Page:Natural History, Fishes.djvu/291

Rh ones, averaging a pound weight each, and some even reaching four or five pounds.

Eels are caught also by osier baskets called leaps or grigs, sunk in different parts of the stream. A new basket is never entered until it has been some weeks in the water, the smell of the wicker being, as is supposed, disagreeable to the fish. They bite freely at the hook; the best bait being small gudgeons, minnows, or sticklebacks, as being more easily gorged than larger fish, which the Eels suck off the hooks. The efficiency of the bait is increased by its being first dried by exposure to the air, as it is then less liable to be sucked off in fragments by the small fry. Larger Eels are taken with single hooks, than with forty or fifty hooks on a long line across the stream, because the best Eels swim near the bank.

In the Thames, during the spring months, Eels are taken abundantly by laying night-lines, but the mass of weeds that springs up from the bottom as the summer advances, necessitates the discontinuance of that mode of fishing; and the delicious Eel-pies, so celebrated in the neighbourhood of Hampton and Twickenham, are chiefly supplied from the canals of Holland, whence they are imported much cheaper than they can be caught even in the vicinity of the "Eel-pie houses."

During the season of its activity the Eel is a voracious feeder. Aquatic insects and their larvæ, crustacea and mollusca, the spawn of fishes, and even fishes themselves, are devoured by them. Mr. Yarrell says that the Eel will attack large Carp, seizing them by the fins, though unable