I enjoyed your post on rigging eels and have copied it to my hard drive. I'm going to give it a try maybe :), although it's tough for me to set aside the time it appears might be necessary. I'd have saved my eels from today, but alas they were long past any needle & thread saving them :).

My question to you and others that employ this method is, what provokes a striper to believe this is the real thing? As you know I'm a big plastic jerkbait nut and I strongly believe that my success has to do with many things. It's the way I work the bait for sure, it's the profile, size, overall length, maybe the way the weighted hook falls when I'm not retreiving it, color to a small degree and possibly my "secret scent" that I pour in.

I do a lot of fishing with live eels dragging slowing on a fixed rod placed in a rod holder in the back of the boat. This enables me to fish plastic up forward and still have a shot at the large from the back of the boat. I'm not imparting any action or retreiving them at all. Whatever that live eel does on the end of the line is entirely up to it, but I suspect it's what it does when an inquisitive bass swims up to take a better look, is what seals the deal. I've had eel rod in my hand enough times to know they freek out, when mama bass comes up to say hello. Now, does your method have any application for a static non-participatory method such as this?

Inquisitive minds want to know, thanks.

Hi GS,
Its easy to make the bass think its the real thing cause it is the real thing. It's just dead. It still smells , feels and to a fish I guess it tastes about the same (do fish have a sense of taste?) :) You have to keep it moving a little. As long as its got water going by it , it will slizer around. You won't get a nervous reaction when a bass approaches but my experience has been that they grab it anyway. Some people will say that the eel being alive would be better but I say having a tail hook , which is almost impossible with a live eel that will tangle it all up , is a better advantage than the liveliness of the eel. Just my opinion of coarse.