PORTLAND, Maine (March 17, 2016) — Maine’s annual rush to catch valuable baby eels prized by expensive restaurants and Asian markets likely will be more successful this year because of warmer weather, fishermen say.
Baby eels cost more at the dock than any other fishery in the state, and are among the most lucrative in the country, sometimes fetching more than $2,000 per pound. Maine has the only significant baby eel fishery in the country, and the season begins Tuesday.
But Maine’s baby eel, or elver, fishermen are coming off a difficult year. Fishermen caught less than 5,300 pounds of the baby eels against a quota of nearly 10,000 in 2015. Many fishermen blamed the slow year on a cold spring, in which the rivers where elvers swim in the spring still were frozen in late March.
Prospects are much better for this year, because rivers are running and temperatures are higher, said Rep. Jeffrey Pierce, a Dresden Republican and adviser to the Maine Elver Fishermen Association.
“There’s every reason to expect everyone will catch their quota,” Pierce said. “Last year at this time we were still snowmobiling on the Kennebec River.”