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boatingonthehudson.com
Eels:
The Creatures from the Sargasso Sea!
The eel is not a very likable creature at first glance. It is secretive, snake-
like, slimy, and, as those who have inadvertently caught one while angling
know, very, very strong. It is the last thing you want to see on your fishing line!
My take on eels has always been one of wonderment as one of my earliest
childhood memories is of watching young eels (elvers) climbing straight up
a small dam on a tiny creek across the street from where I lived. What were
these things? As a boy I caught the adult eel in the Oscawana brook behind
our house in Putnam Valley. Fishing for them was particularly good when
“they let the pool go” which meant that upstream Floradan Lodge opened
the gateway of their brook-dammed swimming pool to clear the silt. The now
dark brown and swirling waters of our usually pristine brook brought out the
eels which we caught with a ball of dough from squeezed Wonderbread or
a nice fat night crawler. We skinned them and roasted them over an open
fire, as we did with any fish we caught, unaware of their arduous journey or
unlikely life history.
Which brings us back as to why we were standing in the tidal entrance of
the ice cold Poestenkill in Troy, NY just a few miles south of Lock One, the
terminus of the estuarine Hudson River.
A local fisherman who was scouting the kill for any sign of herrings saw the
fyke net and asked
“you catching bait?”
A 3,000 mile trip
to reach Albany.
I
t was a cold late April day as my trusted companions, Molly, Samantha and
Lilly, ages nine through twelve, and I waded through the 39 degree water of
the Poestenkill to our fyke net. With help from Jeff Briggs, a volunteer from
the Rensselaer Plateau Association, we emptied its cod end into the bucket.
Nothing! Was it the late Spring or the recent rains? The herring were not
running yet so perhaps in a few days…
And what was our intended quarry? Eels, baby eels, little creatures with
glassine bodies only two or three inches long. Eels that are in the home
stretch of a miraculous journey of some 1500 miles!
by
Garrett McCarey