Last checked: August 2026.
Magnet fishing is not banned in the Netherlands. There is no national law against it, no permit is required, and no bill before parliament would change that. As a hobby it is lawful by default.
That is not a fringe reading. The Kenniscentrum Ontplofbare Oorlogsresten, published under Rijkswaterstaat, puts it plainly:
"Er is geen wetgeving waarmee magneetvissen direct en effectief verboden kan worden."
(There is no legislation with which magnet fishing can be directly and effectively prohibited.)
So the honest headline for the Netherlands is: allowed, unless something specific says otherwise where you are standing. The rest of this page is about those specific things, because there are a few and they are worth knowing before you go out.
Limit one: what you are searching for
The Erfgoedwet contains an excavation prohibition (opgravingsverbod). Hobbyist metal detecting is legal in the Netherlands because of a written exemption to that prohibition — and that exemption is drafted to apply on land only.
The Inspectie Overheidsinformatie en Erfgoed, under the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, states it directly:
"De uitzondering op het opgravingsverbod voor het zoeken en graven met een metaaldetector geldt alleen op het land en niet in het water."
(The exemption to the excavation prohibition for searching and digging with a metal detector applies only on land and not in water.)
This is worth sitting with, because it is the opposite of what most people assume. Being a hobbyist is what protects a land detectorist. In water, that same hobbyist status carries no exemption at all.
What it does not mean is that pulling metal out of a canal is illegal. The inspectorate draws the line at intent, and its own worked example is the clearest thing on the subject:
"Een gemeenteambtenaar die met een magneet de grachten schoonmaakt en fietswrakken van de bodem opvist, overtreedt de Erfgoedwet niet. Maar iemand die met een magneet hoopt een mooie oude sleutel te vinden of een vondst uit de Tweede Wereldoorlog overtreedt de wet wel."
(A council worker who cleans the canals with a magnet and fishes bicycle wrecks off the bottom does not breach the Heritage Act. But someone who hopes with a magnet to find a nice old key, or a find from the Second World War, does breach the law.)
Identical activity. Identical magnet. The difference is the objective. Clearing scrap, bikes and lost keys out of a waterway is not what this law is aimed at. Deliberately hunting a castle moat for medieval metal is.
Practically, that makes two categories of location worth avoiding if you are hunting rather than clearing:
- Castle moats (kasteelgrachten)
- Canals in historic city centres
These are where archaeological material is most likely to be sitting, and the inspectorate names both as places where you risk a fine.
Limit two: your municipality
This is the one that actually catches people out, and it has nothing to do with heritage law. Individual municipalities can and do restrict magnet fishing through local by-laws. There is no national pattern — the VNG model APV still contains no magnet fishing provision at all, so every ban is locally written, which is why the article numbering is different everywhere.
Municipalities where a restriction is on the books, verified against the published regulations:
| Municipality | Position | Where it is written |
|---|---|---|
| Amersfoort | Banned within a mapped zone, no exemption route | APV art. 2:80 |
| Wijchen | Banned across the whole municipality from 1 January 2026 | APV art. 5:38b |
| Nijmegen | Prohibited without a permit from the council | APV art. 5:38 |
| Eemsdelta | Permit-based, but the municipality states it issues none | APV art. 2:79a |
| Haarlem | Prohibited, including carrying the equipment | APV art. 5:38 + Verordening Haarlemse Wateren art. 43 |
| Groningen | Prohibited across public water, exemption possible | Verordening Openbaar Vaarwater 2020 art. 24 — not the APV |
| Delft | Prohibited without an exemption | Verordening Openbaar Gemeentewater 2024 art. 17 — not the APV |
| Oudewater | Restricted, but only in designated archaeological zones | art. 3.15, from October 2025 |
Note the pattern in the last two rows of that list — Groningen and Delft are widely reported as "APV bans" and they are not. Their rules sit in separate water by-laws. If you are checking a municipality, do not stop at the APV.
And the traffic is not one-way. Buren amended its APV in February 2023 to expressly carve magnet fishing out of its metal-detection ban, so no exemption is needed there. Heerlen considered a ban in November 2025 and decided against it, citing how few munitions reports it had. Rules move in both directions.
How to check your own municipality in two minutes
- Open lokaleregelgeving.overheid.nl and search your municipality.
- Search the text for magneetvissen, metaaldetector and waterbodem.
- Check the water by-law as well as the APV — several municipalities put it there instead.
- Nothing on the books? Then it is permitted. If a handhaver challenges you, being able to say calmly that it is not in the APV is a strong position.
Two claims you will see repeated that are wrong
Both circulate widely on hobby sites and both are worth correcting, because they make the picture look more restrictive than it is.
"You cannot magnet fish within 50 metres of a waterstaatswerk." This is real, but it is not a national rule and has nothing to do with Rijkswaterstaat. It comes from the Nautische Verordening Fryslân 2023, art. 9 lid 2 — a provincial ordinance covering shipping routes in Friesland. In that ordinance waterstaatswerk is defined narrowly and deliberately differently from the Omgevingswet definition: a bridge, lock, weir, aqueduct or similar structure in a shipping route. It does not mean dikes, banks or waterways generally, and it does not apply outside Friesland.
"Rijkswaterstaat prohibits magnet fishing along its water." Rijkswaterstaat publishes no position on magnet fishing at all. The claim traces back to hobby blogs, not to any RWS regulation.
One landowner rule is real and first-party: Staatsbosbeheer states in its access rules that it gives no permission for magnet fishing on its land and that you may not bring a fishing magnet into its areas. That is a landowner's condition of entry rather than a statutory ban, but it applies to a lot of ground. On any private land, you need the owner's permission — that much is ordinary property law.
Is magnet fishing just fishing?
It is a fair question and it comes up constantly, so it is worth answering properly. The short version is that the argument is intuitive but does not carry legal weight.
The Visserijwet 1963 regulates the taking of fish. It says nothing about recovering metal from a waterbed, no authority treats magnet fishing as falling under it, and a VISpas gives you no rights here. Magnet fishing is not licensed as fishing, and it is not banned as fishing — it simply sits outside that framework and falls under general law instead.
The related argument, that hobby purpose makes it lawful, runs into the problem set out above: in Dutch heritage law the hobbyist exemption is precisely the thing that stops at the waterline. It is a good defence on land and no defence in water.
None of which changes the headline. You do not need the fishing argument, because there is no national ban to argue your way around in the first place.
Explosives: the one part to take seriously
Dutch waterways hold a great deal of wartime material and age does not make it inert. The inspectorate describes recovered munitions as a growing concern for the Explosieven Opruimingsdienst Defensie (EOD), and recent recoveries bear that out — an aerial bomb in Eindhoven in April 2025, eighteen firearms out of the water in Den Haag in July 2025, a hand grenade in Rotterdam in January 2026.
If you bring up something that looks like a shell, grenade or ammunition:
- Leave it attached to the magnet and lower it gently back into the water. Prising a suspected explosive off a magnet is the single most dangerous thing you can do.
- Move away and keep others back.
- Call 112.
This is also, bluntly, the behaviour that keeps the hobby legal. Every municipal ban on the list above was written after munitions callouts.
If you find something archaeological
Under art. 5.10 of the Erfgoedwet, anyone who finds an object they suspect is archaeological must report it as soon as possible. In practice that means a find report to the Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed, or via Portable Antiquities of the Netherlands (PAN). Stop handling the object and report it.
Where this leaves you
Magnet fishing is legal in the Netherlands. It is not licensed, not nationally restricted, and there is no proposal to change that. What exists is a narrow heritage rule about deliberately hunting archaeological objects in water, a scatter of municipal by-laws, and ordinary landowner permission.
Before you head out: check your municipality's APV and its water by-law, get permission on private land, give castle moats and historic city-centre canals a miss if you are hunting rather than clearing, and know what to do if something military comes up. Do that and you are on solid ground.
This article is general information about published rules, not legal advice, and it is not a statement of what will or will not happen to you. National, provincial and municipal rules vary and change. Always confirm the current position with the authority responsible for the water you plan to fish, and seek qualified legal advice if anything material turns on it.
