Harvested originally to serve merely as bait for catching crabs, today eels are caught and sent to Japan and Europe where they are considered a delicacy. Using a design similar to a crab pot, eel traps are long and cylindrical with an interior funnel.
Eels swim in, but are unable to get back out.
Native Americans and early colonists first made eel pots out of willow branches before they began weaving them from white oak splints. By the 1930s most watermen switched to wire pots.