May 16, 2014 at 4:04 p.m.
The peculiar joy of smelting
The peculiar joy of smelting
It can also describe a rite that revolves around a minnow-sized fish. In the best of circumstances, the fish themselves actually make an appearance - first in a net, and later on your plate. The smelt run.
Sometimes, would-be smelters have to be talked off of their barstools, where they have gathered to await darkness.
Smelt are light-sensitive and make their spawning runs in shallow water at night, so most smelting takes place after dark, when they are moving into the streams.
My brother, Chris, and his friends Ryan and Jeremy, tried their hand at smelting last weekend at Ashland. My cousin Joe, who guided the last smelt fishing excursion I recall being on, met them there.
They weren't in for one of the classic hauls that Superior's streams normally gave up years ago, but they were getting some in the net shortly after sundown, which gave rise to hopes for a good run.
The run tapered, though. They hauled in about three gallons of the little fish. Well, that's enough to get the fry pan dirty, anyway.
Smelt are actually an invasive, an ocean-going species that made their way into the Great Lakes, so fewer of them isn't necessarily bad news. It could be a sign that things are headed back in the right direction. But I do like smelt.
I remember my dad hitting the smelt run when I was a kid. I also the remember pickup beds packed with washtubs and garbage cans full of the little fish.
I can also say for certain that I have cleaned more smelt that I have ever caught. Of course, I've eaten far more, too.
Cleaning them is not difficult, though when they number in the thousands the tedium will beat you like a rhythmic, headache-inducing drum. And your fingers, especially one, will get really pruned.
All that is needed to clean smelt is a scissors, a place to toss the remains, and a thumb designated for stripping the guts. The smelt are going to be cold (at least they better be), so there will be numbness occurring in places other than the brain.
You snip the head, snip the gut, strip the guts and rinse the smelt. An assembly line with a designated rinser may be helpful. If you're eating them right away, someone might as well be prepping that work, too.
I enjoyed the smelt feasts as a kid. Dad simply coated the fish in flour and seasonings and pan-fried them. It amused me that I could eat the little fish bone and all. I sometimes buttered two pieces of bread and made sandwiches out ot the smelt.
We sometimes dipped the fried smelt in ketchup, which might sound a little strange for fish, but it's OK. Ketchup is good on pasties, and my dad is a native Yooper, but I don't know if there's a correlation there. Has anyone ever made a smelt pasty? I really hope not.
When I have smelt now, I don't generally dip them in ketchup. I made a beer batter for the last ones I was fortunate enough to lay hands on.
Getting smelt used to be an easy thing. When the runs were huge, friends and family would call, desperate to unload multiple pounds of them.
I have overindulged on smelt when they were abundant and I agreed to keep or take too many. I don't mean overindulge in one sitting - I mean over the course of weeks. You can definitely have too many smelt.
You get a call from a friend and can almost hear the smile in his voice as he asks, "Want some smelt?"
What he really means is, "I have way too many smelt."
"Are they cleaned?" you ask, though you know full well that they are not.
Smelting is something I haven't done in a long while, but as I recall it goes something like this:
Several guys rendezvous at a tavern near the predetermined smelting spot. It is agreed that they will enjoy a beer. It is soon after agreed that they will have "a few" beers.
Some hours later, the lone soda drinker among them has been hinting, for quite a while now, that the would-be smelters should head to the predetermined spot.
Soon thereafter, the hints become stronger, often laced with profane words, and the soda drinker's voice is like that of a desperate parent of eight unruly children (even if he's only with like three unruly adults).
It is finally agreed that those gathered will have just one more beer, then they will head out smelting. A few beers later, they are on their way.
One guy sleeps in the truck while the rest drag buckets and a seine or long-handled nets down to the water.
The fishing is fairly basic beyond that. You don waders or hip boots and wade out into the stream and net smelt.
On my last adventure smelting, we did OK. We didn't fill a pickup bed full of them, but we got some.
Cousin Joe set us up at their family cottage on the Gile Flowage in northern Iron County for the balance of the night. My friends and I drank beers and cleaned and fried smelt until the sun was up. Yeah, it was one of those "don't get any better than this" moments.
We caught some shut-eye, then cleaned up our mess. To Joe's amusement, we wrote "Thanks!" on a piece of masking tape and used it to tape a quarter to a wall in the kitchen.
That quarter hung on that wall there for years - until the masking tape finally gave out under the stress of wood heat.
Back in the present day, Chris fried up some of that Ashland smelt haul when we rendezvoused at my parent's house Mother's Day, adding something to the grilled Cajun venison backstrap and bacon-wrapped shrimp and mushrooms prepared by my dad, Bawb, for the occasion.
The smelt were good. Real good. There was ketchup, too.
Craig Turk may be reached at [email protected].
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