GUEST BLOGGER GWILYM GANES: Giant Eels

It is always a pleasure to introduce you to a new Guest Blogger. Gwilym James first impacted onto the cryptoverse (hey, I think I invented a new term there, and if something as ungainly as `blogosphere` can become international parlance, then I am sure that `cryptoverse` can become the accepted term for the er... cryptoo, universey place thingy) when he became involved in a hunt for a crocodile in Swansea last year...

Back when I was engaged in hunting the elusive Swansea crocodile in 2008 a hunt which resulted in no solid evidence but did produce some media interest, amongst the various reports I received concerning the lake was the idea that a large eel seen in the lake by a local angler was behind the sighting.

Giant eels are an ongoing element in many of the weird lake monster stories in the UK. Suggestions that Nessie is one or more particularly large eels has been made a number of times over the years and the CFZ’s Richard Freeman is a prominent supporter of this idea of monstrous eunuch eels. The CFZ made an expedition in search of large eels in the Lake District in Windermere and Coniston water recounted in Eel or No Eel and Oll Lewis heard reports of monster eels in Langorse Lake as well.

A glance back through the historical record reveals that some rather large eels have been caught in the past in the UK and I thought I would gather some here. The current angling UK Eel Record: 11lb 2oz (5.03kg) [www.specimen-angler.co.uk]. This compares nicely to the report by Frank Buckland.

“The largest fresh-water eel I ever examined and cast was a magnificent specimen sent in May, 1878, by Mr. John Welch, eel salesmen, Billingsgate. It measured 4ft. 4in. in length, 10in. round and weighed just upon 10lbs. It was taken in the river Mole.” in "Natural History of British Fishes" (1880).

This eel is put to shame by the evidence seen by William Yarrell noted in "A History of British Fishes" (1836):

“I saw at Cambridge the preserved skins of two which weighed together fifty pounds; the heaviest twenty-seven pounds, the second twenty-three pounds. They were taken on draining a fen-dyke at Wisbeach.”

East Anglian Fen eels and indeed pike were previously well known for their size and abundance. As an old rhyme says:

Ankholme eels and Witham Pike,
In all England are nane syke.

Further proof of this comes from The Annual Register, 1827 p.30:

“Large Eels.—Two fishermen exhibited last week at Peterborough and some neighbouring places, two immensely large smelt eels, male and female, which were taken in Gunthorpe Gowt [Gunthorpe Sluice] in the parish of Tidd St. Mary, Lincolnshire. The male weighed 31 lb.., was 19 inches in circumference, and five feet three inches in length: the female weighed two stone, was 18 inches in circumference, and of the same length as the male. It is supposed that these two immense creatures had inhabited a cavity in a drain, near to the place where they were taken, for many years, and that the last hot and dry summer having forced them from their old haunt, they strayed into the salt water, and there became sick and blind, in which state they were captured.—Macclesfield Herald.”

Now this report is about triple the current UK eel angling record. Who knows what other monster eels are out there?

The recent post by TONY LUCAS: Giant eels in New Zealand shows how monster eels have been important in other cultures. There are signs this may have been the case once in the UK for at a Holy Well Ffynnon Gybi, or St. Cybi's Well, in the parish of Llangybi, Gwynedd in the nineteenth century a local remembered the fuss when “one day in the village at a mischievous person having taken a very large eel out of the well. Many of the old people, he said, felt that much of the virtue of the well was probably taken away with the eel. To see it coiling about their limbs when they went into the water was a good sign: so he gave one to understand.” Celtic Folklore: Welsh and Manx By John Rhys [1900] Given that Holy Wells are believed to be connected to sites of pagan worship this evidence is interesting giving rise to notions of strange rites of ancient druidic eel worship.