What are the techniques and methods for catching rice field eels and loaches?

Rice field eels and loaches have slippery bodies and love to burrow into the mud, so they are not easy to catch with bare hands. Are there any better ways to catch them? Let's take a look together.

Techniques and methods for catching rice field eels and loaches

1. Trap them with cages: do this in relatively warm weather. Choose several eel cages with barbs that make it hard for them to escape, and first place tasty bait balls in the cages, such as fried rice flour bran or wheat bran; rice field eels like to eat live prey, so earthworms can be added. Put the cages into the water, and the rice field eels that enter the cages can be collected the next day. For catching loaches, wait 1 hour, first gather and close the bag opening, pull up the cage, then untie the tail of the bag and harvest once. The cage cloth can also be placed at the water inlet; when water enters, the impact of the current forms a flow around the cage opening, and the loaches swim upstream into the cage and are caught.

2. Catch them by casting a net: prepare a small net, first clear away debris from the place where the net will be set, then put bait into the net, and cover it with a reed mat. Wait for the loaches or rice field eels to enter the net to feed, then quickly pull the net in.

3. Catch them by draining the pond or draining water: do this when there is little water in the pond. Start turning over the mud from the edges and corners, slowly turn it with a wooden rake, and use a net to scoop up the rice field eels; to catch loaches, look for the holes the loaches have burrowed.

4. Catch them with grass bundles or loach bags: put bait inside a grass bundle and place it in the water, and the rice field eels will burrow into the grass bundle; just lift the grass bundle out. Loach bag catching is mostly used in rice fields. During the day, first drain the water from the field, and at night add water while placing loach-catching bags. Bait must be prepared inside the bags, and once the loaches go in to feed, they can be scooped up.

Catching rice field eels and loaches mainly uses these methods. The operations are simple and do not require much material. Friends who are interested can give them a try.