[Jockiescott]

I was just thinking about eels one day last week.

My mind was wandering, as it generally does, and it does arrive at some very strange places. 😊

I got to thinking about fishing worm years ago and the amount of eels you'd always catch. The mess they'd make of the line as they tied themselves up in knots trying to escape. I must admit, I for one, wasn't too kind to them back then. Many of them died a horrible death at my hands alone.

I haven't fished worm in such a long time. I had read that eels were in decline but hadn't really paid much attention. I wondered if they were still the 'pest' they used to be for worm anglers in the past.

I really didn't think things were so bad for the eels. Lough Neagh, the largest freshwater lake in Europe is about 45 minutes away from me here in Northern Ireland. I personally know a few guys who live on the western side of the Lough who make a living from Eel fishing on the lough.

They fish for them with a longline of baited hooks, which they retrieve and put the eels into boxes and transport them in custom fitted out vans to the Eel Fishery Co-op at Toome Bridge in County Londonderry. From here, they are shipped Europe wide.

This article appeared on my phones newsfeed this morning.

‘This is an endangered species’: calls to take eels off the European menu

The snake-like species is under threat from smugglers, the climate crisis and Europe’s appetite for traditional dishes

www.theguardian.com

If this is to be believed, the Eel population is in far worse of a state than I ever imagined.

Could it be that the difficulties that the Eels are facing are also affecting our salmon? Both migrate to extremely different areas of the Atlantic ocean but both are declining at an awful rate.

Are our rivers the problem? Are they now in such a state that very little is able to survive there?

It does seem strange that two very different species, migrating to very different areas of ocean seem to be suffering from very similar issues.

Certainly more questions than answers but all so very grim.

 

[mows]

Ells really have declined hugely.
But as they arent cute who cares, seems to be the attitude.
Even the RSPB havent started a save the eel, money fishing campaign!
Eels do seem to be extra sensitive to all manner of chemicals.

Like you Richard, ive often thought there is a bit of a corolation.

Would be interesting to see if the eel populations have been as badly effected in the northern remote rivers, like the salmon.

 

[Rrrr]

Used to catch loads with the worm and same as you i probably didnt treat them as well as i should as i wanted my hooks back etc.
Same fishing the pier with my kids with ragworms, we dont really catch them anymore. Used to catch loads when i was a kid and they were a pain as they used up your bait too quick.

Sent from my SM-S901B using Tapatalk

 

[Sedschörmän]

Eelpopulations suffer from hydropowerplants just like salmon do. The adults just get shredded on their way to the sea.

The juvenile eels also get fished and shipped to Asia. People like to make soup out of them. As they had no chance of reproducution at that stage of life that's quite a big issue.

C and R of Eels has been mandatory for over a decade in the NL and Norway for example.

 

[billyshielstock]

For anyone interested this is a great read, " The Book Of Eels, by Tom Fort " jolly good and fascinating read.

 

[AlanT]

I was just thinking about eels one day last week.

My mind was wandering, as it generally does, and it does arrive at some very strange places. 😊

I got to thinking about fishing worm years ago and the amount of eels you'd always catch. The mess they'd make of the line as they tied themselves up in knots trying to escape. I must admit, I for one, wasn't too kind to them back then. Many of them died a horrible death at my hands alone.

I haven't fished worm in such a long time. I had read that eels were in decline but hadn't really paid much attention. I wondered if they were still the 'pest' they used to be for worm anglers in the past.

I really didn't think things were so bad for the eels. Lough Neagh, the largest freshwater lake in Europe is about 45 minutes away from me here in Northern Ireland. I personally know a few guys who live on the western side of the Lough who make a living from Eel fishing on the lough.

They fish for them with a longline of baited hooks, which they retrieve and put the eels into boxes and transport them in custom fitted out vans to the Eel Fishery Co-op at Toome Bridge in County Londonderry. From here, they are shipped Europe wide.

This article appeared on my phones newsfeed this morning.

‘This is an endangered species’: calls to take eels off the European menu

The snake-like species is under threat from smugglers, the climate crisis and Europe’s appetite for traditional dishes

www.theguardian.com

If this is to be believed, the Eel population is in far worse of a state than I ever imagined.

Could it be that the difficulties that the Eels are facing are also affecting our salmon? Both migrate to extremely different areas of the Atlantic ocean but both are declining at an awful rate.

Are our rivers the problem? Are they now in such a state that very little is able to survive there?

It does seem strange that two very different species, migrating to very different areas of ocean seem to be suffering from very similar issues.

Certainly more questions than answers but all so very grim.

The Lough Neagh eels are stocked so it's not representative of the general eel situation (I'm sure you'll know that, for everyone else's benefit)
Eels are certainly in danger, numbers have collapsed. I'm in rivers or lochs most days (where historical trapping took place) and rarely see any large mature eels just the odd elver or the occasional yellow eel.
Some of the eel ecologists I know actually travel to Lough Neagh as its the only place they can get up close to large numbers of eels.

 

[Jockiescott]

The Lough Neagh eels are stocked so it's not representative of the general eel situation (I'm sure you'll know that, for everyone else's benefit)
Eels are certainly in danger, numbers have collapsed. I'm in rivers or lochs most days (where historical trapping took place) and rarely see any large mature eels just the odd elver or the occasional yellow eel.
Some of the eel ecologists I know actually travel to Lough Neagh as its the only place they can get up close to large numbers of eels.

I really know absolutely nothing about the eel Fishery here AlanT.

I just know those few guys that fish for them but I really didn't know that they were stocked and populations elsewhere were in such a bad state.

 

[river irvine]

I catch plenty every year on the worm, guess it varies from river to river

 

[AlanT]

I really know absolutely nothing about the eel Fishery here AlanT.

I just know those few guys that fish for them but I really didn't know that they were stocked and populations elsewhere were in such a bad state.

They're brought up from southern France or Spain (can't remember) where they are trapped as glass eels then grown on naturally in the Lough. It's purely a commercial fishery. I met the ops director a few months ago, he was saying how it's a very sustainable product but negated to say that they are simply taken from the wild elsewhere, grown on then slaughtered. I did challenge him on the ethics and true sustainability of that of that but he had ready made answers (some of which may be valid, I wouldn't know)

 

[JoeE]

This is the value of eels locally

 

[Jockiescott]

This is the value of eels locally
View attachment 92685


View attachment 92684

I definitely never would have imagined that they were so expensive. 😮

 

[JoeE]

I definitely never would have imagined that they were so expensive. 😮

They have to line the pocket some how..even more so when they are a critically endangered species. They have turned to the dollaghan trout now also

 

[Jockiescott]

I have heard of Loughs Neagh trout being sold in fishmongers recently. I assumed they were by catch from the eel Fishery but eel fishing stops at the end of February I read online.

So, the eel fishers switch to trout from March on?

I had heard of Loughs Neagh Pollan but never heard of the trout Fishery.

 

[JoeE]

They fish for everything, pollan, bream, trout, eels, pike. The works.

 

[Jockiescott]

They fish for everything, pollan, bream, trout, eels, pike. The works.

I had heard 'rumours' that they were taking salmon too. Especially galling for anglers who are under 100% C&R restrictions.

 

[Westcountry]

We were told over twenty years ago that eel populations had crashed by 99%.
I have my doubts that it was ever that bad everywhere but they have declined for sure. Silver eels used to be an absolute menace when sea fishing in the English Channel but I don't hear much about them now (not that I'm anywhere near the English Channel). On the other hand since the 99% decline there have been record elver catches on the Severn some years.

Would be interesting to see if the eel populations have been as badly effected in the northern remote rivers, like the salmon.

If you read Charles MacLaren is spoke about all the estuaries being stuffed with elvers in spring and how they were an important food source for sea trout kelts. I also read something somewhere about the elver run being so big on the Brora that there was a two yard wide blue band of elvers running up each bank of the river for a week in spring. Last year on the Naver there was a noticeable run of elves, tens of thousands over three or four days but not millions. Talking to one of the old ghillies he said he had never seen it before. Electrofishing on the Naver turns up lots of small eels in some places but rarely anything over 1 foot long, mostly 4" - 8" ones. How does this compare with years ago? Who knows, there isn't a lot of historical eel data that I have see for up here!

On the other hand when I used to help with taking in the South Uist AC boats from the lochs at the end of the season almost all of them had large eels living in the void between the inner and out hull. These were proper things up to three feet long and often two or three of them.


Andy

 

[charlieH]

To give an idea of how prolific elvers used to be, my friend Maurice Hudson, who has lived beside the Wye for nearly 90 years (and fished it for most of them), tells of how, as a boy, when the elvers were running his family would eat them so frequently that they grew sick of them, but also how his father would always take a few buckets of them to bury in the bottom of the trenches into which he was going to plant his beans a few weeks later. Back then they had effectively no monetary value, as anyone living locally could easily get them, but with elvers now regularly fetching several hundred pounds per kilo (mainly to be grown on, rather than eaten 'as is', I believe), that would be some expensive fertiliser!

In the 1970s, when I started fishing the Wye, I remember seeing them running up the edge of the river in a dense mass. If you wanted them, at the peak of the run you could probably catch a good netful in a minute or so, and in the evening there would be people netting them all along the river bank - though even then the run was much diminished from what it had been 20 years or so before. I've heard reports that numbers have improved a bit over the past few years, but it's still a fraction of what it once was.

 

[The Flying Scotsman]

This is the value of eels locally
View attachment 92685


View attachment 92684

No wonder they’re endangered at £10 each.
I could of made a fortune as a laddie

 

[Tony M]

Great bait for Tope in the Solent

 

[river irvine]

Used to sell them to the local chinese place, 2 quid an eel and 3 quid for a big one, would get at least 20 quid each a night, not bad for 12 year olds! But yeah looking back we killed a crazy number of eels, not proud of it but we didnt know any better