumulated experience, and from every hard-won lesson learned the difficult way. I see fishing, like so many pursuits, as a vast whole made of countless interwoven parts."

"The finest experiences are built from many things running in parallel: old stories handed down, tips on where the fish lie, knowledge of weather and place, the tales other fishermen tell, the animate myths and legends of Lapland, and a hundred small details that only years put into a river-man's tackle box."

"The deeper stories offer the real substance — beyond simply landing a fish, they carry the deeper, experiential heart of fishing itself. In my experience, fishermen value the knowledge other anglers have built up over years — knowing, for instance, how a fly tied for exactly the right moment should swim through a carefully chosen eddy in the rapids, or where a lure best finds the great pike lurking at the edge of a rock shoal."

"A true fishing companion doesn't just point out spots. He lives inside the moment with you, part of nature itself — reading the water's winding turns, tuning himself to the moods of the fish being pursued, becoming part of a fellow angler's experience. Fishing is shared joy, and, in its way, the continuation across generations of a long tradition of fishing tales."
"Once you've watched fishing culture across the decades, ordinary no longer satisfies. That's why I wanted my company to carry its own character, a little different from the rest. From the start I wanted to push the fishing experience — and its storytelling — a step further. I saw how so many guided trips end the same way: reach the shore, load the car, shake hands, drive off. To me, that feels like the experience is left unfinished."

"I believe a true fishing trip deserves a course worthy of it — and a closing worth remembering. That's why we don't just fish — we live a shared moment together, as part of nature and as part of the catch itself. Bound up in that is an ancient, even spirited notion: that we honour the rest of what is — nature, and the catch alike. That's why our trips so often end at the lean-to shelter, by the fire, where the day's catch is cooked. There, as the fire sparks and crackles behind us, we go back over the day's best moments — the fish caught, the fish released, the ones that got away — and share the real triumphs."
"And there, in that age-old way, we stand — fishermen together, at the very centre of the Kalevala's middle world, beneath the vault of the sky, under the Overworld's watch."