National Fishing Trade Museum

The National Fishing Trade Museum has collected multiple tools to catch fish — starting with the simplest fish-forks and ending with the genuine fish-baskets from wicker, decorated tip-ups, hand-made harpoon guns, and carbide lamps. Each of the tools has its own story how it was brought to the museum — most of them have been confiscated from the poachers.

Māris Mitrēvics, inspector in the Gauja National Park, initially wanted to create a museum on poaching. However, he was sure that many of the modern poaching methods had once been legal and very common, perhaps inherited from one generation to another. And this is how the museum got its name.

Visitors of the National Fishing Trade Museum get to listen to stories on fishing in earlier times and nowadays, the possibility of trying to make fishing tools by themselves, such as making fish-baskets from wickers and making fishing nets.

After the visit to the museum maybe you will become an enthusiast for nature protection, since the museum tells a lot about the poaching and its adverse impact on fish.

The visit shall be announced beforehand and is only available together with a guide.