Eel Record

[Dick Dastardly]

Me to Gerry.

[tony jolley]

Me to Gerry.

 

No had a picture yet have you Budgie?

[Steve Walker]

Jim I think Josh is refering to the "Prison water" theory that a lot of eel specialists subscribe to.Not sure about it myself but one thing Im sure about is that despite eels being undoubtedly able to live out of water for some time and equally undoubtedly be theoretically able to move across land,I nor any one I know have ever seen it!

 

There was a brilliant sequence in a BBC TV documentary showing elvers scaling a weir by moonlight. Turns out the whole sequence was shot in a studio, and that it was only a paper moon (sailing over a fibreglass river).

 

I've not been able to suspend disbelief for wildlife programmes since I listened to a programme on R4 about how they make the sounds effects.

Edited February 15, 2006 by Steve Walker

[peter mccue]

There was a brilliant sequence in a BBC TV documentary showing elvers scaling a weir by moonlight. Turns out the whole sequence was shot in a studio, and that it was only a paper moon (sailing over a fibreglass river).

 

I've not been able to suspend disbelief for wildlife programmes since I listened to a programme on R4 about how they make the sounds effects.

 

Remember 30 years ago, I was fishing my local river Leven at the waterfall. The wall had a number of cracks in it, which caused a wet patch on the pathside that extended from the top of the falls to the bottam.

 

To my amazement, at the height of the day, Elvers were running the wet patch in huge numbers, literally crawling up a dampness that was just enough to keep them wet. My friends & I spent the rest of the afternoon ferrying buckets of them up above the falls. I haven't seen the likes since & unfortunately I am very unlikely to see it again.

[Guest Brumagem Phil]

Some good articles on eels in the articles section of the site (a couple by Leon if i recall correctly).......if my memory serves me correctly, it suggests some eels simply dont return to spawn and just grow old and die where they reside. Given they can live to well over 100 years, that could be some eel.

 

John siddely fished earlswood for eels and its said he once lost one which he said was much bigger than any eel he'd ever seen.......his record on earlswood was around 7lb I think.

 

I fished it this year using his technique and some nice juicy lobworms........had week after week of corking bream fishing (20+ fish each evening) but not a single bloody bootlace :-(

 

If I decide to renew my permit for the new season then I'll propbably have a go again this year.

 

Sorry, just fancied a waffle on topic for a change

[Dick Dastardly]

No had a picture yet have you Budgie?

 

Not yet mate.

[DannyS]

On the subject of eels moving across land we had a strange thing happen about 15 years ago. My father had a largish garden pond.

He decided to make the pond a bit bigger. We drained it and found sitting on the bottom an eel about 2 foot long. The eel had never been put there by us as we built it and stocked it from stratch. It was still there two years later when we cleaned the pond, but had gone four years after that when it was cleaned again. The strange thing is that there are no lakes around, and the nearest river is the wandle. But this was when the wandle was pretty much an open sewer. You could actually smell chemicals from it on some days.

 

As for a new record, A few of us on a working party out of season in our club once saw a huge eel swimming in the shallows of on of our gravel pits. No idea how big but looked to be in double figures. This was about 10 years ago.

[david t]

can eels respire through their skin when crossing land at night? I think they are one off the only remaining coarse fish that hold that air of mystery about them, i wish there were more around my area, in the south east, ive only ever caught one.

[peter mccue]

can eels respire through their skin when crossing land at night? I think they are one off the only remaining coarse fish that hold that air of mystery about them, i wish there were more around my area, in the south east, ive only ever caught one.

 

 

Blimey thats sad, there was a time when fishing any sort of meat baits would bring forth Eels en masse on all our rivers, shows you how far they've declined doesn't it.

 

I don't think Eels can breathe through their skin, It's the gill arrangement that allows them to live out of water for such a long time. The gills are far more enclosed than 'normal' fish & so allow the retention of moisture to enable the filaments to continue processing oxygen....I think!

[Dick Dastardly]

They apear to hold water under their gill covers stopping the gills drying out.

 

When I used to net eels I used to keep them in tanks untill there were enough to be collected.When the fishing was poor this could be a few weeks.During this time the water in the tanks would need changing.This often lead to escapes!

 

Once I found an eel under my Range rover some four hours after the water change.Its skin was a bit dried out but I stuck it back in the tank and it was fine.

 

Another time when a large gravel pit I ran suffered a mass algae crash and the subsequent de oxygenation.The margins were full of eels seemingly trying to get out of the water.

 

Its all very well going on about the elvers amazing exploits but who has seen adult eels migrating back to the sea over land? I never have and neither has anyone else I know.And it is these adult (potentialy landlocked/imprisoned) eels that we are after all interested in.