Bobbing or babbing is fishing without a hook.
You need a safety net to intercept fish. This can also be a boat, a children's pool, an umbrella.
Thick worms are strung on one line in length and tied together in a bunch (ba or bob). The bait is kept closed to the bottom. To catch you should get feeling.

Wait for the first jerk of the eels that feels hard by the stiff bab stick or line. Usually they will let go after the first pull because of the resistance they feel. Yet they cannot let the bob and they will now want to pick it and swim at the second bite. If this happens you will see the line going sideways through the water. You just have to ”accompany” him to you. If an eel feels shock or too much resistance he will release the bab. You must be so peaceful, without giving a tug pull guide the eel above water and up to the boat or basket. The eel is still hanging out with his teeth behind the worms and line. That gives you enough time. Above water he dissolves the bob so he falls into the boat or the net.

The eel is a snake -like fish that like a frog can also breathe through the skin, and also can move overland. Males remain in the river mouth. They are about 40 cm. Females move further inland. They can be about 120 cm. They are even 15 to 50 years. The oldest specimen caught would have been 85 years. (I suspect he walked with a stick.) Over the years, they are darker in color. They have a fascinating and partly unknown life. Adult specimens are trekking on honeymoon to the Sagasso sea (the Bermuda Triangle) to spawn and die. The elver then make a journey of about 6,000 kilometers in 1 or 2 years, to be here to find a good restaurant.
(Salmons do it the other way, they live in salt and spawn in fresh water.)

Eel eats everything (except seeds), he is a night robber and bottom dweller. For his hunt, he uses scent. Catch him at night (in the dark, not at full moon) between April and October at + 10 degrees Celsius. He holds a kind of hibernation in the mud.

There has long been a takeout ban because eels were contaminated, even toxic, especially by PCBs in the fat. Not his fault, but ours.
Note: they are literally as slippery as an eel!

Peel: empty eel

Fishing is boring, unless you catch one, and then it is disgusting. (Dave Barry)