The main tool is a list of known gophersphere servers (active and dead). Nothing new, it has already been done for a long time, and better, by others gopherers. Perhaps someone will find this useful.
The most interesting find for me was that "Die Tageszeitung" (one of the major German newspapers) has a gopherhole. It seems to contain all articles, has a working search function and best of all: its ad-free. gopher://taz.de Is there some way to find out how long a gopherhole has been active, i.e. is there an archive of "active hosts" lists? Best, Arne