It is their juvenile form that has turned an odd-looking, slippery fish into an expensive commodity. Elvers are now Canada’s most valuable fish. Driven by demand in Asia, glass eels can fetch thousands of dollars per kilogram (approximately a one-litre bottle full)—even sometimes more than $5,000 per kilogram. In 2022, fishers in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick earned $39 million from 7,557 kilograms of elvers harvested, according to DFO.
In a decade? Eels were already hard to find a decade ago. At least where I live.
I haven’t been looking for eels. This doesn’t surprise me.
I’ve been fishing (well, drinking) with people who were trying to catch eel. Usually very rare to get any for casual fishers.
Ridiculously good tasting fish when smoked though. But it’s like a treat to get very rarely because of how expensive it is vs how little you get.
Never tried baby eel though. We have minimum size limits in place for catching fish here and most people have the good sense to obey them