Smoked Eel

I do NOT recommend this as a regular part of your diet as less than a foot cost £6.50, however it IS an occasional delicious treat.

I have never had eel, but I know many love it. Must get around to trying it. The eel is an endangered species in the UK now, once so common. Check out their life cycle truly amazing.

Info here http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8273000/8273877.stm

Eddie wrote:I have never had eel, but I know many love it. Must get around to trying it. The eel is an endangered species in the UK now, once so common. Check out their life cycle truly amazing.

Info here http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8273000/8273877.stm

Never knew they migrated so far to spawn! I'm starting to see why they might be endangered though as their 'Fry' or Glass Eels are a delicacy and worth a bit too apparently after watching a program last year that featured them where I saw lot's of people on the bandwagon,catching masses of them during the night-Poor little guys! Come all the way back to our shores without much chance of becoming an adult!

Yes I think there's only one eel-catcher left in the Fens. There's a pub in a nearby village called the Eel's Foot - which refers to the end of the net they used to catch them in. Mine came from Holland.

We do see them around still but not as often as we did. I remember back in the eighties watching a heron that had caught one which was so huge it could only swallow half of it. The rest of the eel was writhing around wrapping itself round its neck and trying to pull itself back out (apparently they can swim backwards as well as forwards). Eventually the heron lay down with its neck stretched out along the ground and took a breather before finally standing very upright and gulping for all it was worth to get the rest of it down. Even then you could see a bulge in its neck flapping around for a while.

Well I ate the last of it today and won't be having any more for a long while.

Jellied eels (of which I am not fond) and oysters used to be the food of the poor only a century or two back, now they are for the rich and trendy

I remember sometimes finding eels crawling across the ground a long way from water. Also at Bickton Mill on the Hampshire Avon (which has now become a fish farm and the owners got arsy about people walking over their weirs and blocked off the footpath along the river) I recall seeing hordes of elvers trying to climb from the mill race up to the river back in the sixties or so.