Lots of eels here. They're easy to avoid if you don't want them. Eels, catfish and sturgeon basically eat the same things. Here, the cats are in sluggish waters, if you move out to water with a little more current you'll get eels.....more current again and deeper water will get you sturgeon. Eels are very slimey but I prefer catching an eel to catching anything with a mouth that looks like it was manufactured by Electrolux.
My brother and I used to target eels in a place called St-Louis de Gonzague...we'd hang them on our bicycle handlebars and sell them to the usual suspects in town for 25 cents a piece. It would keep us in lures. We were 8 or 9 at the time so it was nice money.