John,
Great question...I'll see if I can coax Ron into giving us his thoughts. I know his line of signature rods are pretty fast action which is great for lures but not always the best for tossing a live offering. Ron will often use an off the beach cast for tossing chunk bait, but that would eventually buff your eel to a nice blue sheen...that might not be so bad
.
I would think most anglers would be making a typical back cast. A few eel slingers I've met like the softer, more parabolic action of a glass rod to slingshot their eel into the suds. The problem with a lot of glass rods is they can get pretty heavy by the end of the night.
I'm sure there are a lot of qualified folks on the board that can give us some great input.
Mike