American eel

One of the only fish I know that can move backward with almost the same precision as it can move forward. Because of that, they’re incredibly hard to net they can just reverse themselves and escape. This one even went back into the water backwards while I was releasing it. This eel absolutely inhaled my Carolina rig while I was casting into deep water and covering a lot of ground. I was using a tiny baitfish style 2-inch soft plastic shed baitfule nano crappie, and because this eel was so large and surprisingly strong, it put up such a good fight that I honestly thought I had a medium sized channel catfish on the other end. What makes this catch interesting is knowing where this eel came from. American eels are born in the Sargasso Sea in the Atlantic Ocean and travel thousands of kilometres before eventually making their way into the Great Lakes, including Lake Ontario. Their life cycle and migration are absolutely fascinating. This little guy has quite literally traveled thousands of kilometres through an incredible journey and somehow ended up hitting my rig. Honestly, I don't really enjoy catching eels. If I had a choice, I’d 100% avoid catching them, but unfortunately, when you're casting and covering water, you have very little control over what decides to hit your bait. This one just happened to find my rig.

New Species Unlocked

A couple of days ago, I went there looking for big channel cats. I couldn’t find any big ones, but I caught a couple of juvenile channel cats, and this guy hit a drop-shot rig. Then I went back to the Trent River and caught two big channel cats.

Huge American eel