Eels

I was asked by a local historical society to stand up in a hall and speak of my experience of setting for eels on chalk streams. I've done a few talks about working on the river and there is talk of a tour, but this was the first request specifically for information on eels.

Unfortunately I had to cancel the request at short notice, but committed the following notes oratory notes to the archives.

I've replaced the brief CV at the start of the piece with a short public information film about eels as the niche takers of this chunk of guff will already be aware of my personal particulars.

Forgive the semi script style of the piece but it was written as a cross over piece that could also prove popular in Mummery.

As ever, I have to write these things down in case I forget.




I have worked on the Dever at Bransbury for twenty eight years and prior to that I worked on the River Test, first at Leckford Estate from 1986 and then for the Houghton Fishing Club at Stockbridge.

Both Leckford and Houghton had eel sets that were regularly used to catch eels. I occasionally used a fyke net in my formative years at Bransbury Mill to catch a few eels.

Leckford had a substantial eel set on the main river, The Houghton Club had two, one on the main river and one on a carrier stream.

Eel sets were used from late summer through to mid winter and only used at night. The eel sets I have helped operate consist of a set of hatches that span the river channel.

During the day the river would be allowed to flow through an open set of hatches with no water running through the set – a large grated box positioned behind a closed set of hatches.

To set for eels the hatches in front of the set would be opened at dusk and the hatches through which the river had flowed during the day would be closed. The whole river would be flowing through the set during the night.

Eels migrate to sea to spawn and start their run down the river from mid summer. During their time living in the river they have a yellow belly and are known as “yellow eels”.

Once the urge to return to the Sargasso sea is triggered the eel’s belly turns silver and they start to make their way downstream.

It is these silver eels that are the target when setting for eels on the Test and Itchen.

Because the whole of the river is flowing through the eel set gratings, anything that comes down the river is caught - leaves, weed, rubbish and of course the silver eels. Consequently the set must be cleaned off throughout the night and any eels caught on the gratings moved to a holding box nearby.

The number of eels running downstream on the middle Test and middle Itchen is dependant on the moon and weather conditions.

No moon or “the dark” will always see more eels running, as would bad weather or a rising river. This aversion to light would sometimes be exploited by keepers placing a light on one bank to push running eels down a particular channel towards the set.

The heaviest catch that I was involved in on the middle Test was in October 1989 when on a dark night in bad weather and a rising river we caught 700 eels each about 18inches in length.

We had to attend the set throughout the night, constantly clearing away rubbish from the gratings as, if allowed to become blocked, the water would go over the top of the set and the eels would be away.

A full moon with clear skies would see around a dozen eels caught through the night and with little clearing off required a single visit in the early hours would be enough to keep it clear.

The appearance of larger eels in the catch marked the approach of the end of the eel run for that year.


For many years setting for eels on the Test and Itchen was sustainable with numbers caught consistent from year to year. The unique nature of both these chalk rivers means that they are often several channels wide with a main river and several carrier streams. Eels running the carrier streams inevitably evaded capture as most eel sets were sited on the main river channel.

Eels caught in the set were transferred to a holding tank in the river and kept alive awaiting collection. For many years the majority of eels caught on the middle to upper Test ended up in one of Fred Cooke’s eel pie shops in the east end of London.

Along with Manse’s, Fred Cooke’s was one of the first eel pie shops in the east end of London opening in the late 19th century. The business was a great success, Fred Cooke built up a chain of eel pie shops in East London and the demand for eels could not be met from the nearby River Thames and Billingsgate fish market.

During my time working on the middle Test in the late 80’s and early 90’s it was the third generation Fred Cooke who arrived each month to pick up the eels.

A giant of a man in Doctor Martin boots, he wore jeans held up by colourful braces topped off with a baseball cap with “Bruno” writ large across the front.

He could have fallen straight out of a Chas & Dave video.

Fred arrived once a month or when eel holding boxes were full.

He had a flash flat bed truck with a large tank on the back and transported the live eels back to his eel pie empire where they would be held alive in tanks for up to six months before they were required to put in an appearance on the menu.

The rapid increase in fast food restaurants in the 1980s and 90s saw Fred Cooke’s business suffer, eel pie shops closed and Fred Cooke’s empire was reduced to a single shop on Hoxton St.

Known as the Buckingham Palace of the eel pie shop world for its lavish use of ornate stained glass and marble, it was still operating under Fred’s son Robert until the earlier part of this year.

With a reduced requirement for live eels Fred Cooke ceased collecting eels from the middle Test in the mid 1990s.

During the following few years a Dutch company would dispatch a lorry once a month to collect live eels caught from the River Test to take back to Holland for smoking, but in the final few years of the 20th century the European eel population collapsed and all eel sets were mothballed.

The reason for the collapse remain unclear but it occurred across all northern European rivers.

The European eel is an incredible creature and remarkably robust, its decline is not attributed to overfishing during its time in freshwater, but thought to be caused by something happening during its time at sea, principally during its period of passage as a juvenile from the Sargasso sea to the edge of the continental shelf.

For the few years in the 90s that I set a fyke net for eels on the Dever, I rarely caught more than a dozen in a night. These ended up at the smoker, and I only set the net when I anticipated a requirement for smoked eel.

It is a simple set up with a a leader net directing a silver eel towards a series of chambers that could be lifted in the morning and the eels removed. It needed minimal clearing off and I didn’t set in a rising river as it was not as robust as a fixed eel set and could easily be washed away. I have not set my fyke net for eels for twenty years.

The details of sale for Bransbury Mill in the 18th and 19th century list the fishery as an asset of the property and specifically mentions eels.

There was once a small set somewhere on the man made mill stream dug to drive the mill wheel but there is no evidence of it today.

I have seen several small eel sets in mills that are detachable.

Positioned on the outfall of the channel taking excess water around the Mill wheel they were attached at night and removed during the day, this may have been the set up at Bransbury Mill and possibly at Bullington where I believe eels were also once caught.