I've always been an "eels-first" kind of guy, but if the fish are keyed on small bait, I'd go with the 1.5 Habs.
Last couple of years I went to MV, we fished a well-known spot where the "book" says, eels on the drop. The two guys with me fished plugs and small jigs exclusively. Me, being stubborn, fished eels at least an hour per night, until I got sick of watching them hit fish on every cast and picked up my plug rod, at which time I racked the eel rod and switched over to plug and had every-cast hits. They were keyed on mullet and peanut bunker. I had one bass on eels the whole week, and that was on the slack.
Darters worked, along with Habs needles, which were deadly when the bait moved over a shallow flat inside of the main channel.
Funniest part of the trip was going down at the end of the drop, and meeting the guys coming up who'd drifted eels all tide and had maybe one or two fish. We went down and fished the incoming and had fish steady for 6 hours on plugs and jigs. The locals saw us at the weigh-in every morning and were racking their brains trying to figure out how and where we were getting those fish. They thought we were deliberately being "seen" at spot A, then running off to somewhere else. Couldn't believe we were getting them all on the wrong tide
