Germany 101 - How to Get a Tourist fishing license and a surprise coarse fishing trip!

Hi Angling Friends

old and new

from far and wide,

Gather here to hear stories of fish and fishermen

in far Germany!

well, after months of painstaking research and wading thru many pages of sketchy online information, (Mostly in German), I have been able to find out where some fish live and how to go about getting the necessary paper work to catch them. Here in Germany.

First off I had to get a license. which would cost a German about E200, and requires that they undertake a month of compulsory weekend fishing courses, 40 hours worth or something, and then they have to sit a 130 question written examination, in 7 0r 8 sections - Clive will know the exact figures, achieving at least 75% right answers in every section@! If they fail then they have to start the whole process again I believe...

thus presumably ensuring that all people who one encounters whilst angling in Germany are well qualified to fish in a morally sound way, but also I have found, they are by default, therefore all extremely keen anglers!

However, as a foreigner I am entitled to a license which lasts till the end of the calendar year that it is applied for for only E12.50! This hardly seems fair to the poor Germans whose fish I will be appropriating... ;-) And I also did not have to sit any tests. At least not yet. This may come later if I stay here on a longer term basis. I am not sure when I have to start acting like a German...hopefully not till after marriage! I will certainly try to get another one of these licenses at the beginning of the next calendar year, do you think that this will be possible Clive?

Here you can see me all dressed up to play the part of respectable foreigner...with my license!

I have never been so pleased to hold a Kiwi license in my hand, as this little piece of paper entitled me to buy the German Fishing License – without one no can do. This is because the German Rathaus assume I had to through a similarly arduous licensing process in N.Z. To obtain it! It is viewed much like a driving license by the German regulators. In case you are wondering, apparently the German course and lessons are about subjects such as; fish release, fishing techniques, baits, species identification, humane fish killing, that sort of thing. True fishing craft.

 My first fishing excursion was with Patrick Leoni and his wife Anne, and their friends Joachim and Thomas. I had Patrick and Joachim met them fishing before after an excursion to a local – 5 mins from home - German lake with my long suffering German girlfirend and fishing companion come gillie Miss Katharina Rose ...

Where I was excited to sight holographic coloured small fishes, which I after careful study I believe to have identified as belonging to the cyclid family.

Note the brilliant blue tinge to the tail edge, and the brilliant 'false eye' colouration on the gill plate...

These lakes were set in a small wood...

With A lovely BBQ area under cover

Where I met some friendly Polish guys whose German was about as good as mine...

 I was very happy to finally be in nature again.

and I was impressed with the catches and skills of Joachim and Patrick...

So the next time they went fishing I went with them. They fished in a small lake with baits and Mepps spinner-bait lures. I was allowed to watch only.

Note the pop-up water oxygenating fountain which suddenly burst from beneath the calm H2O surface on hot Summer days (this was a 30+ degrees Celcius day) to make O2 and keep the fish alive. These Germans have thought of everything!

While Thomas scanned for more Hecht/Pike and Joachim checked the electronic loud beeping constantly at the slightest gust of wind bite indicators... which the lines run through...

Patrick caught lots of small Roddaiger / Rudd on bait and several small Barsch /Perch on the mepps. In the evening 2 nice Schleie – Tench were caught...

 These 3 pics are the first Tench

Which you can see better in this photo. Joachim weighed it as 1Kg on his electronic scales - 2.2lb. They told me that this was a good sized tench, a large one. Has anyone got a recipe for one?

The second tench was almost twice that size, so probably weighed 1.75 Kg Patrick told me. This would be about 4lb! 

This was a very large catch for a Tench they said, and it had to be caught twice as it jumped back into the water out of the extremely large mouthed and 2+meter long handled net while being unhooked. Note that this is a different, much much bigger net to the one which the first Tench was photographed against.

It was released to fight another day and grow even bigger!

After this days fishing experience I don't think that I will ever be able to look at sweet corn kernals from a can in quite the same way again!