eel moratorium.. has it begun?
 

Just got back from the bait store... I was told I should grab them quick as they arent going to be available very soon... First time I was warned by my guy there....

Ill admit I do not know all the details.. was there a date set etc for eels being restricted?

nope, canada, where most eels are coming from now , have changed there regulations on size. its making it more difficult to get them. Just get an eel pot and pot your own :hee:

From what I have heard if anything is going to happen, its at least two years away, so you have a couple of seasons left to get a 50 on the eel.Once it does happen (if it does) just toss a pot out and get your own for fishing, I wouldent worry about the eel police finding you at 2am on some remote rock.If eels are "endagered" its because of the demand from other countries that consume them for food, not from bass fisherman.

who would eat one of them slimey bastages :yak:

Eel is actually pretty tasty.kinda tastes like chicken.

Unagi :drool:

i was told the same at my tackleshop last night..... eels are going to be hard to get next season. My hunch is that the eel suppliers are going to milk this and drive up prices before any moratorium happens. We'll see though.

not if you pot your own

I can see it now a huge underground eel market :beat: They will always be availible one way or the other. :bl:

got horseshoe crab ? :jump1:

Yeah!!!
Screw conservation!
Lets go kill some schoolies while we're at it too!

I'm curious.

If possession of eels were to become illegal would any here continue to use them?

If yes how would that be different from keeping an undersized bass or hunting/
fishing out of established seasons?

You know damn right well that the tackle shops will be raising prices...they will say " It is not me it is a supply vs demand thing", then they will use the gas prices as an example.

Next they will increase the price of chunks (who uses chunks :bl: ) and say "Since everyone has switched from eels to chunks the demand has gone up for the chunks so I had to increase the price"

Then they will increase the price of lures because "the lack of bait, because of the denamd, has increased the price of lures"

Hey fellas...you increase the price of everything fisherman will not come to your stoe for anything. Wit the gas prices preventing some folks from fishing we dont need any more pricing pressures!


On an off topic....I just saw that the Airlines are raising prices because of "fuel prices". So if the prices of gas drops do they drop their prices....I THINK NOT!!!

Buy stock in Sluggos

I just reread my post....man there was some venom in there.

I need to catch me some fish.....it has been a while with the twinks :splat:

Here we go! lumping everything else into the eel problem, I dont kill school bass..

I cant answer your question on how it would be different.

As to would I still use them...I plead the fifth on that :D

I would have no problem at all fishing sluggo's they work great, so if eels were none existant thats what I would use.....

It might be time to get the 55 gallon plastic drum out.

My uncle had a nice system going for years with pots and keeping them in the drum.. He isnt using the hardware anymore.. might as well get some use out of it.



and if you really want to be an activist, instead of making ridiculous comparisons like eel use and killing schoolies... go picket the party boats where I would guess that 50% of what comes up in the way of small cod/haddock dont back down alive.

Not regularly... but if one happened to swim by or something.. i cant say i wouldnt.

Why not just eliminate the commercial harvest of eels, What percentage of users would pot their own? I think it would be pretty small.

Make sure you have your license to harvest horseshoe crabs first....

I went back to potting my own. I had to pay $1.90 each recently and half the time they don't have any. And forget about fresh bait anymore. Nobody carries fresh/not frozen. :huh:

got wood?

$1.90? wow

still at $1 apiece and I am one of 3 guys who buy them from this guy.

Overseeing how people unhook fish on a party boat is a mate's job most of the better boats they actually do their job.
DEM was down at Capt Leroy's thursday night checking permits and fish.
They were also in Padanaram creeping around after a couple reports of shorts being taken off the breakwater.

And its the correct comparison.
If you're gonna ignore laws, you might as well just take short fish.
There's no difference.

You got a problem with a moratorium on certain species? Fine, take it up with the DEM and the State. Don't ignore the laws and do whatever the hell you want, because it'll make you no different than the piles of people down at the East End or any number of "popular" places that blatantly ignore the size requirements and catch laws.

Look, if I want to fish eels , then I am fishing eels! simple as that.

You guys are taking this way to far, there is no "moratorium" on eels and its not gonna happen, relax and dont worry about it. thare are plenty of landlocked eels in freshwater ponds, pot those and your ok in my opinion.

It wouldn't be any different. Poaching is poaching.

All the self rightious people! I would bet anything that any of you in the middle of a blitz where the only thing that was working was eels, would take one and hook it right up, moratorium or not!!

You'd lose that bet.

You feel the same way about taking shorts under the cover of darkness? Explain the difference to me.

Granted, I can only base on what I see, but I would hope they would put a moratorium on pogies and herring long before eels. Or hell, put the moratorium on any and all live bait, except for maybe clams and worms. Do it for a year or two.

Id be all for that if it helped.

Not worth the explanation or the argument that will ensue, I do not take shorts as your post implies. I dont think eels are endagered, I think there needs to be a 5 or 10 year study first, I think most of it is politics, one person says they see less eels in a tidal river and all of a sudden its an endangered species..There is a world out there of people , like it or not who consume eels for food and thats the problem, not bait fisherman on the east coast..

No kidding.
But its the internet, you get used to it.

remember there was a large group of people who didnt think the bass were in trouble in the 80's and they didnt have the internet to compare notes.