Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 8/Notes about eels
NOTES ABOUT EELS.
I question much if, amongst all the countless inhabitants of both fresh and salt water, there be one so universally popular—and yet of whose natural history so little is known—as the eel, and that certainly not for lack of materials of interest, inasmuch as there are few fish (for I suppose I must term it a fish) about which so much can be said, and so much has still to be learnt.
There are many varieties of the eel known in this country, as well as several foreign ones special to the countries in which they are bred (as, for example, the gymnotus, or electrical eel, of South America); but I shall confine myself in this paper to the chief of the British varieties, namely, the conger, or great sea-eel; the fresh-water silver eel (the delicacy of our dining-tables); and, lastly, the small brown salt-water sand-eel. En passant, let me remark that there is a creature, called by some ignorant people a sand-eel, which is neither more nor less than a worm, and its proper name is the log (not lob) worm. This worm is used as bait for taking sea-fish.
The conger, with which I shall commence my remarks, grows to an immense size, often exceeding one hundred pounds in weight. Conger fishing is rarely practised per se, as it would not pay, but the fish is taken incidentally in almost every kind of sea-fishery. Great numbers, for instance, are caught in the herring and mackerel nets, and as many on the long lines used for the cod fishery, whilst they are often also taken in large numbers when fishing with the hand-line for codling and whiting. The conger frequently gets into the “trawl nets” employed in fishing for soles, plaice, turbot, &c., and not seldom causes woful destruction to the nets of the fishermen. I have alluded in a previous paper to one of enormous size taken many years ago on the Kentish coast,[1] and I have heard of very many similar instances. Enormous congers are caught off the Cornish coast during the pilchard fishery, and are cut in pieces, cured and dried for consumption in the fishermen’s cottages. The flesh of a very large conger is somewhat rank, but the smaller fish—say those of two to four pounds weight—when either fried in bread-crumbs, or stewed in wine as the river eel, are, in my own opinion, little, if at all, inferior to that fish. When congers are taken with hook and line, the bait used is a piece of fresh herring (a bait, by-the-way, that no salt-water fish, to be caught with a hook, will refuse). The greatest caution must be used in taking a conger-eel off the hook, as it is an excessively cruel, crafty fish, and will snap like a dog at the first thing that offers. The writer has a scar on his left hand, caused by a small fish of this species. The eel should be disabled by a sharp blow or two on the back of the head, or on the tail, so as to disjoint one of the vertebræ, and kill it outright. I have been (when fishing alone with a hand-line, as I sometimes do) so reluctant to handle one of these eels that I have cut the line above the hook, and allowed it to escape in preference to so doing. With the single exception of the savage dog-fish, I know no fish so awkward to handle as a conger-eel. The large congers are really dangerous customers, as any one will be inclined to agree with me who has once had a view of their formidable jaws. The boatmen cut the larger congers into flat pieces, about six or eight inches square and two thick. These they pepper and salt, and dry some time in the sun, after which they eat them broiled as a relish for tea. I have eaten, in a fisherman’s cottage, conger-eels so dressed, and found them by no means unpalatable. Some of the boatmen eat “dog-fish,” “nurse-dogs,” and “Sweet Williams” (a species of small dog-fish), dressed in a similar way. I have occasionally partaken of them myself, and must own that the “nurse-dog” was not bad, though a little too sweet to suit my palate. The bite of a conger is exceedingly painful, and gives a sensation like that which would be given by rubbing the skin sharply with a rough file until blood was drawn. Instances are on record of large congers having attacked fishermen, and I have heard of one man losing his arm from the bite of one of that tribe. In colour the conger-eel is much lighter than the river eel, being something of a pale lavender, with a darkish line drawn down the side from head to tail. Like all others of the eel tribe, its voracity is unbounded, but at the same time it is not an indiscriminate feeder. Its preference is for white bait (that is herring, mackerel, and sprats), and the smaller ones bite greedily at a worm. I have seen very large crabs and a couple of quarts of large and small prawns, and on one occasion a sheep’s eye (probably thrown over from some coasting vessel), taken out of a conger. These eels contain an immense amount of oil, but I never heard of its being put to any special use, probably because they are not taken in sufficient quantities. In the cod season, and when the lines for taking that splendid fish are baited with sprats and pieces of herring, congers are detestable nuisances, as they sometimes get on the hooks in great quantities to the exclusion, of course, of the cod; nay, they will eat the poor cod off the hook when he has got fastened! I have taken scores of cods’ heads only! all the flesh being eaten off the bones, as what the conger leaves, the crabs and lobsters will finish. I once was immensely chagrined at finding on one of my hooks the head of a cod (which, entire, should have weighed forty pounds), the body being quite devoured, and even the eyes and red gills eaten out of the head! The cod-fishermen—where congers are plentiful—are in continual dread of this voracious creature. However, this short account will suffice for this particular variety of the eel.
Next in order, but most esteemed of the species, comes the silver-eel of our rivers, ponds, and lakes, a delicious fish, and one which few palates dislike; indeed, from the eel-pie of the street-boy to the exquisite “spitch-cock” of more aristocratic patrons, there is hardly a form in which the river-eel is not welcomed as a dinner-dish by all classes. Silver-eels are caught in all fresh waters, and by special wire or wicker nets, or “pots,” so constructed as to arrest their progress when once imprisoned. These traps are usually set near mills in rivers, and sometimes laid singly in running streams and large ditches, the haunts of eels. Immense quantities are thus taken annually, many millions in fact, and far more than it would be an easy task to compute. The best size for the table is from one to three pounds weight. The county of Berks is famous for its eels, though indeed wherever there is food for them they are pretty sure to be found. Four or five years ago, when the Serpentine was under course of improvement, thousands of fine eels floated dead to the surface of the water, and were carried away in numbers by men and boys. I saw some on that occasion (it was either in 1857 or 1858) of splendid size and condition; indeed I have rarely, if ever, seen finer ones. Private individuals who wish to take eels, not for the market, but for pastime, or to supply their own tables, may take them in most fresh waters by means of night-lines baited with lob-worms, minnows, and small gudgeons. Jack and trout are often taken on these lines: I myself have taken fine fish on them, but only once a trout, and that was a small one; still I have known many instances of good trout being taken, as well as perch. There are other ways of taking eels on which I need not here expatiate. Holland is famous for its eels, and they are brought to Billingsgate alive, and there sold by tens of thousands each morning during the proper season. These are bought by costermongers and little dealers, and retailed in the streets. On a winter night, every street in a populous locality (especially if it be a low one) will exhibit its eel-merchant with a can of smoking hot stewed eels, and of the eel-pie houses and vendors I may truly affirm that “their name is legion.”
It is a very bustling, curious sight, very early in the morning, when eels are in season, to pay a visit to the Dutch eel-boats lying off Billingsgate, and to hear the great amount of rough but good-humoured badinage that goes on between the crews of the vessels and the intended buyers. A great lump of eels, twined and intertwined in so many Gordian knots, and all alive and writhing, is produced from a box (full of holes to admit the water, and fastened by a chain to the boat), and perhaps the seller ultimately takes a third of what he asked at first. The eel-buyers are an exceedingly sharp set, and can calculate to a fraction what a lot will be worth at a glance, knowing as they do the exact state of the street-market, and the prices to which (and no further) their street-customers will go. The day of the week also to a great extent influences the street-markets. On Catholic fish days, for instance, the demand with Irish labourers will be greater; and it must be remembered that fish being a stock in trade that will not keep, the street-seller must needs look very sharply to the probable demand. Most of those who deal in uncooked eels sell also plaice and other fish, whilst those who sell hot stewed eels, sell besides only whelks, and sometimes the eels alone. So popular are these stewed eels with street boys, that I am assured a lad, after having had one halfpennyworth, will come six or seven times again in the same evening if he has the money, and one street-dealer told me he had once sold thirteen halfpennyworths to the same boy within three hours!
The last variety of eel to which I shall refer is the small sea sand-eel, which is sold in vast numbers to the Londoners in the by districts, especially the Irish, and the young lads and boys who have a few pence to spare for what they deem a delicacy. This choice “morçeau” is particularly affected by the hangers-on of the Victoria Theatre: indeed, the class of people frequenting that district form at least eight-tenths of the customers of the eel-man. Sometimes a working-man’s wife, to get a hot and cheap supper for her tired-out husband, will buy a few of these eels ready stewed, and bring them home in a small basin.
The sand-eel does not differ in its habits from others of its tribe. It may be taken at any seaside place, as for instance, off Ramsgate and Broadstairs’ piers, by merely fastening a bunch of worms to a piece of worsted and dipping them into the water. The eels will hang on till lifted out. This method is termed “bobbing,” and I have often employed it, when a boy, at both the places mentioned. It must be practised when the tide is flowing, as the eels come in to feed with the flood tide. The worms should be sea-worms, dug out of the mud at low water. Common land-worms turn quite white in salt water, and are of very little use. I have also taken the silver fresh-water eel by “bobbing” in the river Loddon, and in the Thames at Henley.
The sea sand-eel is a very bony fish and exceedingly inferior, but it commands a good sale amongst the lower orders owing to its cheapness. Its size rarely exceeds twelve inches in length, and its thickness is no more than that of a man’s finger. It is sold on barrows in the streets and lanes of the New Cut, Whitechapel, the Edgware Road, Somers Town, and other populous localities, and also in the small fish-shops scarcely to be dignified as “fishmongers,” but where the articles offered for sale consist mainly of bloaters, dried haddocks, shrimps, whelks, and periwinkles.
Probably many of the readers of this periodical are not even aware of the existence of this little eel. It may often be seen taken in the shrimp and prawn nets of our coast, and under the large stones and seaweed in the shallow pools left by the sea at low water. I regret much to add that great and needless cruelties are practised on the eel tribe, as, though the eel is tenacious of life, the mere disjointing of one of the vertebræ is sufficient to deprive it of feeling, and the motion that follows is purely muscular. It is a piece of brutal barbarity to skin eels (as is almost always done), without first depriving them of feeling. I should like to urge a plea for the poor eel, who has not many friends; nay, why should I not urge a plea—as I most heartily do—for the whole of the dumb creation?
- ↑ See Vol. VI., p. 399.