I have talked to some very reliable people who tell me at the fastest it will be two years! I am not worried and I tend to trust the people I talk to, they are in the know! And good luck to the eel police trying to find a guy on some rock pile in the middle of the night slingin eels, I am not the least bit worried.

Also what I have heard from people at high levels in DEM and marine fisheries is that what most likely will happen is that there will be a limit you can have in possesion, instead of buying as many as you want it may be something like only 6 per day. at any rate eels wont be hard to find.

Lets wait and see, my eels pots are ready! but honestly, its not going to be a big deal

Here's my dilemma...i use gami circles, and although rare, i sometimes gut/deep hook fish. Is it true that the hooks rust out? if so i guess i should be leaving a lot more hooks in fish. in years past i cut the line and released the fish, then i thought it couldn't be good for the fish having a hook lodged in its perforated gut so i started keeping gut hooked fish, and either eating them or giving them away.
what do you guys do if you gut hook a fish?

jam your hand down it's throat and unhook it.if you can fit your hand in you can get it out easily.
scoolies cut the line.

i will bet it takes over a year for a hook to rust out of a fish. if not longer.

I've been hooking eels down the throat, similar to the way #^&#^&#^&#^&#^&#^& does it for years. Another advantage is that you can cast them for long periods without tearing the eel. When you hook them through the lips, I find they tear easier.

Just my .02

And all this time I've been hooking myself in the bottom lip and just stuffing the eels in my shorts :err:

It's no wonder I'm not catching any fish :boots:

-spence

That is sick and cruel...you horrid man :fishslap:

e#^&#^&#^&#^&#^&#^&,

Thanks for the post. There's a lot of us beginners that appreciate it.

Hmmm, Very interesting how I've been sucessful, while doing it all wrong! :eyes:
Not the first time I've noticed this though, probably not the last either.
Beginning to think there's more than one way? :bgi:

how do u get them to eat the hook ????

This was a good post by Bill.
An He says he doesn't care...
I wanna see how he hooks a bunker..

What about hooking them through the tail. I heard that if you do that you can just toss it out and leave it to swim around and you don't have to constantly reel in.

That post is old......Anyway bunker get a 4x strong VMC trebble right in the nose!! Thats it!

No way your serious...however if you are, no dont do that

I know this post is wicked old, but I referred to it before I started eeling for the first time this year and it helped a bunch! I hooked them exactly how #^&#^&#^&#^&#^&#^& suggested and except for a few cast offs (probably due to not hooking deep enought down the throat) had no problems, some eels stayed alive and on the hook for a couple of hours. Oh and I also bashed them on the rocks if they were out of line.

Sounds odd but I DID read somewhere that the cobia fisherman do that... maybe they arent head hunters???

the hooked then like 1/3 of the way back through the flesh...

4/0 trebble.. mmm... shad :jump:

um sorry?