Rural craft

In the 21st century, many old skills are no longer needed; we celebrate those that remain part of our rich rural culture

They’re a funny bunch,” said Fred Cooke, owner of the best eel, pie and mash shop in Dalston, east London. “Meeting up with them out in the Fens at the dead of night with a pocket full of cash doesn’t half give me the willies sometimes.”

Fred was talking about eel trappers who plied their trade through the rivers and drains of East Anglia, where he bought the wriggling, slimy resource for his worldfamous jellied eels.

Peter Carter was the last eel trapper in the Fens, using the same method of catching eels that his family had used for generations reaching back to 1475. But in 2016 Peter finally hung up his nets and willow traps amid fears about plunging eel stocks.

Trapping eels for food outdates even Peter’s bloodline by a very long margin. Eel catching and the construction of fixed traps or ‘weirs’ is covered in the Magna Carta, which called for eel weirs to be removed from “the Thames, Medway and throughout the whole of England”, not for reasons of conservation but because “the common passage of boats and ships in the great rivers of England be oftentimes annoyed by the inhansing of gorces, mills, wears, stanks, stakes and kiddles”.

So plentiful were eels in England in medieval times that every county had its own version of portable eel trap and its own name, too. Eel pot, putcher, grig, hive, kiddle, putcheon, wheels and wills were all versions of willow-woven, portable eel traps.

The elvers — young eels — have to travel back up the rivers after they have hatched. This incredible migrating journey does fortunately allow for many opportunities for the eels to be trapped along the way.

The most traditional and popular portable trap for catching adult eels is the conical wicker or willow trap: a simple funnel into which the eel swims — following the scent of bait — and out of which its exit is hindered. Willow traps were traditionally baited with shrimp, lamprey or rabbit.

Canny trappers invented a variety of ways to catch adult eels, either in standing water or while they were migrating downstream. Other permanent and largescale traps were built in the form of weirs or bucks. These involved structures built across the river through which eels were forced to migrate and which would either ‘filter’ the eels out, leaving them caught on a grid, or funnel them into baskets.

The lowlands and the east of England had a concentration of individual traps and weirs, where the rivers in the west of England, like the Severn and Parrett, were famous for their valuable catches of juvenile elvers.

Elver trapping requires entirely different equipment because of their tiny size. The most popular way to catch them is a large dip net. These small-mesh nets, some the size of a duvet, are used to intercept elvers that are brought into the river by the high tides through the summer. Elver fishing reached its peak in the 1990s when glass

“Willow eel traps were traditionally baited with shrimp, lamprey or rabbit”

eels — the next stage up from elver — were being live exported to Japan and at one point reached a record price of £600 per kilo. However, it has become increasingly controversial because the overall number of eels in the UK is estimated to have collapsed by 90% from the levels seen in the 1970s.

I’ve trapped eels by fyke net and baited traps both in Dorset and the Fens. I’ve also fished for eels with a commercial boat on Lough Neagh. Sadly, I haven’t touched any of my eel-catching equipment in more than a decade because, like many, I fear for the future of this complex and strange fish.

In 2009, David Moore, chairman of the Anglian Region’s Fisheries, Ecology and Recreation Advisory Committee, wrote a letter to the last handful of licensed eel catchers in which he recommended that commercial eel fishing should be ended and that anglers should return all eels that they catch. Even my local smokery now buys the eels it smokes from farms abroad.

Though the eels are having a rough time adjusting to our changing environment, Richard and Suzanne Kerwood, who run a farm outside Exeter dedicated to growing and working with willow, still keep the craft of eel trap building alive. Willow-built eel traps may be clever eel-snaring devices, but at the same time they are achingly beautiful works of rural craft.

For more information on willow traps visit windrushwillow.com

Peter holds an eel caught in a traditional wicker ‘hive’, a method used by his family for generations