I’m not sure who in their right mind would eat these fish...but then again, when I was a child in NYC and the Hudson was so polluted it stank and you literally saw sewage floating by, there were always people down there on the waterfront fishing.
The only thing they ever caught was eels, because that was all that could live there, but their buckets were full of writhing eels when they left and I assume they ate them. It was a nasty thought, even then, and we kids would look into the buckets mostly to scare ourselves.
You catch the eels to use as bait to catch fish elsewhere...................