Yikes
 

Thats going to suck if they are listed and no longer available as bait. Shut down the elver fishery, how short sighted of a fishery is that...

They survived without using river herring as bait, they will continue to catch fish without eels. Improvise, adapt, and overcome. Shut it down before it's too late.

My guess is u can culture them like rabbits

LOL "we'll grow em, you sling em" , next day UPS

Never been successfully done. All aquaculture starts with wild harvested elvers.
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The number that are killed is huge . The price shows how hard elvers are to get. Like all things when huge money is at stake there is no more reason to conserve. I've always wondered how many of these quote commercial fishermen actually pay income tax. Bet not a lot. We used to have so many eels in Maine before the elver thing started that you could drop a minnow trap anywhere water was brackish and get eels.

I never thought me as a dyed-in-the-wool eel fisherman would ever say it but no big deal. Its been the year of the plug anyway...... Plus i got about 50 dead eels in the freezer for riggies.....and catch me if u can as i got pots
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I've got a bunch in the freezer too, but it's nice to know that I can raid your pots if I really need live ones.
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I hear yea Mike last 2 years iv had a good plug bite ...last year I did good with plugs but eels produced better ...this year I'd say the plug bite has been better then eeling but regardless I'll fish eels till my freezer supply is gone
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I noticed the words "regulatory oversight" used in the article, nothing good ever happens when you get the bureaucrats involved.
Also noted the market for elvers has gone crazy, we all know what group is causing that.

ever notice that anything considered to be a "delicacy"
ends up on the endangered list

Before you condemn the elver fishery consider that only about 1 in 10,000 elvers ever makes it to adulthood!

Might as well give on using eels next year!
I mean, we've had a moratorium on herring for how many years now? And when do you think we will be able to start using them again?

Answer.....NEVER!

The same will happen with eels.

Remember that poachers are too stupid, too ignorant and too arrogant to read and comprehend what they are helping destroy!

Now if all the funds we paid to the freshwater and marine fisheries were to be used to control and curtail these POS we might have a little piece of mind, but we'll NEVER get the bait back again!!!

Add to this the problems related to plastics and the environment, and we are truly screwed!

on a similar note

i was truly amazed at how many cigarette butts
wind up in the belly of lake trout up North.

i'd wager that the same tobacco smokin
idiots complaining about the lousy fishing
are the same one's flickin their butts into the lake.

Well it would be nice to switch back to herring, it's only been 16 years since we were able to use them.
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My favorite

thats the exact reason they should close that ridiculous fishery... its agold-rush mentality that encourages cheating, and even some robberies.

AND if only 1 in 10,000 make it to adulthood, they should not remove hundreds of thousands of elvers from the population and make their likelihood of surviving to adulthood that much less likely...

right?

Just like striped bass... It's all about the money.
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Eben - the pleasure sticks will make a comeback - start pouring.

All kidding aside this would probably knock a bunch of one dimensional charter boat guys out of the picture.

And when you take a year like 2012, when the Maine harvest was about 3.4 million elvers, zero of those make it to adulthood. ~3.3 million of which would have been consumed in the food chain. Now they aren't available as energy in the system and the few elvers left unharvested face even greater pressure. Good point if you leave out the "before you condemn" part.

Well, look at it this way, if you buy a dozen eels you probably have done more damage to the eel population than the average elver fisherman.

Bobby, is it really 16 years?? I remember netting them at Gilbert Stuart and live lining them under the Sprague Bridge.

Also use to get them at the Nonquit Dam in Tiverton and live line when the stream dumped into the Sakonnet.

Mike- I know you're a pro-commercial guy, but now you're just not making sense. allowing the harvest of elvers takes millions of potential adults out of the equation before they can grow and reproduce.... guys who use eels for bait are taking adults that have already reproduced.....

From what I've read, I'm fairly certain that as soon as a mature silver eel reproduces it soon dies. It takes somewhere between 5 and 30 years for an adult eel to reproduce and they spawn only once in a lifetime.

Wrong on so many counts. The eels we use for bait are not adults, they are "yellow eels" they turn into "silver eels" when they become adults. Once adults migrate to the Sargasso sea they die. You will never see a post spawn adult eel.

1 pound of elvers equals approx. 5,000 fish so it takes an elver fisherman taking 2 pounds of elvers to reduce the adult population by 1, So if you have a dozen eels you have done as much damage to the population as an elver fisherman who catches 24 pounds of elvers. (I doubt that most elver fishermen are that successful but I don't know for sure)

I don't have a dog in this fight, as I seldom fish with eels. Last time I did it was probably five years ago. I'm just trying to bring the facts out, not following the old mantra that its always commercial fishing to blame.

I did a lot of research into this the last time around, even wrote several articles for the fisherman mag and On The water about it. Nothing seems to have changed in the last 8 years.

well except for the price per pound....:smokin:

This is true. But it has been gyrating more than the stock market the past couple of years. (want to buy some eel futures? :) )

Is that number because of the elver fishery or despite the elver fishery? :confused:

You equate 2lbs of elvers or 10,000 individual elvers to one adult eel and then stated that the yellow eels used for fishing are not the adults (silver eel). Your logic would be correct if those dozen eels purchased at the bait shop were silver eels but their not, they are yellow eels. Do you know how many yellow eels needed to make one adult silver eel being that you studied this topic extensively?

In addition to the above question do you know how many elvers are needed to have one "yellow eel"
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