Smelt runs turn icy rivers into communal night fisheries
Osmerid smelts school the North Atlantic and Pacific plus northern lakes and rivers of Europe, North America, and Northeast Asia. Most stay under twenty centimeters, though some European females reach twenty-five to forty. Anadromous lives send many from sea to spawning streams; surf smelt never leave salt water.
True smelts, the family Osmeridae, are small silvery fish of cold northern waters. Most stay below 20 centimetres, though some female European smelt reach 25 to 40. Like salmon, many live at sea and swim up rivers to breed, while a few such as the surf smelt never leave salt water. The oldest confirmed fossil, Enoplophthalmus, comes from the Early Oligocene of Europe, and Speirsaenigma from Paleocene Canada may be older still if it is not instead a relative of the ayu. Several declining western American populations, among them California's delta smelt and the eulachon of the northeast Pacific, are now off limits to harvest.
Spring runs turn catching them into a social event. Around the Great Lakes, people go smelt dipping once streams warm to about 4 °C, spotting the schools by headlamp and scooping them out with mesh nets, then cooking all but the biggest with fins and bones intact. On the Maine coast, runs up tidal creeks narrow enough to straddle could be caught with a bucket. In New England and the Maritimes, winter fishermen once took horse-drawn sleighs over the ice to traditional spots, froze the catch simply by leaving it on the ice, and sold it for extra income.
Cooks everywhere prize them. Great Lakes First Nations valued smelt as an easy source of protein and oil, and Pacific coast peoples served dried smelt with oil. The eulachon is so fatty at spawning time that a dried fish burns like a candle, earning it the name candlefish. Japan grills egg-laden fish as shishamo and uses capelin roe, masago, in sushi, while dim sum menus call fried smelt many-egg fish.
Festivals follow the runs: Inje in South Korea holds an ice-fishing festival on Soyang Lake, and Lewiston, New York, fries about 160 kilograms each May.
Source: Smelt (fish)
