Striper Spaghetti: Tips for Fishing with Live Eels

Fishing with live eels is, has been, and will remain one of the most effective ways to catch trophy-sized striped bass. For generations, anglers on shore and in boats have spent days and, unsurprisingly, plenty of nights, casting and drifting live eels, hoping for that slurpy thump that indicates a large striper gulping down their offering.

            Eels just work. They have natural action by virtue of being a living creature, they can be fished well on a simple circle hook rig, and, once you get the hang of it, you can usually avoid the annoying instances of the eel twisting up on your hook, enmeshing you in about ten minutes of untangling a slimy pretzel composed of equal parts eel, hook, and line.

            I’ve come to enjoy using live eels so much that last summer I bought an aerator and a 5-gallon bucket to keep my extra eels alive in the garage for long periods of time. Nowadays, I buy them 24 at a time, bringing the extras home and plopping them in the bucket to hang out until my next trip. The bucket setup only cost about $40 all told, and within a couple weeks it easily paid for itself by saving me from throwing back leftover eels at the end of a trip.

            I am also an avid user of imitation soft-plastic eels, and they are beyond a shadow of a doubt big fish magnets when fished properly. I typically go out for a day with one rod geared for live eels and another with an imitation, usually a Gravity Tackle 13.5” eel, tied on. This is because, as any angler knows, stripers can be moody. Some days they happily take both soft-plastic and live eels, but some days they truly want one or the other. Do I know why? No. Do I want to arrive unprepared, with only one or the other offering, and risk a slow day? Also no. I also really enjoy using live eels. There’s something pretty cool about going from peaceful, quiet, bobbing in the kayak, to rod bouncing, drag zipping chaos when the eel gets gulped down. For those looking to dial in the practice of using live eels for big stripers, here are a few tips:

The Best Ability is Availability

This is a saying traditionally tied to coaching sports, which essentially preaches that an athlete’s availability, specifically being healthy and not injured, trumps their ability. If they’re not on the practice field, they can’t play, no matter how much ability they might have. It might be a bit of a stretch to tie this to eel fishing, but hear me out.

Most people I talk to who don’t like fishing eels say nothing about them not catching. It’s always that they’re expensive or annoying to hook and keep untangled. And I get it. But there are some easy ways to deal with both of those issues, the first of which I’ve already mentioned briefly: get an eel tank.

            Live eels aren’t cheap, running somewhere in the realm of $2.50-$3.00 per eel. For a full day of fishing, it’s the equivalent of buying one or two $20 plugs every trip. Not economically sound, except on those rare days when the action is insane and all 24 eels get gulped by over-slot fish. Without a tank to keep eels in, you may be left with a bunch of them and no more time to fish. Before having a tank, I used to give them to fellow anglers leaving the launch or just throw them into the water. Either way, I was losing money. So, if you want to make sure you aren’t wasting money and always have eels available, spend the money on a 5-gallon garbage bucket and a cheap $15 aerator. Make sure the bucket is black and not white, or the eels will slowly turn light tan (ask me how I know). This simple setup ensures you get to bring home leftover eels and use them again next time. They’re incredibly resilient, and all last summer I think I only had 3-4 die, despite buying two dozen each week. That’s money saved and fish caught.

            The other issue with eels is the dreaded slime ball. For those not initiated in the world of eel fishing, it should come as no surprise that when they get a hook shoved through their face, eels freak out. Unfortunately, this freak-out is often manifested in the eel tangling up on itself, wrapping around your hook and line, and knotting itself in a pretty much impossible to undo ball of goop and doom. The only recourse is usually cutting your line and retying, losing a $3 eel in the process.

            The best ways to avoid this, and keep as many eels available as possible, is to have a good grip on the eel when hooking it and then immediately toss it in the water once hooked. Use a dry towel to grab and hold the eel just behind its head. Don’t leave its tail end sticking out. They are absurdly twisty and even an inch or two can reach up towards its head and start a tangle. I usually hook my eels from the bottom and up through both jaws. The moment that barb comes through the top of the eel’s head, I chuck it in the water. The vast majority of the time when it feels the water the eel will start trying to swim down (one of the traits that make them so deadly in shallow water). When they’re swimming, they’re not knotting, and you are good to go. Make sure if changing spots that you drag the eel on the surface of the water while you travel. Putting it on deck or in a bucket while hooked is just asking to be greeted with a terrible slime ball when you arrive to the new spot.

Less is More- Let ‘em Swim

This can actually apply to the use of both soft-plastic eel imitations and live eels themselves, but let’s stick with the live eel for the purposes of our discussion. The key here is to not overwork the eel. You just don’t need to. In water 15-20’ or less use a 6/0 or 7/0 circle hook tied to a strong leader of no less than 40lb strength (usually 50lb is a happy medium). Hook the eel, lob it out (casting it like a traditional bait will mean more ripped and lost eels), and when it hits the water take a crank or two up until the slack is nearly gone and you can feel the eel swimming. Depending on the depth you’re fishing and the strength of the current, reel only fast enough to keep the eel out of the bottom structure. You do not need to sweep, twitch, or jig the live eel. Let it do the work. If the eels are fresh and frisky you’ll be able to feel its tail beating while it swims down, their natural behavior upon hitting the water. With a slow crank of your line, you’ll be keeping the eel swimming 2-3’ above bottom, right in prime striper territory.

            If you’ve never fished a live eel before and wonder what the bite is like, let’s just say you’ll never have to wonder whether or not it was a big striper that hit the eel. Your rod, which previously had gentle slack, will violently bounce once or twice when the striper gulps the eel (usually head first), and you’ll feel slack. Drop the rod tip a bit to give the striper a chance to fully inhale the eel, then lock your rod arm (meaning don’t pump the rod up), and reel down on the fish at a moderate pace. This will allow the circle hook to slide towards the mouth of the fish, hopefully imbedding itself right in the cheek like it’s designed to do. That’s the only time you should reel an eel with any sort of speed. Otherwise, let the eel do the work of swimming itself and getting into the strike zone.

ABT- Always Be Trolling

            This might apply more for other kayak fisherman like myself, since boats tend to change spots at higher speeds, but regardless of your vessel, consider slow trolling an eel when changing locations. As previously discussed, no action needs to be imparted on the live eel, so a gentle toss behind the kayak and some trolling around .8-1.5 miles an hour will maximize your potential catches even when the goal is just to move to new grounds.

            Sometime my whole plan for a day will be to cover ground and slow troll a live eel. Even if you’re going a bit fast and the eel is near the water’s surface, you’ll be very surprised at how often a striper is quite willing to come up and explode on it.

            Another way to get some bonus fish, and try multiple tactics at once, is to toss a live eel out on one line behind your kayak and fish another bait, say a topwater plug, in front. I do this all the time, and even though sometimes I go too slow and the eels gets all up in the weeds and becomes ineffective, the number of times it works makes it well worth the extra rod in the water. It’s a pretty cool feeling to be working a topwater plug 20 yards away, focused intently on the action and any swirls nearby, but then be snapped back to reality by the sound of the eel behind you being obliterated, rod bouncing and drag peeling. It’s semi-controlled chaos for sure, and makes eel fishing, at times a quiet and somewhat dull pursuit, just a bit more exciting.

Night is Right

            Janet Messineo’s book Casting into the Light: Tales of a Fishing Life details her experiences growing up as a female surfcaster on Martha’s Vineyard. I love this book because it’s real to the fishing experience. It’s not all tales of giants and epic bites. Sometimes her story delves into those lonely nights spent standing on a rock, the moon at her back, listening to the occasionally eerie sounds of the ocean in front of her. The thing is, most of the time when she was out there spending long nights on the Vineyard’s shores, she and her talented fishing friends were throwing live eels.

            Striped bass have no issue hunting at night, using their lateral lines to locate and eat offerings just as easily as during the day. In fact, during the summer months when shallow waters get uncomfortably warm during the day, most fishy folks will tell you the bite is exponentially better at night anyways. And if you’re going to go fish for stripers at night, you have to try using live eels. Bigger bass tend to move shallow at night, where there’s more bait, more structure in which to trap the bait, and cooler, more comfortable water. This is prime live eel time. One of the advantages of the live eel is the lack of action the angler needs to give it. Seeing how your artificial bait is working in the water can be a bit more challenging at night, but with live eels you can fish water from 2 to 20 feet without needing to worry. As long as you keep the eel off the bottom and out of the rocks and seaweed, its action is going to be just fine.

            So, this summer when the sun is going down and you’re feeling a bit antsy, go to your local shop and grab a half-dozen eels. When the sun sets and the tide is running, find some shallow, structure-rich water and head out to try your luck at hooking a giant.

            Big-fish lore often boasts of tales involving the use of live eels. Casted, trolled, or drifted, they are a deadly weapon in your angling arsenal. If you haven’t tried them before, I encourage you to do so. There’s a good chance you won’t ever want to be without them again.