[Granville-Hough] 30 Apr 2009 - Snakey Folks continued

[Trustees for Granville W. Hough]

Date: Thu, 30 Apr 2009 07:40:13 -0700
From: Granville W Hough <gwhough at oakapple.net>
Subject: Snakey folks - continued

	I never fished for eels, but my older brother Rudolph did on Clear 
Creek/OkaBogue.  From where the creek rose in out pasture, he went down 
about two
miles toward Milton where the stream was much larger.  There he caught a
mudcat, found fresh water muscles, caught an eel, and a lamper eel.  We
ate all except the lamper eel.  I remembered the taste of fresh water
muscles, and have always loved oysters, raw or cooked.  We also ate the
mudcat and the eel, but I can only remember they tasted fishy.  We were
afraid of lamper eels and probably confused them with lampreys, a
parasitic eel-like fish which now infects all the Great Lakes, the
Finger Lakes, and their tributaries.  I looked up Congo eels/lamper eels on
Google.com and found they can be bought live for aquariums for $10 each
for an 18 inch one.  Larger ones are more expensive.  They can be eaten,
but there is no market for them as food.  It is said they have 25 times
the amount of DNA as a human.  I suppose that means God has them in
waiting, ready to mutate into all possible forms, after Armageddon.
(I've been watching the TV series, "Life After People.")
	The life cycle of the eel has always fascinated me.  How they could be
born in the Sargasso Sea and make they way to some remote place like
Clear Creek must be one of God's wonders.  What attracts them?  Do they
descend from eels who went there before them? Or do they just go
randomly to North America or to Europe or wherever?  It is as strange as
the migrations of birds.

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Harold Hopkins:

Hi Granville,

I've enjoyed your latest reports on various subjects, including
today's "snakey folks."  Speaking of snakey things, I'm sending you a
piece I wrote several years ago based on my childhood memories of
fishing for eels and some of the adventures involved.  I kind of
wonder if anybody at Mize is still alive or even there who'd remember
fishing for eels.

Again, I'm enjoying your pieces.  Harold H.

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Not So Long Ago in Smith  County

A Feeling for Eeling

By Harold Hopkins

When I was growing up I was so dumb I used to think that Saint Ely
Creek, a small stream that empties into the larger  Cohay Creek a
few miles north of Mize, was called that because it probably had
an abundance of eels.  How the Saint part got into the name was
simply more than I could comprehend.

I never did learn more about saints but as my life unfolded I found
out as much as I needed to know about eels and perhaps some things
I didn't need to know. I read, for instance, that the eels in Cohay
and other creeks were not natives but were hatched in a sluggish,
seaweedy part of the south Atlantic Ocean called the Sargasso Sea,
and eventually would go back there to spawn and then die. I also
learned that male eels couldn't survive in fresh water and therefore
that all the eels in Cohay and other creeks were female.   Habits
picked up in childhood are hard to break and I hope the womens'
movements will forgive me if I continue to refer to an eel as a he.

That Sargasso Sea business would have been  just more than most
people at Mize could accept as the truth and I'm sure some of them
would have maintained that they had seen, or knew somebody who had
seen, Papa eel and Mama eel and maybe a couple of their youngsters
out for a Sunday swim.

But they would have been fudging a bit because you just don't see
eels in the daytime in  Cohay Creek. So far as I can remember they
are strictly nighttime feeders.  In fact, their nighttime activity,
their voracious appetites, and perhaps their insatiable curiosity
provided the basis for one of the most popular sports in the 1930s
at Mize - fishing for eels.

I  don't really know if fishing for eels should be termed a sport or
social event. A person didn't usually fish for eels by himself but
in company with one or two companions.  Nor did one run up and down
the creek to determine where they might be biting best.  You knew
eel holes like you knew swimming holes and you simply headed for
your favorite eel hole and spent the evening there, taking along a
bucket of earthworms, fishing gear, and whatever else you needed,
such as a  deck of cards or a checkerboard.   Then you baited your
hook with as many earthworms as you  could get on it and cast it
into the waters.

The chances were you'd spend little  time playing cards  or
checkers. I  think eels are actually social creatures. You didn't
need to be  particularly quiet around an eel hole and you almost
always built a big fire.  I believe these fires may have attracted
eels, appealed to their curiosity, or perhaps just let them know
that some fool out there on the bank had more earthworms than he
knew what to do with.

The eels weren't  long in revealing their  intentions.   When you
get an eel on your hook he behaves  like no other fish.  If there's
a root or snag anywhere in the eel hole he'll find it  and wrap
your  line around it, not once but several times, before you can
get him ashore.  It's the same with anything else in the water,
such as your companion's line. The eel you've hooked heads straight
for it, or - let's say - crookedly for it, and ties several knots
in the lines so that both of you are obliged to take your lines
to the firelight for untangling, or  cutting loose.  If an eel
can wrap your line  tight around something stationary you either
must break your line or pull your hook loose and set him free for
another hookfull of worms and  another tangle.

Eel knots are intricate, devious, even fiendish, and are always
covered with slime from the eel's skin, making your untying efforts
a test  of your stamina and character. I've heard some people swear
after an evening of coping with  eel knots that they'd never do
it again, but your true eel fisherman forgets  these high resolves
when he hears that the eels are biting.

Once you get your eel out of the water you take him a distance away
on the bank to  separate him from your hook so he won't make his
way back into the water while you're trying to get a hold  on him.
The only way I know of to get an eel off the hook is to  roll
him around in the  dry dirt and leaves until he's good and dirty
all over.   Then step on his head and, if you're lucky, hold his
head there long enough to yank your hook out.   Working your hook
out of a live eel is an impossibility unless you chop off his head
first, but then of course he's not a live eel, is  he?

Even cleaning eels is no snap.  One way that works is to  drive
a nail through the eel's head  and into a tree or post, then use
a sharp knife to  make an encircling cut through the skin just
below the head.   An eel's skin is on pretty tight so you have to
get a good grip on the skin at the cut place with a pair of pliers
and pull downward with great force. Another way is to  wrap a few
layers of crumpled newspaper, perhaps from the sports section,
around the eel.  The paper will stick to the eel's skin and give
you a good grip to pull down the eelskin.

Then you eviscerate the eel and cut him into sections or rounds
like pieces of sausage.  These pieces, when fried, are  slightly
tougher and somewhat gamier than more ordinary fish.  In Europe,
I have read, eels are more popular than here and also are pickled,
smoked, stewed, and cooked in soups.

You can also catch eels on an unattended hook baited and set
out overnight.   Sometimes you'll find your catch to be a strange
creature that looks like an eel, but isn't.  This eel-like creature
has two pairs of tiny, undeveloped legs and feet.  Fisherman at
Mize called these "lamper eels," but they were not real lamprey
eels nor any other kind of  eels.  Nobody would eat them and the
word at Mize was that if one ever bit you you were dead for certain.
Years afterward I learned that it was an amphibian called Amphiuma
which means and is also sometimes called a "Congo eel."

I found out for myself that they were not fish but air breathers.
One summer I was cleaning some old rotten logs embedded in the
bottom of a slough that crossed some corn bottomland near  Cohay
Swamp.   The slough had water in it most of the year but it had
been particularly dry that summer and the mud in which the logs
were embedded had dried up and cracked into hard earth.

Prying up one of  the logs I was terrified when two big "lamper
eels" came boiling  out of  cavities in the dried mud where they'd
lain hibernating since the slough had gone dry early in the summer.
Although they danced and wriggled frantically at being disturbed
they were unable to  go anywhere  in a hurry because  their small
feet were useless on land. I got over my surprise and grabbed a
hoe and killed both of them.

I never did feel right about what I did, especially after learning
later in life that they really were not dangerous,  as people at
Mize  had thought.  Besides, they were the natives.  The foreigners
were the real eels, fattening up on Smith  County worms before
eventually migrating downstream into the Gulf of Mexico to mate
and fulfill their destinies far away in the Sargasso Sea.