The Common Eel 2 6i 



The migration to the sea usually takes place in September and 

 October. A dark, wet, windy night is their favourite time, when they 

 collect in great shoals, thousands of them sometimes crowded together. 

 I have often seen them during the winter come from under stones and 

 from holes in dykes when the water was let off mill-lades. Many of 

 these were 2 feet long. The eel has little difficulty in finding food, as 

 most larvae live under stones where the eels hide. Eels, too, are very 

 destructive to young salmon, for they devour large numbers from the 

 fry up to the smolt stage. 



FIG. 247. Young Eels. July 1909. 



There is no better bait for a large eel than a parr or a smolt, and 

 if one is cast into a pool where there are large eels one of them soon 

 picks it up. I have often fished during the night with natural bait, 

 and if it was warm and thundery, eels were so eager to take the bait 

 that I have had to leave the pool I intended fishing. In Scotland eels 

 are allowed a free passage to and from the sea, as there are no eel 

 fisheries and few people try to catch them with the rod. In most, if 

 not all, eel fisheries they are only caught during the downward migra- 

 tion, but I am of opinion that if eel fishers were to try to catch them 

 during their upward migration a continuous supply could be obtained 

 from May to October. In all our large estuaries swarms of eels 

 could be found during the summer months, for they are constantly 

 running up. It seems to me that, besides the migration of the elvers, 

 there is a continual migration inland of eels of a larger size, which 

 swim along the bottom and across the whole width of the river, and 



