Smelt

I never ate any, but there was a place here in town that used to sell smelt by the pound bag. Best tip up bait for Pike ever, hands down.

SR

I mentioned it to my dad and he told me, yeah my old man and all his drunk buddies piled into my 53 Chevy wagon and drove them up to Duluth and watched them stumble around falling in the water. Filled multiple buckets and cleaned and fried them. Lol.

Also someone mentioned grindstone. My dad’s buddy used to net smelt there for ice fishing pike I guess! They loved using frozen ciscoes and smelt on tip ups. They used to crush the giant pike up on LOTW In march I believe.

B-man that is awesome. A little fireside wrasslin?

Also see we are rocking the $18 energizer headlamps. Those little triple-A eaters got me through thick and thin in the woods and on the ice! I have more expensive ones now but they are still always with me or in the vehicle. Hard to go wrong.

They were mining

Ended up with a couple gallons of smelt and five cohos today

They also seined and released a laker with a mortal lamprey bite, I should have just kept it but wasn’t worth the risk.

The Boys were cooking smelt on finger fires till 2am, they were actually pretty good with a little Johnny’s on them lol

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Johnny’s is good stuff!!

We fried up some smelt and are canning the bulk of them today.

They’re soooo good fresh (iced right away and cleaned within 12 hours). We seasoned them with Johnny’s followed with an egg dip and flour, splashed with some hot sauce after frying.

For canning, Hank and Ben love hot sauce sardines, so we packed jars with smelt and Louisiana Sauce. They’re in the pressure cooker right now for 100 minutes.

Also made a few half pints of mustard sauce ones, and canned 5 cohos in hot sauce too (never done that before, but I think they’ll turn out awesome

Hank said the canned Cohos will be called “Hot Hoes”

He has no idea what that means, but I’m gonna let it ride and can’t wait to see the look on Grandpa’s face when he asks him if he wants to eat some Hot Hoes

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get a picture!!!

Smelt fishing…….The talk about smelt got me thinking about how we used to take in the annual smelt spawn every Spring. Without fail, from the time I was 10 until about 19, the neighbors would gather all their smelting gear and load their truck and trailer with 10 gallon milk cans and head north. Sometimes 3-4 vehicles would follow behind with the sole purpose of striking it rich like a bunch of gold miners from years past.

Usually we would go out of Duluth, MN and hit the rivers flowing into Lake Superior. We had many to draw off of; often the common denominator was that if one area was hot, the others were also. Every once in a while, one river would out-produce some of the others and it just added to the chase. We would always fish them at night, although in later years, we found mornings to also be good.

We usually used dip nets; often we could fill a five gallon bucket in a dip and a half. Other times, we would go to the mouth of Superior in WI and pull the big net. I don’t remember the exact length, but it seems 35’- 40’ rings a bell. When we seined, I remember we used the larger mesh which allowed all the smaller males to go through but caught the bigger females. Having 20 to 30 gallons in the net in a single haul was labor intensive. I remember being totally wiped out after pulling the net 8-10 times a night.

The atmosphere up there was that of a bunch of guys turned loose from their wives for a couple of nights of drinking and raising holy hell. There were fights, copious drinking, and many women looking to make a few bucks. For a 15-18 year old kid it was an indescribable experience that my Grandpa loved to hear about and my Grandma shuttered to think about.

Many nights over the course of 9 or 10 years we made 150-200 gallon hauls. Eventually the stress and strain of the work and excitement forced some of the older fellas to call it a memory. I, along with a childhood friend, took over the best we could. All the neighbors would inquire as to when we were going and many of them would flip us a 10 spot to help with gas. We pretty much just went with the dip nets, partially because of the work that making a haul entailed, and also the up keep the big net needed in maintenance . One other prime reason was that the rivers were much kinder when the wind blew. On the big lake, smelters often disappeared when the waves hauled them out to sea. Some got lucky and made it back to shore and some didn’t.

But as usual, people wrecked everything. Too much drinking, too much crime, and eventually the rivers were closed. About the same time, the smelt numbers started dwindling. I’m not sure what the main problem was; however, many blamed the lake trout for the decline. Smelt numbers didn’t amount to much until the lamprey took its toll on lake trout. As the lake trout population declined, smelt numbers increased at an unbelievable rate peaking in the 60’s and 70’s. Once the lake trout numbers rebounded the smelt numbers diminished. Of course, let’s not forget commercial fisherman helped to reduce the numbers.

At any rate, for us smelt fishing dried up and like the old fellas before us, smelting just became a memory. I used to love nothing more than returning at dawn, cleaning up a few, dipping them in batter and frying them up. When straight out of the lake, and into the hot oil they would roll themselves over, like a dog rolling onto his back. Get a plate, grab the salt shaker, and open a beer. That was a breakfast to behold.

WS

B-man, I was at the airport in Park Point. There were a thousand people on that beach Friday night, and even worse on Saturday. We had a blast and ended up with 20 ish gallons. Again, I keep for a big fry at our campground and gift the rest. Its pretty good trading stock! They are getting 30 for a gallon and 125 for a 5 gallon bucket. Some a little more and some a little less. With a big run falling on the weekend it should drive the price down.

I dont want to set anyone off on the video topic, so dont watch it if you dont want to. But it give a lot of detail on how to and how we did.

smelting

Great stuff B man. What was preferred? The single smelt over the fire or those bacon and eggs the next morning?

Heck yeah Burr

Loved the video

One thing we did different was I bit the head off the last smelt we cleaned instead of the first one we caught

The kids have a video of it on their phone