With all this weather I have plenty of water in the backyard/over the fence and given i havent been able to go fishing for ages thought i would entertain myself by trying to catch some eels (which i can see sometimes swimming around)
I have been using salami for bait and have hooked 1 and had 2 other bites/misses in about 3 hours worth of fishing.

Is that just usual for freshwater eels or should i be using something else for bait to get more bites?

Chicken frames for burley are the best (what allot of the commercial eeler's use in their hinaki's). Then a piece of red meat once you have them around. We have a lake below us on our front yard an its riddled with them, like a snake pitt. They nail most of our ducklings so I get the cuzzies round to burley up and help themselves.

Red meat works well. One of the problems with trying to catch them after lots of rain is that they gorge themselves on earthworms that get washed into the water. Having said that eels are pretty much always hungry.

Fresh pipis are amazing, last week my mother and I went for a eel with our hand lines on the farm I work on for the first time. She had kahawai and I had shelled me a few pipis from maketu, which she thought was hilarious. So just because she laughed at me, I thought I would prove a her wrong. Which I did, less the 5mins I got my first one, less then 15mins I was pulling in my 2nd we started eeling at 6:30pm we were leaving at 7:50pm with 7 good sized eels. So give pipis a go, don't laugh at those who do you'll be surprised. My mother was!!!!

I'm no expert, but from what I've seen of them, anything will do. Smellier/bloodier the better I suppose in terms of attracting them to your hook in the first place. The eels in my mate's stream are rather partial to a beef sausage! 

We often get eels when snapper fishing around dark so I suspect that a nice 1/2 Pilchard would work just fine as well.

pigs liver,anything cheap or free,nothing wrong with a small fresh water eel smoked,we made a ihaka out of chicken mesh and tied a bait at the closed end worked well,in the opening shaped a funnel out of mesh so when the eel went in it didnt feel the sharp bits but wouldnt exit.

Best bait by the way will be a bunch of big earthworms threaded down a strong longshank hook. If that works in the UK it will work here I am sure of it. Had a go with red meat here years ago after my Maori mate insisted that was best and caught zilch, I gave him no end of stick. 

Tagit wrote: We often get eels when snapper fishing around dark so I suspect that a nice 1/2 Pilchard would work just fine as well.

we always used fresh sheeps hearts or intestines for eels. Caught heaps to 20lb in local streams in Waikato region