The Common Eel ay 
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 larve 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. 
i 
Fic. 212.—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, ite 
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 
