unexpected visitor

River Severn has been hard fishing in highley for the past few months, with high temperatures and low water finding a decent peg has been hard going but that hasn't stopped me from trying. I have searched multiple areas of the river for a good peg with a deep stretch of water and a medium current to allow my ground bait to trickle through. After finding the perfect area inset up my Shakespeare 12 foot carp rod with an in-line lead and hair rig. A mix of black halibut powder and cooked hemp for the ground bait was first thrown into the river just off of the main current. The hook bait I used was lightly cooked spam (a type of luncheon meat) with chilli flakes and topped off with a splash of blackcurrant mist, this was then cast out into the same area as to where the ground bait was already thrown in. After fifteen minutes the rod tip began flipping around but not line was being pulled off, I tightened up and felt a weight pulling back, this was the first of the two barble. After safely unhooking and recovering the barble I recast another chunk of meat into the same area and followed it with another handful of ground bait, all of a sudden the rod screamed off this time line stripping off of the reel, after a short fight a second barble landed in my net. and ended my first night on the river. The next evening I went back to the same stretch but found someone already in my swim, so I decided to go a few swims up river onto another stretch and repeated the same tactics as the previous evening. I didn't have to wait long until I had something on my line. I noticed the rod tip pulling but no line was stripping off so I thought maybe I had a branch or something else on the line, turns out I did. It wasn't a barble, chub or a snag, it was an eel. I had never before that night caught an eel, and hope to never again 😂. To those who have never caught an eel in the UK, let me inform you they are slim and exceedingly slimy, unhooking them is very difficult and the slime they produce smells exceedingly bad. It saved the blank and was a nice surprise, but hope to never catch one again.