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Eels are as close to cheating as you can get without explosives.
It's not that they always work, but it's just that when there are fish in front of you they will ALMOST always take them. Sometimes if there's a lot of fire in the water, you'll get the fast pick-up-and-drop deal... but you can very often combat that by fishing a dead or nearly dead eel like a plastic worm in freshwater, in other words let it sit on the bottom for several seconds or as much as 30 seconds or even more and then move it a few feet and wait again. If you're still getting the same treatment reduce the test of your leader and fish a very long leader--10-15 feet tied with an albright. I've always thought that the reason they drop the eel is that they see your line lighting the fire up, if you drop from 50 or 60 down to 30-pound test there's a lot less diameter to ignite those little critters, on top of that, using the long leader eliminates the terminal tackle and extra knots which, I've always felt, ups your chances and I've seen it work many times.
As for fishing eels on a sandy beach... like the others have said Bob, you can't pick a place where stripers swim that an eel will not work as long as the conditions don't rule them out.
-Dave
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