Would the loss of eels truly hurt you?

[Back Beach]

No eels? I quit.

Really though, I use mostly eels because I feel it is the best way to catch large in most cases, plus I hate treble hooks. You can argue less skilled fishermen will be hurt by no eels, and the real fishermen will shine, but it simply isn't true. Sometimes plugs are the only way to fish such as when you have a 30 knot wind in your face or the fish are way off the beach and a long casting plug is needed.Maybe you're in the canal with 50 feet of water in front of you and the fish are near the bottom. How much good will a live bait do you then? Also, if you fish mostly with plugs, then most of your large will come on plugs just by way of the relationship of time spent fishing with them versus other methods. I fish mostly eels in eel appropriate locations on eel tides with eel mentality and an eel rod, therefore most of my big fish come on eels and I would miss them, but I would adapt.
Sometimes a fly is the best way to catch them, sometimes jigs, sometimes eels. Its all about results for me, not the hows. Good question Toby.

[Squibby17]

I'm not going to lie, I would miss them for sure.

I caught my first striper on an eel and I would say 2/3's of my larger fish (larger being over 15 lbs) have been caught on eels. If they are truely endangered I will have no problem stop using them however I may have to learn the art of the rigged sluggo once this happens (may try it this year too)

Quick story

Last Fall I went to one of my spots and my friend was suppose to meet me with eels. Well I waited for him for 1 hour and I caught 3 or 4 bass all under 8 lbs. He finally shows up we rig up the eels and get two fish over 15 lbs in the first 1/2 hour, there is no doubt in my mind eels work better for the bigger and smarter fish.

my .02

[t.orlando]

Probably 95% of my fish over 30# been on eels. But also fish them the majority of the time. So will hurt some, just gonna have to rethink strategys

[tlapinski]

I will get this disclaimer out of the way now, as it was not my intention in the first place. This post was meant to spark some discussion as it is something I have been thinking about lately and something I have discussed with a few of my fishing partners. It was not meant in any way to belittle eel guys, or to make out pluggers to be better than eels guys. If I wanted to do that, I would have just said "eel fish don't count anyway". I eel and I plug. I apologoze if my post or comments were taken in any other way. As I did say earlier,

there are things that make some guys better eel fishermen than others

This is the same of plug fihermen.

That said, I like some of the responses so far. The point about the commercial fisherman was something I was thinking about, as was the question of what will the skishers do? I guess you could plug while skishing, or drift a pogie chunk, but I think the last thing you would want is a bag of pogies hanging off your belt out in open water...

[Goose]

Originally Posted by tlapinski

I guess you could plug while skishing, or drift a pogie chunk, but I think the last thing you would want is a bag of pogies hanging off your belt out in open water...

Funny you should mention that, certain times that is just how I fish. I remove pvc inserts in my surfbag, that allows me to keep chunks of still frozen pogies in a freezer zip-lock. Keeping water off your chunks makes all the difference, it keeps them firm and keeping them from going mush allowing good casts. Its a very productive way to fish.

[piemma]

It would hurt my production in July and August. Eels are the killer in the warm Summer months. Not too concerned about Spring and Fall as there are always some big baits around so plugs work for me. It will definetely put a crimp in my fishing for Summer...unless I go the Sluggo route which I think we will all be forced into eventually