Eels risk slipping through the net of conservation

All over Europe, "glass eels", which become "elvers" as they move inland, little see-through slivers of fishiness, prized by gourmets, are coming in from the sea at five per cent of the rate seen 30 years ago. In the UK, the figure may be as low as two per cent.

The European Union is committed to restoring fish migration routes.

But in practice, so far, this has mainly meant fish passes designed for salmon and sea trout, which breed at the top of rivers and go back to sea to live, making fine spectacle and sport as they go.

The eel lives the other way round, and sneaks to and fro, and prefers dirty ditches to bubbling brooks. And most people have only ever loved it for its flesh or the money to be made in providing it.

Fish passes just for eels have had a low priority, but there is now a toughened-up official commitment to provide them and Clive would like us all to try not to begrudge the money.

The Book of Eels, by Tom Fort, exposed the astonishing scale of the human exploitation which has been one of the eel's problems.

It moved in tons, so we took it in tons. The taste for it is a hangover from the days when it was probably the main source of fish flesh.

Now, except in Gloucestershire, on the Severn, and Bucks, on the Wye, and Somerset, on the Parrett, where the locals plead tradition like the Japanese do for whaling, there is very little elver fishing and not much commercial eel fishing left in the UK – officially, at least.

There is no licensed elver fishing any more on the Humber, Ouse and Trent, but there is still some fishing for adult eels, although the Environment Agency is vague about the scale of it.

Clive certainly knows of "fyke nets" – tunnels designed to take eels in bulk – being set, licensed or not. And no wonder. In 1998, a kilo of elvers – around 3,500 baby fish – was fetching 500 from the fish farms of China and Japan

That was a mad year but even now elvers are 250 a kilo in the right markets and gourmets will pay 20 for a frozen half-kilo of the smoked flesh of the yellow eel – the adult – and more for the silver eel, the fully fattened final transformation, which gets taken during its last epic journey, back to the deep tropical Atlantic.

The Scots have banned all commercial netting of eels and even hook and line angling for them.

Clive would not like that, although he thinks it an understandable response to the scale of the crisis. Since January this year, even in England, all anglers have been required to return all eels to the water. Clive always has. He has not eaten an eel for 30 years and does not feel he is missing much. His interest is in the hunt.

"I'm 54 and I started fishing at 11, in the land drains east of Hull, where I got used to eels. I joined the Navy for five years and did a bit of fishing around the world and when I came home, I went back after eels but I was going after bigger specimens. I have fished for them ever since – probably 40 or 50 nights between March and October, usually six pm to six am. I turn to pike in the winter.

"From 1985 to 2005, I was a member of the Eel Study Group, a network of interested anglers. There were only about 25 of us nationally. But I guess we understood eels better than most people and we talked to government agencies when they began to realise there was cause for concern, in the late 90s. But it was 2005 by the time the European Commission called for eel management plans from all member states and it is only this year the UK has had its plan approved.

"From 2005 to 2007 I was a member and representative of the National Anguilla Club, named after the eel's Latin name, and got involved in similar discussions through that role.

"From January this year, the agency finally has the power to refuse or withdraw any commercial eel netting licences and I hope it will use it. If carp or pike were being taken by the ton there would be uproar.

Clive says: "In this country, a freshwater eel of more than four pounds is big. I have caught about 20 of them, including six over five pounds. The biggest was six pounds and four and a half ounces and about 44 inches long – from a still water in North Yorkshire in 1986. That is as far as I am prepared to go in talking about venues. If you want to break records, you would be better off in Shropshire or Cheshire.

"I look for water that has been fed from the rivers network at some point but has got cut off. If an eel is there, with a source of food, it can live for years, getting bigger. In the 1980s, a guy I knew caught an eel of seven pounds two ounces and the Natural History Museum said it was 68 years old. So when I look at a water, I think about how it was connected 30 or 40 or more years ago. Basically, you want it shallow and full of food. The eel will chase fish, and scavenge dead fish, but it gets biggest where it can find a lot of small food items like waterleeches, snails, shrimps and larvae

"I fish with hook and line, usually baited with dead roach or live lobworm. But I groundbait in a big way. The eel has a phenomenal sense of smell. I have used chopped or minced fish, liver, ox blood, and one season I chopped up 30 chicken carcasses with an axe and put some in each time I fished. One night I collected 200 slugs in the rain and put them close to my hookbait, which was also a very big slug.

"Last year, I used eight pints of maggots a night, which I kept in the freezer, so they would not wriggle away when I used them.

He continues: "The 68-year-old eel I mentioned was caught by a man who used to pick up road kill and deposit it where he was fishing. But I have come to think the commercial groundbait powders are probably as good as anything.

"Most anglers fish for eels on the bottom but through the Eel Study Group, we established you could also catch them several feet off the bottom.

"Under certain conditions you can catch them very close to the surface, even over deep water, particularly on moonlit nights. This involves fishing small deadbaits or livebaits just two or three feet down, silhouetted against the surface.

"I use ordinary line but I do recommend wire traces for attaching the hook. There is a very high possibility of catching pike with the same bait and you do not want the pike to escape with a hook in its mouth. And although the eel's teeth are small, they can rasp across a line and snap it in a prolonged fight."

CW 24/4/10