Specimen Secrets
It’s a magical but frustrating business, as Drennan Cup Champ Dai Gribble reveals…
Dai Gribble on the rigs and baits for catching big eels
IN COMMON with most anglers I find small eels a nuisance. They tend to spin and twist, making a mess of your tackle, and are best avoided at all costs.
Big eels – anything over 4lb in weight – are a completely different proposition, however, and make a challenging target for the big-fish angler.
Perhaps the greatest attraction of big eels is that they can turn up practically anywhere.
I have my doubts that adult eels travel large distances over land, as has been suggested in the past, but elvers are able to get into more or less any body of water in the country. Once there, they can grow large in even very small ponds, given a good supply of food.
The element of mystery about what size eels are in a water adds to the excitement of fishing for them, as you never really know what might turn up.
One thing is for certain, unlike in the carp world you won’t catch a big eel with a name!
Sadly, their numbers have plummeted in recent decades and the eel is now a protected species.
You can still fish for them, but any fish caught must be returned unharmed.
One of the problems when fishing for eels is that they are very vulnerable to being deep-hooked and, since the vital organs are very close to the head, deep hooking is likely to be fatal if these organs are damaged.
The two rigs I use for eels are both designed to eliminate deep hooking, and I would urge anybody targeting eels to follow suit…