Eel: description of fish, habitat, habits and methods of catching. Eel fish: river and sea species, their features What does eel fish look like

Common, or European, eel has an elongated body and fins in the form of a fold. The way of life and migration of the eel is the subject of careful study by scientists.
Acne mysterious I'm a fish. It differs significantly from other fish in shape, more like a snake. The long (up to 2 m) body of an eel is covered with very slippery skin (sometimes they even say “slippery like an eel”), so it is almost impossible to hold it in your hands. The scales, unlike other fish, are very small, almost absent. There are no pelvic fins. There are also some differences in the structure of the skeleton. An interesting property of eels is the ability to stay in the air for a long time. This is due to the fact that wet, slippery acne skin absorbs oxygen well. Sometimes they can even crawl from one body of water to another on wet grass.
Dimensions.
Length: male - 30-51 cm, female - 40-100 (150) cm.
Weight: 3.5 kg, less often - up to 6 kg.

related species.
The acne family includes 16 species, one of them is the American eel (Anguilla rostata).
Lifestyle.
European eel for a long time was a mystery to people. Despite the fact that adult eels are found in almost all European rivers, their reproduction was hidden behind a veil of secrecy a hundred years ago.
Eels lead night image life, and during the day they burrow into the silt. They hibernate in the silt, as they do not eat anything during this period. They live in fresh water rivers, streams, sometimes they were found even in water pipes.
Acne and have many other features. For example, a very good sense of smell (a dog cannot even be compared with them) in some cases, an eel can sense the presence of one molecule of an odorous substance in river water. It is believed that this helps him navigate during migration (that is, literally find his homeland by smell). But the exact mechanism of orientation is unknown. It is also unknown why long-distance migrations are needed for spawning, why eels always return from the sea to the rivers where their parents lived.
Reproduction.
Although eels spend most of their lives in rivers, they breed in the sea. The larva, which is called leptocephalus, was previously considered a separate species, so it does not look like an adult. From the sea, the larvae return to the rivers.
Even the reproduction of eels was a mystery. Even Aristotle was surprised that he had never seen eel caviar. He even suggested that these fish are born from silt. But the fact is that an adult eel lives in European rivers, which swims to the Sargasso Sea for breeding. Even determining the sex of an eel is not a simple matter. In most fish, sex is determined at the time of fertilization, so females and males are born in equal numbers. And for some reason, female eels have more. The sex ratio is somehow dependent on external conditions. Small eels feed on invertebrates, mollusks, insect larvae, but large eels feed on small fish.

Eel surveillance.
In February, small transparent larvae enter the lower reaches of the rivers. At the end of April, having already become "glass", eels set off on a journey against the current to the river sources. Young individuals with a yellow belly are found in rivers. Eels settle along channels, lakes, ponds and other bodies of water. Favorite habitats of these fish are thickets of underwater plants in the mouths of large rivers.Eels prefer rivers with a muddy bottom: they rest, buried in the ground, from which only their heads are visible. Last stage metamorphosis begins at the end of summer, when the yellow-bellied young grow into adults. In September-October, adult eels go back to the sea (fish that go to spawn from fresh water to the sea are called catadromnii). At this time, fish travel considerable distances in order to reach the sea as soon as possible. Eels prefer dark, moonless nights to travel.

Did you know….
Young eels with yellow casings look very different from adults. When these fish were attributed to two different species.
Aristotle believed that eels appeared on their own from river silt. This is due to the fact that people in ancient times did not find eggs and fry of eels in European reservoirs. There were amazing stories associated with the reproduction of acne. According to one theory, eels arise from horsehair, which swells in water and turns into young eels.
She has very few eels in Ukraine. Only a few cases of catching them in large rivers are known. But attempts are being made to artificially grow these fish in fish farms, because eel meat is very tasty.

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Eel is unusual River fish, quite rare. Since 2008, it has been included in the Red Book, as it is practically on the verge of extinction. It does not look like a kind of fish that is not familiar to us. Inexperienced fishermen may mistake it for a snake. The body is long, cylindrical, the skin is slippery with very small scales. The head is large, slightly flat on top. Grows up to 1.5 meters long, weighing up to 6 kg.

Where does the river eel live and what does it eat

Eel is an anadromous fish, spending almost all the time in fresh river water. Spawning takes place in the sea. It feeds on frogs, insect larvae, and small fish. It is surprising that the eel spawns 8,000 km from its habitat, in the Sargasso Sea. The larvae are transparent, small on the surface of the water with the Gulf Stream in three years, swim to the shores of Europe, come to the mouths of the rivers and rise upstream. They live in rivers for about 9-12 years, then migrate again to the spawning site, spawn and die. The migration path was only proven in 2016. This is such an understudied fish. Live during the feeding period in the rivers of Europe basin Baltic Sea and in small quantities in the rivers of the Black, Caspian, Barents, White Sea. Another amazing feature is the ability to move without water over land from one reservoir to another, thus settling in closed lakes.

Where to look for an eel in a pond?

The eel prefers to stay in quiet places, at the bottom, in snags, thickets of grass, in holes. This is a nocturnal predator, you need to prepare very well for catching it. It is advisable to have a flashlight and newspapers with you so that you can wrap the eel in them, otherwise it will quickly slip out, study the area well, because in the dark it is difficult to keep and not lose the wriggling eel.

Nozzles for catching eel

The eel is practically omnivorous, so you can catch it on a variety of baits, from a worm - crawling out to peas, cheese, beans. He bites well on pieces of fish.

How to catch an eel in a pond

The eel begins to peck in the spring, when the water warms up to +10 degrees. At this time, it is best to bite on all types of worms, leeches and insect larvae. The bites are most active from evening to midnight. It is advisable to first conduct a good bait. In summer, eels are best caught on fish, in autumn only on small fish like sculpin and ruff. The weather for fishing is optimal without dew and fog, in warm stuffy weather, at low atmospheric pressure. The eel has very good eyesight, and even in the twilight it will find bait.

Fishing goes on a donk with a double or triple hook, fishing line (from 0.35 mm) and the rod must be strong. The eel practically does not get tired, it is impossible to torture him, it is more likely to miss him or ruin the tackle. The bottom is caught with or without a float.

They usually cast several rods at once, allowing the bait to sink to the bottom. When the eel grabs the nozzle, it can move back in an arc to its original place. The float dances strongly when biting. Hauling is best done using a good large landing net submerged in water. And immediately quickly pull it ashore or onto a boat with a light jerk. And the eel is also not easy to put into the cage, it wriggles like a snake, it can easily escape. The cage should be with a small wire mesh so that the eel does not leave. If the cells are large, he will find a way out with his tail.

If fishing comes from the shore, newspapers are useful here, in which you should immediately wrap the eel so that you can hold it in your hands, otherwise it will slip out and quickly crawl back into the water.

Occasionally, an eel can rise to the upper layers, then it can be accidentally caught on a fishing rod with a float. In such cases, you can try to catch it on green peas.

Catching an eel video

If fishing goes in places with a strong current

Be sure to use a heavy sinker that allows the bait to stay in place.

Eel often completely swallows the bait with a hook, it is difficult to remove it from the mouth. Therefore, you need to have a good supply of hooks with you, tie a new one, and remove the remaining fish in the mouth already at home.

There are several more types of fishing that are used less often: without a hook, on a needle, in a plumb line. Let's dwell on the most unusual - fishing with a needle. This is an old Scottish method for catching eels from holes. Of course, you need to know where the holes dug by water rats are. The fact that an eel lurks in a hole will be visible from a small cloud of muddy silt at the entrance to the hole.

They take a stick, stick a needle with a worm into the top. A strong fishing line is tied to a stick, the stick is carefully lowered into the water in front of the hole. The fish grabs its prey, and the stick with the needle gets stuck in its mouth. The fisherman must pull out the stick by the line along with the eel.
Eel is a very tasty fish. It is especially good in smoked form, so take the time to catch it.

Science knows many fish with unusual life cycles and amazing adaptations for survival in extreme conditions. One of the mysterious fish is the river eel, also called European eel or common (scientific name Anguilla anguilla). Scientists have been studying its life and reproduction for more than 2 thousand years, but there are still questions that have not been answered. Eels have always been found in the rivers of Europe only in adulthood. Unable to catch eels with caviar and milk in the river, Aristotle assumed that they appear as a result of spontaneous generation in swamps. This incredible explanation was believed to be correct for many years. Later, no less strange thought was expressed that eels give birth to eelpouts (small sea ​​fish). And this belief has taken root so much that the Germans call the eelpout the “eel mother”.

family of freshwater eels

River eel belongs to the family freshwater eels(Anguillidae) of the order Anguilliformes. This is the only group from this detachment living in fresh water, all the rest are marine life(for example, also related to eels).

Freshwater eels inhabit rivers in the southeastern part of the African continent and on many islands of the Malay Archipelago and India. All of them breed in the sea and die after spawning. The most famous, interesting and mysterious representative of not only freshwater eels, but of the entire detachment, is the European or common river eel that lives in the rivers of Europe.

Appearance and lifestyle

The body shape of these fish is called eel-like, it does not taper towards the tail and is often round in cross section. During swimming and crawling, eels move like a snake (curving the body). This way of swimming does not make it possible to develop high speed.

Characteristics external structure modern eels:

• The absence of ventral fins, in connection with which there is a second name for them - legless (Apoides).
• The dorsal fin and anal do not have hard rays, so they are soft and are located along the back and belly, resembling a kind of rim.

Body river eel(Anguilla anguilla) is covered with very small, inconspicuous scales that do not have a silvery sheen. Its color is changeable, which is associated with the characteristics of the reservoir in which it lives and its age. The skin is very slippery due to the abundance of mucus, so it is incredibly difficult to hold a live eel in your hands. The usual length of an eel is from 50 to 150 centimeters, but there are individual specimens up to 2 meters long.

It is important to note that the fish, called and very similar in shape body on an eel, belongs to a completely different order and has nothing to do with real eels.

Why are eels sharp-headed and wide-headed?

There are two forms of eels: sharp-headed and wide-headed. Why is that? This is due to their habitat and food. If an eel lives in a reservoir where there are a lot of small food organisms, then it grows narrow-headed: its muzzle is sharp, and its mouth is small.

If his diet consists of large organisms, then he has a large mouth, which allows him to grab large prey (crayfish and fish about 15 centimeters). At the same time, the muzzle has a blunt shape, and the head is wide. The sharp-headed form of the eel is considered the most valuable (it is almost twice as fat as the wide-headed one).

European eel lifestyle

The European eel is nocturnal. During the day, it is inactive and is more often at rest, buried in the ground. Or uses different shelters to hide. Young individuals burrow to a shallow depth; with age, the burrowing depth can reach 80 centimeters. There is information that they can penetrate deep into soft silty soil up to one and a half meters. With the onset of darkness, especially on cloudy and moonless nights, the river eel begins to hunt.

In the cold months of the year, eels are in hibernation, while they are buried very deep in the bottom silt. Waking up from hibernation in the spring, the fish are very voracious. At this time of the year, they are successfully caught with bait, because they grab any food very greedily.

Nutrition

River eels feed most intensively during the warm months (from May to September). IN winter period they don't eat. The ratio depends on several factors:

• age;
• season;
• characteristics of the reservoir where eels live.

During the first 2 years, young fish settled in lakes eat small aquatic crustaceans, worms and insect larvae. Usually, by the beginning of the third year of life, they begin to hunt juveniles of various fish. And since this period, the growth rate of eel has been increasing. Adults prey on small non-commercial fish (roach, bleak, ruff, spiked and others).

Catadromous migration for breeding

The life cycle of the river eel passes with metamorphosis. He is a migratory fish: after all, almost his entire life passes in fresh water, but he breeds in the sea, after which he dies.

For reproduction, common eels make spawning migrations to the spawning site, which is located in the Sargasso Sea (the saltiest of all seas). Scientists call such fish catadromous: they migrate from rivers to the sea. Anguilla anguilla makes a very long migration of 8,000 kilometers, guided by deep currents Atlantic Ocean. After all, they go to the spawning site at a great depth, probably about 1500 km, while making vertical migrations, daytime descending into deeper layers, and at night rising higher. Perhaps the earth's magnetic field is also a guide to help keep the right direction.

Sexually mature river eels that make spawning migration acquire external features making them similar to deep sea fish: the eyes become huge, the color becomes black, and the skeleton becomes soft and fragile due to demineralization.

Spawning and metamorphosis

During migration, gametogenesis is completed, that is, the formation of reproductive products in females and males. It is not possible to observe the spawning of river eels in natural conditions, since it takes place in the depths Sargasso Sea, about 400 meters from the surface, where the temperature is favorable for the development of eggs and eel larvae (about 16 degrees).

The French scientist Maurice Fontaine, as a result of experiments unique in difficulty, achieved the spawning of a female tame eel, which in an aquarium in portions spawned eggs ranging in size from 1 to 1.4 millimeters. At the end of spawning, she died. But it was not possible to fertilize the eggs, because there was no male with ready-made milk.

An eel larva emerges from the eggs, not at all similar to adults. When these larvae were found, they were described as separate independent view fish and received the name leptocephali. They have the shape of an elongated oval about 7.5 centimeters long, very flat and almost transparent, only black eyes stand out. Leptocephali float to the surface of the Sargasso Sea and set off on a long journey to the shores of Europe to enter the rivers from which their parents came. They are picked up warm waters currents of the Gulf Stream and this journey lasts several years (according to some sources - a year, according to others - three years) (information from the site fishbase.org).

Having reached the European shores, the larva changes. When it stops feeding, it becomes shorter (its length decreases to 5 centimeters) and turns into a transparent, snake-shaped body of a “glass eel”.

Thus, he approaches the estuarine sections of the rivers and begins his "freshwater" life. Transparency gradually disappears, pigmentation appears and the young eel becomes an adult, which after 9 - 20 years of life in the river, having reached maturity, will go on its catadromous migration to the spawning site.

Common or European eel (lat. Anguilla anguilla)- kind of carnivore freshwater fish from the river eel family.

It has a long wriggling body with a brownish-greenish back, with yellowness on the sides and abdominal part. It lives in the waters of the Baltic Sea basin, in much smaller numbers - in the rivers and lakes of the Azov, Black, White basins, Barents Seas. It is found in many reservoirs of the European part of Russia. At first glance, this wonderful fish resembles a snake, and therefore in many places we do not even consider it a fish and are not eaten. The long body of the eel is almost perfectly cylindrical, only the tail is slightly laterally compressed, especially towards the end.

His head is small, slightly flattened in front, with a more or less long and wide nose, as a result of which other zoologists distinguish several types of eels; both jaws, of which the lower one is slightly longer than the upper one, are seated (also the arthropod) with small, sharp teeth; the yellowish-silvery eyes are very small, the gill openings are very narrow and moved a considerable distance from the occiput, as a result of which the gill covers do not completely cover the gill cavity. The dorsal and anal fins are very long and, together with the caudal fin, merge into one inseparable fin, bordering the entire rear half of the body in a circle. The soft rays of the fins are generally covered with rather thick skin and, as a result, are hardly distinguishable. At first glance, the eel seems to be naked, but if you remove the thick layer of mucus that covers it, it turns out that its body is seated with small, delicate, very oblong scales, which, however, for the most part do not touch and are generally located very irregularly. The color of the eel varies considerably - and sometimes dark green, sometimes bluish-black; the belly, however, is always yellowish-white or bluish-gray.

The real location of the eel is the rivers of the Baltic, Mediterranean and German seas. We have this fish in in large numbers only in southwestern Finland, in St. Petersburg, Baltic, and some northwestern provinces. (even, according to my information, in Smolensk Gubernia, namely in the Belaya River, a tributary of the Western Dvina) and in Poland. In addition to rivers, the eel lives in many large lakes - Ladoga, Onega and Peipsi, from which it enters the shallow Pskov Lake. In Ilmen, however, it is not. From the waters of the Baltic Basin, the eel probably penetrated through canals into the rivers of the Black and Caspian Seas in this century, but it is still very rare here. Only single specimens occasionally reach the Volga, as prof. Kessler from fishermen in Vyshny Volochek, Rybinsk, Yaroslavl and Yuryevets, but they do not breed in it; they are probably often confused here with river lampreys. According to O. A. Grimm, eels sometimes reach Saratov, but in any case they are very a rare event and hardly reach the Caspian Sea. Only in some rivers flowing into the upper Volga, eels come across quite often, namely in Tvertsa, where they probably got from Lake. Mstino, but Lately they disappeared from this river as well.

In the same way, only individual, so to speak, lost individuals are occasionally seen in the Dnieper, Dniester and Danube, but, apparently, from ancient times, since even Guldenshtedt (in the last century) says that the eel is located in the river. Ostra (in the left tributary of the Desna), near Nizhyn. Probably, it got into the Dnieper basin from the Neman through the Pinsk swamps, and indeed the upper reaches of the Black Sea and Baltic basins are close to each other and, moreover, are connected by canals. Kyiv fishermen sometimes find eels in the stomach of large catfish and believe that they must be found not far from Kyiv - in the Dnieper or Pripyat; Mogilev fishermen also claimed prof. Kessler that the eel comes across occasionally in the Dniester. Finally, in the seventies, K.K. Pengo was delivered an eel, already caught in the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bAzov near the Petrovsky village. As for the presence of eels in the Danube, in the spring of 1890, the fishermen's society in Galati sent over half a million young eels from Altona in Schleswig, which were released into the Danube, on the Romanian coast. In all likelihood, eels are quite acclimatized here and will breed (in the sea).

“River eel,” says Prof. Kessler, is not a completely freshwater fish, but rather an anadromous fish, since it does not spend its entire life in fresh waters, but periodically leaves them for the sea. However, there is an important difference between the eel and other anadromous fish. The fact is that all other anadromous fish, as far as we know, grow up in the sea and rise from there up the rivers to throw eggs, while the eel, on the contrary, keeps in fresh water at a young age and then goes down the rivers to spawn. sea. When the eel wanders along the rivers, neither rapids nor waterfalls can stop him; for example, the high Narva waterfall, which serves as an insurmountable barrier for salmon, does not at all constitute a similar barrier for eels. It is not known, however, with accuracy how the eel gets over the steep waterfalls it meets, like the Narva one, especially since it cannot make high jumps. In all likelihood, he bypasses them, crawling over wet coastal rocks; at least it is true that he knows how to crawl very dexterously on wet ground and can live out of water for up to half a day or more. The reason for the survivability of the eel out of water is that the gill leaves, due to the elongated shape of the gill cavity and the narrowness of the gill openings, remain moist for a very long time, capable of supporting the process of respiration.

The eel prefers to adhere to waters with clay or muddy soil and, on the contrary, if possible, avoids rivers and lakes, which have a sandy or rocky bottom. In particular, he likes to rotate between sedge and reeds in summer. So, for example, a very significant eel fishing is carried out along the southern coast of the Kronstadt Bay, in those reeds that humiliate the coast near the Sergius Monastery, and beyond Oranienbaum. Here, fishermen distinguish two varieties of it - running eel and herbalist (sedentary). Fishermen lay clearings or paths in the reeds, on which they set up fences for eels. It should be noted, however, that the eel is in motion only at night, while during the day it remains at rest - “lies in the mud, curled up like a rope,” in the words of our fishermen. In the same way, in winter, at least in our northern side, the eel remains motionless and burrows into the mud, according to Ekshtrem, to a depth of 46 cm.

The eel is a carnivorous fish, it feeds on both other fish and their caviar, and various small animals living in mud, crustaceans, worms, larvae, snails (Lumnaeus). Of the fish most often given to him as prey are those that, like him, rotate more along the bottom of the reservoir, such as sculpins and lampreys; but, by the way, he also seizes any other fish that he can catch, and therefore often falls on the hooks of the lines baited by the fishermen. I once happened to find in the stomach of a large eel the remains of a small chub, along with a hook, on which, probably, the fish was impaled, when the eel grabbed it and swallowed it. In spring and early summer, when almost everyone carp fish they spawn, the eel preferentially feeds on this caviar and exterminates a huge number. By the end of summer and autumn in the Kronstadt Bay, its main food is crustaceans, sharp-tailed idothea (Idothea entomon), which are known to fishermen as sea cockroaches. A very remarkable property of the eel is that, when caught and planted in a tight cage, it vomits out of the stomach a significant part of the food that has not yet had time to be digested, especially if the stomach is tightly stuffed with it. So, for example, he sometimes vomits whole snails, crustaceans, lampreys through his mouth. There is almost no way to hold a caught eel in your hands, as it is slippery, strong and dodgy. If you put it on the ground, then it moves along it quite quickly, forward or backward, depending on the need, and bends the body completely snake-like. It is quite difficult to kill an eel: the most terrible wounds are often not fatal for him. Only if you break his spinal column, then he dies relatively soon. In addition, muscle contractility is preserved for a very long time even in cut pieces of eel. I happened to observe the right moves mandible, alternating opening and closing of the mouth in the cut off head of an eel for more than a quarter of an hour. The clerk of a fish farm in St. Petersburg assured me that the most the right way to quickly kill an eel is to immerse it in salt water, but experience did not justify this assurance; the eel, which I placed in a strong saline solution, remained alive for more than two hours.

Some interesting information about the eel from Russian authors are given by Terletsky, who observed it in the basin of the Western Dvina. According to him, the eel lives here in many lakes, from which, along rivers, streams, even overland, it passes into big rivers and rolls down to spawn in the sea. Its course begins in May and continues all summer. During this time, he does not have a permanent home, but migrates from place to place. Idle eels, that is, those that do not breed this year, do not leave the lakes in which they live, and although they travel in rivers, but only for a certain distance. In ordinary water levels, the eel adheres to places deep, quiet, with a muddy, grassy or sandy bottom. With a high rise in water, it often occurs in coastal whirlpools, in which it crawls and digs even during the day. For the most part, it searches for food at night at the bottom, and during the day it digs into the silt, crawls under the roots of coastal trees, under stones, etc. greater distance. He kept eels in a special pool, on a stream, and from here carried them to a fairly considerable distance, even half a verst, and gave them freedom. “Experiments were made at dawn, in the evening and at night, on moist soil. Immediately, the eels, bending ring-shaped like snakes, crawled quite freely and quite quickly, at first in different directions, but then soon turned towards the river and headed towards it in a more or less direct direction. They changed their path only when they encountered sand or bare earth, which they diligently avoided. Once on the square, sloping towards the river, they intensified to speed up their pace and, apparently, were in a hurry to get to their native element as soon as possible. Two, three or even more hours eel can freely stay out of the water on a warm day. It can stagger on land from evening until sunrise, especially if the night is dewy.

Until recently, the reproduction of eels has remained very obscure, and even to this day it has not yet been fully investigated, which, of course, depends on the fact that the eel goes to sea for this purpose. (Danish ichthyologist Schmidt in the 20s of this century and others researchers have precisely established where, how and when eel spawning occurs.) ordinary conditions the eel grows rather slowly, not earlier than in the fifth or sixth year of life it reaches a length of 107 cm, but, however, continues to grow for a very long time, so that sometimes there are individuals that are up to 180 cm long and are thicker than a human arm. According to Kessler's observations, an eel, which is 47 cm long, weighs about 800 g, and an eel 98 cm long weighs about 1.5 kg; in addition, there are indications that an eel 122 cm tall weighs from 3 to 4 kg, and therefore it must be assumed that the largest eels should weigh at least 8 kg.

An interesting feature eel is the possibility of its habitat in freshwater and salt water, as well as its life cycle.

Description

Eel is a fish that belongs to the family of the same name (eels) and can have several names: common eel, European eel, river eel. The river eel is characterized by a greenish-brown skin tone and the absence of scales on the abdomen. The long writhing body is very reminiscent of a snake. It has a small head and a laterally flattened body. Teeth small, sharp. The body is covered with mucus, and the belly and sides are lighter than the back.

It is generally accepted that the first eels appeared on our planet 100 million years ago in the region of modern Indonesia. It has amazing vitality and the ability to live without water if there is a small amount of moisture.

The size of the eel does not exceed 50 cm for males and 1 meter for females, but there are cases when the giant eel reaches two meters in length. The average weight is 3.5-7 kg., The maximum officially registered weight is 12.7 kg.

habitats

Today it is found in the basins of the Baltic, Barents, White, as well as the Azov and Black Seas. It has the ability to move on grass damp from dew and in this way even gets into closed stagnant reservoirs.

Prefers to live and eat in still water. It keeps at a variety of depths, but there must be a snag, burrow, thicket or other shelter nearby. It chooses to hunt at night closer to small areas of the reservoir, however, it will not refuse close-swimming prey even during daylight hours.

Behavior

The life path of an eel begins in the Sargasso Sea with a millimeter-sized egg. The eel larva is very different from the already adult, it is translucent. Previously, it was considered a separate species of fish and had its own name - "Leptocephalus". The larva rises, is picked up by the current of the Gulf Stream and is on the way for three seasons, drifting with warm current to the shores of Europe.

The European eel lives in rivers for about 10-12 years, after which it makes its way back to the sea to give life to offspring and die. It is interesting that the route that this fish makes has not changed for many centuries, and during this time it has only lengthened, as a result of which the eels have to overcome several thousand kilometers of growing up.

Spawning (reproduction)

Puberty occurs when the male reaches a length of 29-30 cm, and for the female this figure is 42 cm. This period is characterized by external changes: the eyes enlarge, the shape and size of the head change. An adult female lays over half a million eggs.

The eel larva is completely different from the adult and has received a separate name "leptocephalus". Spawning takes place in the Sargasso Sea, that is, in the same place where the life cycle of the larva began. Eggs are laid at a depth of 400 meters, and the water temperature is 16-17 degrees. After spawning, the fish die.

Nutrition

The food preferences of the eel are small fish, frogs, mollusks and insect larvae. It does not disdain crustaceans and even caviar of other fish. After 4-5 years of life in fresh water, it acquires the skills of a predator and hunts from ambush. At this time, small roaches, perches and ruffs become its prey.

If there is enough food in the reservoir, it can reach a weight of 4 kg with a 2-meter body length. It feeds mainly at night and during the warm season. As soon as the cold sets in, the fish stops eating until the first warm months.

Surprisingly, during the spawning journey, the eels stop feeding, and their intestines atrophy, that is, the premature death of this fish, and not from old age, is laid down by nature.

Vitreous, that is, young fish, can be prone to bubble diseases. The accumulation of gas in the upper tissues of the skin leads to the appearance of bubbles on the body, especially in the head. This effect pushes the fish to the surface of the water. With heavy damage, the death of juveniles can occur. To date, this disease has not been studied enough.

Fishing and fishing methods

The annual catch rate of this fish worldwide exceeds 70 thousand tons. It is not surprising that in 2008 it was decided to include the eel in the Red Book lists, because otherwise it is threatened with extinction.

As for amateur fishing, the eel is most often caught at night, armed with a float rod or feeder tackle. As a nozzle, an ordinary earthworm will do.

It must be borne in mind that this fish provides very decent resistance due to the shape of its body.

In order to remove the prey from the hook, you will need a rag or glove, because. with bare hands do not take it due to excess mucus.

Donkey fishing

To catch eel on bottom gear, several powerful rods 3.3 meters long are used. When casting at a distance of more than 50 meters, a 3.6 m rod is used. Monofilament is used as the main line, or a line with a diameter of 0.3 with a minimum stretch.

Weights - diamond-shaped or tear-shaped flat type. When using several leashes (2-3 pieces), we knit them on the side of the main fishing line. Their thickness is selected depending on the nature of the bottom.

If the bottom is soft, peaty with a small amount of shells, then you can take 0.2 mm leashes, if it is rocky, then we take fluorocarbon leashes with a diameter of 0.25 mm. The length of the leashes is about 25-30 cm. The sinker should have an eye - it is tied at the end of the fishing line.

The eel bites well if you use a running rig. It is recommended to use hooks with a long shank, number 4-6. For eel fishing, you will need a spinning reel with a spool capacity of 4000 to 7000. It is advisable to use reels with a baitrunner.

Lures and baits

Often an eel is caught on a donk with impaled worms. Also, as a nozzle, you can use a large creep. It is recommended to plant one or two medium crawls along the entire length of the hook. Alternatively, 2-3 red worms can be used. Another nozzle is a dead small fish (gudgeon, bleak, small perch or roach). 0