Use a pickle barrel. Really. "Thirteen years ago, we had a real good market," says F/V Playboy owner Dave Rickel out of Port Orford, Oregon, talking about overseas markets for hagfish, or slime eels. Back then, says Rickel, the market was mainly foreel skins for belts, wallets, and other leather products. But as management restrictions grow in other fisheries, the market for eel meat in Korea opened, giving Rickel and other fishermen a chance to make up lost earnings. Much of the technology in catching slime eels remains the same as it did a decade or so ago: weighted traps made from five-gallon buckets with a cone-like tunnel for eel entry are attached to individual buoys, similar to crab gear, or attached to a longline. Now other fishermen suchas Mike Erdman, a Charleston, Oregon, fisherman and owner of Oregon Sea Green Products, and Bob Pedro, owner of the F/V Miss Linda, have taken the bucket concept and improved on it by using large pickle barrels, with the hopes of getting more eels and running less gear. Pedro credits his slime eel setup to Erdman, who has been one of the most successful slime eel fishermen over the past few years. A standard pickle barrel with a screw-top lid costs between 15 dollar and 20 dollar, Pedro says, and is the primary element in a hagfish trap. They look simple, consisting of the pickle barrel with a weighted bar, four cone tunnels, an escape panel and rope that attaches to a longline.
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