Eel fishing profession

(Baonghean)When the lights are on in every house and the family gathers around the dinner table, it is also the time for eel trappers to “work”. Leaving in the evening and returning home at dawn, the eel trap profession is considered a “working day job”, hard and tiring...

In the past, setting eel traps was only a leisurely job for the village boys. On clear moonlit nights, with cool breezes, people would go out to set traps to catch eels as bait for a fun drinking party, or to improve their meals. When freshwater eels became a specialty, a “commodity” with a high price, setting eel traps became a profession for many farmers in the villages of Nghe An. In Long Thanh commune (Yen Thanh), the whole village did this job.

Normally, the season for setting eel traps starts in the 8th lunar month, when the heavy rains begin to appear. But now, they set traps all year round. The job does not require capital, only effort and strength. Having a few dozen traps and a little bait is enough to qualify for the job. The traps are made of long, thin-fleshed, wide-core bamboo (the diameter must be 6-7cm or more). The bamboo is sawed into tubes, each tube is about a meter long, with a sharp knife to remove the eyes, and the outer skin is scraped clean. The inside of the bamboo eyes is punctured. The head of the trap is fitted into a coop made of giang strips woven with sharpened bamboo sticks, the head is wide open, the tail is tied in a funnel shape, so that when the eels go in, it is easy but it is impossible to get out. Now, when the village becomes a city, the bamboo fences are replaced by solid concrete fences, so the raw materials for making bamboo tubes are becoming scarce, people replace bamboo tubes with PVC pipes. Bamboo tubes made of plastic pipes are light, durable and easy to buy because nowadays, finding bamboo to make bamboo tubes is really difficult.

Mr. Nguyen Van Hiep (Block 12, Hung Nguyen Town) collects eel baskets.

At around 6 p.m., motorbikes and bicycles carrying baskets of bamboo shoots spread out across the deep fields and swamps. Mr. Dang Khac Nam, from Hamlet 3, Long Thanh, who has been making bamboo shoots for decades, said: “I have known how to make bamboo shoots since I was ten. In the past, people only released bamboo shoots to have food for the day, and if there was any surplus, they were only sold at the local markets. About ten years ago, when eel became a specialty, traders came to the house to buy it, making bamboo shoots a profession that supported the whole family.

This job does not require capital but is hard and laborious..." During the day, he carries a hoe to dig for worms, pull nets to catch fish, catch frogs, and chop up frogs to make bait for eel traps. In the afternoon, he spends time inspecting locations to find places to set traps. "During the day, eels hide in the mud, only coming up at night to look for food, so setting traps must be done at night. The two most important factors that determine the success or failure of setting traps are bait and cuttings. Because, "if the bait is not good, eels will not bite; if the trap is not clear, eels will not enter." The "base" where eels often take refuge is in fields of reeds, sedges growing wildly, where there is a lot of mud and water. But the most favorable places are pond mouths with a lot of reeds..." Mr. Nam enthusiastically shares the secret to setting traps.

Before, every night, wandering around the fields in the commune, he could catch a few kilos of eels, but "there are many people, but resources are scarce", many people work in the trap-setting profession, so the eels are gradually depleted. Now, to catch a lot of eels, he has to go far away, sometimes dozens of kilometers from home. The person who sets the traps must always have a "map" of the traps in mind, so that when he goes to collect the traps, he does not miss anything, does not lose anything, or confuses them with someone else's. On average, each night, he catches about 2-3 kilos of eels, with the current selling price of 120,000 VND/kg, he also earns a few hundred thousand, enough for his wife's medicine and his children's education.

However, not everyone can do this job, because in addition to the basic technical requirements, it also requires the health to stay up all night and sleep in the fields. At dusk, when everyone is preparing to gather around the dinner table and the fire, the team of trappers must wade in the night, struggling with mud and dirt. When setting traps in remote areas, they form teams of about 3-5 people to prevent unexpected events. At night, four or five people crawl into a tent covered with a makeshift tarpaulin, taking turns on duty. One person sleeps, another stays awake, and so on until dawn. When the rooster crows on the houses with flickering fires, they spread out to collect the results after a night of work.

Taking out the bamboo traps, pouring out from the bamboo traps eels as big as two fingers, round bodies, bright yellow skin, many traps have 3-5 eels "trapped", Mr. Ho Van Dung confided: "Fish die because of the traps, eels die because of the bait", being greedy, many get trapped, putting their heads into the traps. In life, if you are greedy for profit, you can easily die...". People who work in the trap-setting profession in Dia Dinh village, Cam Thai, Thanh Van commune (Thanh Chuong) have an "unwritten" rule that they can only catch eels of a certain size, the small ones must be released back into the fields to grow up. People who work in the same trap-setting profession must be responsible for protecting each other's property. Absolutely do not steal traps of "colleagues", be willing to share experiences, gather together to rely on each other in times of difficulty and adversity.

Mr. Nguyen Van Tien, head of the Dia Dinh village trap-setting association, said: “This job is hard, just enough to eat but cannot make you rich. Going to set traps is often not only far from the commune but also far from the district, going at night, there are many dangers, so we have to go in wards, in associations, solidarity, and mutual support. Now, there are many people using electric shock to catch eels, using drugs to catch eels, affecting the environment, destroying eels, so eels are gradually becoming scarce... To protect natural eel resources, we tacitly agree with each other not to catch small eels, only catch those that are big enough...”.

Duy Nam