Abstract The paper is devoted to optical testing of mid-infrared Ge/Si photodetectors obtained by stacking of self-assembled Ge quantum dots in multilayer structures, which are near-field coupled to the adjacent nanoplasmonic arrays of subwavelength holes in metallic films. It is shown that photocurrent and near-field spectra consist of several sets of peaks, which are attributted to surface plasmon waves, localized surface plasmon modes or diffractive Rayleigh anomaly depending on the hole diameter and the angle of incidence θ. We find that for small holes the greatest contribution to the photocurrent enhancement is due to the excitation of the surface plasmon-polariton waves for all θ. As the hole diameter is increased and becomes comparable with the array periodicity, the normal-incident photoresponse improvement is provided by the Rayleigh anomaly. With the increase of incident angle, the photocurrent enhancement is supposed to arise from coupling of the localized shape resonance and propagating plasmon modes.