You don't talk for nothing: as slippery as an eel. The real fun with an eel begins when you pick it up.
Perhaps it happened so, because I was still a little boy then. Anyway, it made me cry about my first eel caught. I simply couldn't hold this fish in my hand. I didn't understand any of this. My working hands, trained in a mountain stream, they had already chosen so many brown trouts from the shoreline and from behind the stones, and then suddenly a fish just doesn't get caught. The eel was wrapping around my arm, and at least I was squeezing it with all my strength, it slipped neatly without the slightest problem and immediately crawled towards the water. Even the stripping ashore didn't help – this fish finally escaped me. Today I am twenty years older and although I already have over 200 caught eels, I still have problems with a firm grip on this incredibly slippery fish. Especially then, when I catch an eel completely by accident. It must be a hilarious sight to the casual observer, when I move my legs and hands trying not to let the writhing beast out of my hands. Things are a bit better, when I go specifically on eels. I am not exaggerating, if I say, that I have tried almost everything, to grasp the eel more securely – from a wire cloth, and ending with sandpaper. The effects were very different. The worst thing is this though, that all eels are gray at night. How many times have they slipped out of my hands and immediately disappeared somewhere in the tall grass or among the stones lying on the shore?. It is true that after losing my prey, I don't cry the way I used to, but only curses are on my lips, curses, which modern young adepts of eel fishing should not listen to…
Slippery as an eel
