There have been reports of recovery of individually tagged fish captured in isolated lakes in Niedersachsen and Nordrhein-Westfalen. Those fish, which were later determined to have been tagged and released in the Elbe River, were caught by professional fishermen, sold as stock fish, and then released into these isolated lakes.

Another curious incident was the fate of a pikeperch that was originally tagged and released in the Elbe River. It was sold at the Hamburg fish market labelled as originating in the “Bodden waters in the Baltic Sea, near the island Rügen”. Since there is no water connection between the Elbe River and the Bodden waters in the Baltic Sea where the fish allegedly originated, the declaration of the fish’s origin at the fish market was false.