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Fishing Eel Livebaits

Ian Wakeford

I am sure we must have all caught a small eel at some point in the past, once hooked it rolled itself up into a contortious ball of slime, consuming hook, hooklength and your patience.  So if someone suggested to you fish fish them as livebaits you may think that they have taken leave of their senses.  Well if you are careful about your presentation eels can be fished completely tangle free.  Just look at the advantages:-

• They are an extremely tough bait, I would class them as nigh on un-killable.  

• They have more energy than trout and work hard all day.  

• Their skin is like leather so a small hook hold will hold like superglue.

• You can transport them in a damp rag, no need for an aerator.

• At the end of the day with no action you can let them go or put them back in your livebait tank.  They will last for many sessions.

• You can commercially buy eels from Kosher fishmongers or dealers and are very easy to catch anyway.

With all these advantages you must be thinking why have these wonder baits passed me by.  I am telling you, it is the fear on tangles that is doing, it is buried deep in your psyche, it is a demon that must be exorcised.

Now I know that zander and pike like eels and at particular times of year, eels head off to and from the Sargasso sea.  This must be a bumper harvest for river predators in particular.  Recently I have had my attention drawn to catfish's fondness for eels as well.  So undaunted I decided to follow the advice I was given and try it out for myself.  My first attempt was bank fishing the river Ebro in June, I tried trotting an over sized "pike" float fishing rig along in the current.  I had rigged up a small carp hook on a 15lb BS mono hair, to a much bigger size 4/0 Treble hook. 

You don't need a big eel for bait - 2-3 oz will catch a 100lb cat.

The eel seems to always be swimming downwards, never attempting to rise up.  The trick was to hook it an inch from the tip of the tail with the carp hook.  That evening, action was slow, I never got a chance to see if catfish liked them like they were rumored to.

A few days later I chose a different swim on the Ebro, this was a backwater mainly renowned for it's carp.  What I wanted to do was cast 20 metres upstream and hold a bait static near a fallen tree.  So this time I tail hooked the eel again and fished a paternoster.  Big mistake, within a nanosecond the eel had reduced my rig to a ball of slime.  Clearly this was a mistake fishing an element of a rig below the eel.  The eel had to be the lowest point on the rig.

So I tried a leger rig with a very long tail, with two polyballs mid way along the trace.  My idea was that I could release enough line to get both polyballs which were about a metre apart on the surface.  The eel would then hang off the polyball nearest the hook about 18 inches from it.  In theory it could swim in any direction and not have the opportunity to encounter any line to tangle with.

Well the theory just about held up.  I had about three runs that night all off a mystery fish that I could not hook.  I put the blame down to very small catfish of a few pound.  Did the rig tangle? Well it did once, but only a minor one caused by a sloppy cast.  So on balance I think it is a fairly safe rig.

Two months later I returned to Spain and was keen to try eels out.  When you have limited time the ability to go to the local fish farm and buy 3 quids worth of eels is great.  It avoids the need to spend hours trying to extract a perfect crucian carp from the river.

this time I had arranged a trip with Derek Curzen and had hired his services for the day to guide on the Ebro.  Derek had been using eels now for about 20 trips this season and he had much more confidence than me as to their potential.  I was convince that you could fish them tangle free.  But my experience of the previous nights had lead me to believe that only small cats fancied them.

The plan for the day was to motor upstream for a few miles and then drip down with float fished eel baits over known marks in the river.  The weather in August is very hot, the temperature is well over 40 degrees in the sun on the river (my car said it was 107 F when I got back into it).  To avoid some of the heat we fished from dawn until midday.  The final result, three takes, in the morning, which by Ebro standards is not bad.  I lost one fish and landed two more, a 61lber and a 89lber.  Now these are big by UK standards but by Ebro standards are middling to upper average fish.  However this proved the point that fish over three pounds did like eels and I was able to fish them all day without tangles.  And just so you can all see what an average Ebro fish looks like, see below.

This fish is 61lbs - I like the mountains in the background.

the temperature here was well over 100 degrees F.  I was so tired after the fight with the heat, I could not lift the fish.  89lbs.

So if you fancy a spot of Ebro catting with eels in the lower reaches it is worth talking to Derek.  Here is his web site.  http://www.eaar.co.uk