advise on freezing sand eels.

[Determined Dan]

hi all I'm going to try and catch some sand eel and freeze them as bait . and advise on catching them and freezing them so the sand eel don't go soft and burst .

[bigsod]

Dont know if youre a bit late for catching them, but pack them in 10 to 15 eels per bag in sealable plastic bags and get them into the freezer as soon as possible. If possible spread them out so none of the packs are on top of each other to ensure quicker freezing. Leave them for at least six weeks and you should have nice firm non splitting sandeel.

[Determined Dan]

thanks big sob that's great advise.

[paul mason]

thanks big sob that's great advise.

The later you get the sandeels in the year the better they seem to be tougher and have more blood in them and they also last longer in the freezer. The eels must be very fresh when freezing less than an hour out of the sea, try transporting them in a coolbox filled with ice
There are a number of ways of freezing sandeels, to freeze them fast you will need some steel trays and have them prefrozen in the freezer and lay a batch of eels on them, they freeze fairly fast like this. when frozen they can be wrapped in newspaper and vacuum packed ( the newspaper is to stop them bursting the vacuum in the plastic)
The way I do it is with small snap-lock bags 4"x 3" and pack the bag with about thirty eels and when closing the bag squeeze the air out till water comes out and press the bag shut. The more eels in the bag the less air = less freezer burn.
I have had eels in the freezer for a number of years packed like this and still caught fish on them.

Happy eeling.

[Determined Dan]

thanks Paul that's a good idea with the steel tray. ill give it a go when i catch some.regards Dan.

[fisherman59]

just wondering do you wash them in fresh water before freezing

[paul mason]

just wondering do you wash them in fresh water before freezing

Yes! If Youre going to keep them for long periods in the freezer I'd wash them, the salt from the water seems to damage them when frozen.

[anto2121]

the way i do it is to take a cooler box with me with ice blocks,but if you don't have one just make some blocks of ice by filling small sealable bags with water the night before and freezing and put these in the bucket your putting eels in with some salt water but don't take the ice out of the bags,and if you get eels don't take too many as the more you have the longer they take to pack id take around a bucket max which around 1300 eels and takes about an hour to pack with 20 per bag,
once i get home then i get an empty bucket and a small net and pour the eels into net and drain over the bucket for a minute then i get any old bags round 4 and and divide the eels up into them and place in the freezer this way the eels start freezing while you pack,so all you do then is take out maybe 100 eels pack them and put them in freezer and repeat till all eels are gone.
and u have to use a chest freezer they wont freeze fast enought in a normal freezer and make sure u put the freezer on fast freeze mode the night before if it has that its an orange button on mine.
and a couple more small points if your using a net when you make a haul first thing i do anyway is to remove any small flat fish and crabs[and beware of weevers]hope this helps good luck

[taz]

hey just be careful of weever fish i don't know if they are still about. they are nasty little blighters