re: What is the OB's opinion of eels?

They are slippery.
And slimy.
WNET

quote:

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I think something that is born in the Sargasso Sea, travels a thousand miles or more to freshwater, spends 40 years in said freshwater, and then makes the journey back to Sargasso to breed and die, is worthy of our respect and conservation efforts.

When you catch a large adult in freshwater (which are always female btw, the males stay relatively small and in brackish water) she may be nearly 40 years old.

There is a species of snake, the rainbow snake, that specializes on eating American eels. They, like the eels, end up disappearing from areas above dams. The dam blocks the eels...no more food for rainbow snakes.

Catch and release for me all the way with American eels.

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Eels are weird fish, in my current job I deal w/ them about 30% of the time as they are a species at risk and we have to manage our impact on them – I wont bore you w/ the details. But ya we don’t know much about them once they migrate to the Sargasso to breed or how they get from the Sargasso to shore. They are the best striper, lemonfish or grouper bait going, I like them as sushi and as mentioned earlier they are great smoked. The price paid to the larval eel fishermen (the cold cash stuff on TV or the shown on PBS) peaked in 2013 at about $3000/lb, this yr it was ½ that. Even though they make jack in the larval fish there is no market for the large fish, all the small fish bought are grown out into eels for sushi or smoked fish market. Right now (and for the future) we cant culture eels like we do catfish, bass, redfish etc – so if we want eels for aquaculture, we catch the young and grow them out.
There is lots of $ spent on management of them by various industrial sectors.
For me the pay the bills