Fish of the Day - week 9 - the cunning conger eel!

 

Conger eels come in many sizes, from the occasional beast over over 6ft long and weighing in at 10st (70kg) or more "Monstrum horrendum, informe, et ingens," ...

to the very small often referred to as snakes, smaller still are called 'whips'...

and those that live in the darker recesses inshore are often almost black rather than grey in colour. 

Bill 'Rasper' Tonking waits for the next hooked fish to appear while Porthlevener, 'Kipper' guts fish in the side deck on the Bonny Mary.

Before netting became the preferred method of fishing for many of the boats between 15 and 20m longlining was the mainstay of the fleet during the summer months in Newlyn. Boats like the Bonny Mary  worked around 24 baskets of longlines with 180-200 hooks a basket targeting big white fish like ling, pollack, coley and cod. Conger eels often appeared on the hooks when the lines were shot over patches of hard ground. Occasionally, the longliners would make a night trip during the winter months just to target conger eel. One night after fishing on the Epsom Shoal ground south of Mounts Bay the Bonny Mary landed 660st (4200kg) of conger, they filled all the deck pounds of the boat.

The bulk of the conger eels landed back in the 70s and 80s went straight to Spain. Well known fish soup dishes like Bouillabaisse include conger as its firm fish does not disintegrate when cooked. Conger also make superb fish cakes for the same reason that the flesh combines well with mashed potato.

Mature congers, when gutted, reveal what is referred to as 'chittlings'.

It doesn't end there. years ago, fishermen in Newlyn and Mousehole split, dried and sewed together with needle and thread 9-10 congers in the form of a 'sheet'. Known as 'cloths', spread on sticks they were suspended from wooden poles in all weathers until they were quite dry, usually a month to six weeks. The name probably being derived from the French as that was where the original market for this fish product was - after drying the eels were ground to a dust and it was exported for use in soups and stews. Fish prepared in this way were called, conger-douce, conger dowst or in English, dust - an industry described by Martin Wright of Mousehole now lost, but with the practice of air-drying fish (which you can sample locally at 45 Queen St in Penzance) maybe this process will find a place in modern cuisine!

Either way, certain areas of the sea must be teeming with huge conger these days as they have not been targeted for over 40 years - there is a market out there for them surely?!