Amsterdam’s Fishing Season
Amsterdam’s Most Successful Fishing Season Has Nothing to Do With Fish
Every city has its traditions.
Paris has romance. Venice has gondolas. London has rain that politely pretends not to be rain.
Amsterdam has bicycles. Millions of them. They stand in front of stations, lean against bridges, block pavements with remarkable confidence, and apparently spend part of their lives exploring the canal system.
Each year, Waternet removes somewhere between 12,000 and 15,000 bicycles from Amsterdam’s canals. Let that sink in. Preferably not as literally as the bicycles.
It also means Amsterdam proudly holds the Guinness World Record for recovering the largest number of bicycles from waterways. There are stranger records, admittedly, but this one somehow feels perfectly Dutch.
Many tourists imagine the canals as peaceful ribbons of water reflecting elegant seventeenth-century houses.
The canal workers know better.
Underneath that picturesque surface lies an underwater bicycle museum. Somewhere between forgotten umbrellas, the occasional shopping trolley and perhaps a duck wondering why handlebars keep appearing in its neighbourhood.
Every time the crews search the canal bed, another bicycle appears.
It’s almost comforting.
Like mushrooms after rain. Except heavier. And considerably less edible.
The recovery operation itself looks wonderfully dramatic. A specialised barge glides across the canal while a crane lowers an enormous steel claw into the water.
For a brief moment it resembles deep-sea archaeology.
Perhaps this time they’ll discover a Viking ship.
No. Another Gazelle. Sometimes three of them.
The claw rises triumphantly carrying what appears to be the entire parking area of Amsterdam Central Station.
Some bicycles arrived there after being stolen and deliberately thrown into the water. Others simply lost an argument with gravity, a slippery bridge, or an owner who believed balancing on one wheel after visiting a local café was a demonstration of talent rather than optimism.
Dutch engineers build bicycles to survive rain, wind, snow and daily abuse.
Canals, however, remain undefeated.
The strange part is that professional bicycle fishing is a real job.
Imagine explaining that during a family dinner.
“So… what do you do?” “I fish.” “Oh, trout?”
“No.” “Salmon?” “No.”
“…Bicycles.”
There would probably be a short silence before someone quietly refilled your wine glass.
As a photographer wandering through Amsterdam, I couldn’t help smiling at the thought. Every bicycle leaning against a bridge suddenly became a future candidate for aquatic adventure.
Some looked stable.
Others had the unmistakable posture of saying,
“See you underwater.”
The canals themselves remain beautiful, of course. Calm water, elegant bridges, boats drifting past historic façades.
It’s just reassuring to know that beneath this idyllic postcard scene lies an entire parallel universe of rusty handlebars and submerged Dutch engineering waiting patiently for their annual rescue mission.
Perhaps that’s the real charm of Amsterdam.
Even its canals cycle.
Or at least they try.
