Origin.  Born in the Sargasso Sea, after a 365-day “spring break” at sea, the baby elvers start swimming up our rivers.  Males stay near the coast and top out at two feet.  Females keep heading on upstream and grow five or six feet long (five to eight pounds).

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Not too many eels make it past this wall of concrete.

Not so Many Today.  Great big dams keep eels from swimming up our rivers these days.  Our Des Moines River has the Red Rock and Saylorville dams that would keep Mark Spitz on a jet ski from going upstream.

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Eel sniffing for food fallen into the gravel.

Plenty Left.  Fish breeder Jerry Klein from Knoxville visited Guyana a few years back.  He was amazed at the volume of “worms” that swarmed in their drainage ditches.  Since we see so few eels around here these days, he didn’t even recognize them.  You won’t see many in our neighborhood.

Tasty?  People that like eels (such as Frazier and Niles) insist they taste bonissimo.  People in our neighborhood (the Midwest) will not touch, much less eat an eel -- whether they caught them on a ten-foot pole or not.  We’ll never know if they taste good.  Fishermen who hook one, see them wrap around their line, and quickly cut “them dang snaky thangs” loose.  Professional “eelers” net tons from the mighty muddy Mississippi and sell them overseas.  The baby elvers sell in China for $300 to $600 a pound.  Another fish story?

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Eels usually stay hidden during the day, unless they smell food.

Nocturnal Preference.  Eels prefer to work the night shift.  If you feed yours during the day, they quickly reset their biological clocks to match yours.  Biorhythms be darned when it comes to the dinner bell.

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At four inches long this female eel's about as big around as a pipe cleaner.

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Eels like to burrow beneath the gravel and stay hidden during the day.

Color.  Eels darken as they grow larger.  The gal on the left is six inches long.  The one on the right measures four inches.

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Sold to us as glass eels, these skinny guys are three inches long.  They eat blackworms.

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Couple of elvers in a four-inch bowl.  They eat live black worms.

Elvers.  Baby eels -- elvers -- start out clear.  Bait shops call them “glass eels” around our coastal areas and sell them for bait.  Must be great fun putting one of these little greased snakes on a hook.

Bottom Dwellers.  You rarely find your eels at midwater.  If you see your eels at the top, they’re trying to get out.  Eels can travel quite a ways out of water on a rainy night.  They supposedly come out of the water to find food.  Sounds like another fish story.

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In your aquarium eels root in the gravel looking for food.

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She's doing her Happy (Yummy, yummy, yummy, I've got worms in my tummy) Dance.

Eel Foods.  Not picky eaters.  Eels prefer foods that sink to the bottom -- especially live and frozen foods.  They root thru the gravel looking for snacks.  And they will eat flake foods.  They just like everything else better.  They really love worms.

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Sold to us as a pink paddle-tail eel.  Looks like a12-inch long American eel.

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Female eel checking out a 1.5-inch chromide.

Last Word.  Apparently eels can nip.  However, they’re not dumb enough to take on larger fishes.  The gal above likes to check out this chromide from time to time.  They’ve lived together a couple months.  We didn’t see the eels the first month.  So, you really need some tank mates or your aquarium will look mighty bare for a while.  LA

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