Some one was asking about smelts?

[bigugli]

Sharp pair of scissors, snip off the head, snip the belly, strip the entrails, rinse and bag. I've found that the fastest way to clean the tasty little buggers.

 

We get an assembly line. One person snips the head, one slits the belly, one scrapes and one washes and bags.

 

This is the first I've ever heard of anyone catching them with hook-and-line though! We net them in the spring and that pretty much satisfies the craving for a year.

After doing the shoulder to shoulder thing It is a lot nicer jigging for them. No bumping, jostling or fists. No CROWD. It's a real hoot getting them to the bucket before they can wriggle off the hook.

[Dabluz]

Been thinking of how to catch Smelt through the ice. Due tell how due you?

 

When fishing for smelt through the ice, they are usually caught in about 3 to 10 feet of water.

 

Rig up a light but fast action short ice rod with 4 lb mono. Make a series of dropper loop knots about 3 to 4 inches apart and attach a size 10 hook to each loop. Use a tiny bit of nightcrawler on each hook. Put a 1/4 once bell sinker on the end of the line and lower the line to the bottom.

 

Where I fish, there is no limit to the number of hooks. I use 10 hooks so that I can pull the whole setup out of the water with my short rod. When the smelt are biting, it's quite common to catch 3 or 4 at a time.

 

However, in Quebec, the limit is 120 smelt which is quite a bit since you need a really big appetite to eat more than 20 of them. On top of that, their importance as a forage fish for sport fish is still underated. You won't find landlocked salmon unless there are smelt. I can manage to eat about 30 of them....however with nothing else on the plate. I prefer small smelt because you can eat them like french fries...no need to remove the vertebrae. The real tiny smelt (about 3 inches), I freeze individually and use for bait.

 

The are excellent eating when fresh. Some people freeze them to eat another day but I find that they lose their taste after only a short while in the freezer. I only eat them fresh (less than 24 hours). Fresh smelt smell quite a bit like cucumber....very similar to whitefish.

 

I often go smelt fishing through the ice so I have a few people (usually older folk who no longer can go fishing) who I give them to. I usually quit when I have around 100 smelt caught. That means that I have a good 1 hour of work at the sink.

 

Smelt are an interesting fish. Most die after spawing but some do spawn again and even a third time. They are a relative to Atlantic salmon...so are whitefish and grayling. Smelt also have a natural antifreeze in their blood. Here in the Saguenay river where salt water mixes with fresh water, the water can actually be -2 or -3 celsius near the ice. This means that an ordinary fish would freeze at that temperature....but not smelt. However, the smelt further north have a greater concentration of this antifreeze. Where I fish, there are 20 foot tides. This means that at low tide, there is no water under the fishing hut. However, as soon as there is 6 inches of water, the smelt start moving under the ice. It also means that I only fish on a rising or falling tide. Rising tide seems to be the best time. The smelt aren't always moving under the fishing hut. They sometimes run elsewhere so sucess is not a sure thing however, if you find a fishing spot where you can usually catch smelt, you have a silver mine.

 

Smelt are not the only fish with an antifreeze in their blood but they are numerous and are of commercial importance. They may even be a way of using this antifreeze to cure cancer. Imagine being able to use this antifreeze in normal human tissue and be able to freeze (and therefore kill) nearby unhealthy or cancerous human tissue.

[Jonny]

After doing the shoulder to shoulder thing It is a lot nicer jigging for them. No bumping, jostling or fists. No CROWD. It's a real hoot getting them to the bucket before they can wriggle off the hook.

 

Sounds like fun to try.

 

Where I fish for smelt, however, is a tiny creek just 200 ft. from my house and I usually have it all to myself. I check it on nights when I think the smelt might run, and when I get a good run I might get half a dozen per scoop with the net. To smelt fishermen who hope for nets almost too heavy to lift out of the water, that probably sounds ridiculous. But if I spend half an hour at the creek, I can get more smelts than I care to clean.

 

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Thanks for the excellent detail, Dabluz. It would be worth trying around here to see if there are any results. If I ever get to it, I'll have a copy of your post to refer to.