Smelting on Thin Ice

Smelting is a pastime that presents Maine anglers in a hearty, intrepid light. How the small, sea-running fish travel up Maine’s tidal rivers in winter to spawn in freshwater streams by spring, and why recreational fishermen do the things they do while sitting in wait atop frozen rivers for these little silver bullets to arrive, are details that add up to an interesting tale.

“During the dog days of winter … when there’s good ice, there’s no place to go, no place to be, except in the smelt shack,” says Craig King, a scientist with the Sea-Run Fisheries and Habitat bureau of Maine’s Department of Marine Resources (DMR). He interviews smelt fishermen for research purposes but picks up smelting advice—like rolling bait in cornmeal—that gets passed from generation to generation. Which bait to use is less settled. Some swear by bloodworms because their transparent skin reveals the blood within and attracts the smelt. Others prefer sandworms for their cheaper price tag and tougher skin that keeps on the hook longer. Still others think hot dogs work best.

Smelt shacks, wooden structures that measure eight by 10 feet, sit astride two 1-foot-wide “race holes” cut into the ice on Maine’s tidal rivers with chainsaws. Inside, jig poles, each with 10 hooks, lines, and sinkers, hang over the holes. The human creature comforts are a makeshift floor, hanging lights, and a wood stove. Each shack is elevated with wooden beams to ensure that the heat from the wood stove doesn’t affect the ice. Together, the shacks are arranged into a small neighborhood. “The wind can be howling at 20 below zero, and you can sit in a camp with the wood stove cranked in a T-shirt and just sweat,” says Jim McPherson, owner of Jim’s Camps in Bowdoinham. McPherson plays host to both locals and folks from away who return to his operation annually, often helping to introduce new anglers to the tradition. In fact, McPherson’s 33-year-old daughter Katie recalls the time a regular customer brought her grandbaby fishing; the child sat in a highchair inside one of the shacks.

“When you catch your [first] fish and it’s still flipping, you stick the head in your mouth and bite the head off and spit [it] into the hole [in the ice],” says the elder McPherson, explaining the custom is meant to bring new fishermen luck for a good haul. “When you’ve got this head in your mouth and some of the entrails hang down over your chin … some people get a little gag-ish after they realize what they’ve done.”

A taste for smelts

First-time smelt fishermen antics aside, anglers brave the bitter cold and return to the ice annually out of a love for the flavor profile of these four- to six-inch fish with their bright silvery-green skin, delicate white flesh, and edible bones. People’s perceptions of that specific flavor profile vary slightly. Their opinions on how to best prepare smelts vary more. But most smelt connoisseurs agree that fresh is best. “They’re … a delicacy,” says King, who prefers to brine and smoke his catch. “I don’t want anything else getting in the way [of the flavor],” says Mike Alfiero, co-owner of Harbor Fish Market in Portland. “They’re amazing. They’re almost sweet. When they’re nice and fresh, they smell like watermelon.” “A real fresh smelt will smell like cucumbers,” says McPherson, who recommends rolling the smelts in cornmeal and frying them in bacon grease, a common practice on the flat-top wood stoves in his rental camps. “I like them pan-fried, deep-fried, just a simple egg wash in flour—throw them in the frying pan with some adobo seasoning,” says Dan Devereaux, avid smelt fisherman, co-founder of Mere Point Oyster Company, and Brunswick’s coastal resource manager. Like many other smelt fishermen, Devereaux often gives away fresh smelts to friends as a celebration of the season. “Believe me, everybody loves smelt! Everybody’s happy to get them,” he says.

Smelts over time

For most of his life, McPherson has spent the better part of his days, and nights, in the smelt fishing camp rental industry on the banks of the Cathance River, where schools of smelt have historically traveled. He’s seen it all during his tenure in this “smelt capital of the world.” “The train station was right here in Bowdoinham, where they loaded barrels of smelt … and shipped them out to Boston and New York,” he says, reflecting on an era of bountiful Midcoast smelt fishing. “That’s how a lot of people made extra money in the winter. That’s how they survived.” Change in smelt bounty, however, has taken many shapes beneath the ice on Maine’s rivers. “Smelt seem to have their own cycles,” says McPherson. “You may get real good runs for three or four years, and then they won’t come in that much for a few years. Then you’ll get another charge.” The smelts’ enigmatic cycles, however, do not account for the long-term environmental changes affecting the fishery. McPherson recalls that, 30 years ago, he could fish from the middle of December through the end of March with 24 to 30 inches of ice on the river. Now he fishes most of January and into February with 16 to 18 inches of ice, in a good year. In 2021, though, Jim’s Camps were open for just three weeks due to a lack of ice. The ice isn’t the only thing that has changed. “It wasn’t uncommon to catch 80 pounds [of smelts] in a tide back 30 years ago,” says McPherson. “Whether it’s due to pollution or some kind of environmental impact, there are definitely not as many as there were 20 years ago.” Harbor Fish Market used to source smelts from four or five local harvesters who brought Alfiero 100 pounds of smelt at a time. “Now we’re lucky to see any,” says Alfiero. While he thinks local smelts are by far the nicest, he imports approximately 100 pounds of Canadian smelts each week during the season. Smelt populations are moving north. “It’s something we’re seeing in real time,” says Sean Ledwin, director of the DMR’s Sea-Run Fisheries and Habitat bureau. According to information published by the University of Maine Sea Grant program, rainbow smelts are harvested in three distinct fisheries. In spring, when the smelts move into freshwater streams to spawn, fishermen harvest them with hand-held dip nets. “It’s subsistence fishing for folks Downeast to add some income and food,” says Ledwin. To allow Maine’s smelt fishery to recover, the DMR closed the spring smelt fishery from Stonington to the New Hampshire border beginning March 14, 2014. A commercial fishery operating on Washington County rivers uses bag nets and gillnets. The fall season supports a riverine and coastal bay hook-and-line fishery. In winter, anglers fish for smelt through ice on tidal rivers, where they are limited to four quarts (40–60 smelts) per day. No matter the locale, smelt fishing is about community. The practice goes back generations and has evolved into a subtle ecosystem of bait harvesters and dealers, fishermen and their families, wholesale dealers, and an extended network of those involved in the smelt camp rental businesses along the tidal rivers. “It’s the same feel that you get when you go to northern Maine or Downeast and you go into a store, and they’ve got brownies made from Suzie down the road or bloodworms dug from Uncle Jack’s son for fishing,” says Dan Devereaux. The appeal of smelt fishing boils down to being a similarly old-school thing.

What, then, does the future hold for this beloved Maine tradition?

While the reasons for the changes in the smelt population can be at least partially attributed to warming waters, work is afoot to better understand the issues at hand. “It’s a really fascinating fishery,” says Danielle Frechette, a marine resource scientist with DMR. Over the past three years, Frechette has worked with the Gulf of Maine Research Institute’s Ecosystem Investigation Network, The Nature Conservancy, and the Downeast Salmon Federation to develop a citizen science initiative. “There’s actually quite a lot we don’t know about smelt,” she notes. “We’re hoping the citizen science data will help us answer some of these questions.” Putting more boots on the ground to build a comprehensive survey of smelt streams that tracks the presence and absence of fish in the almost 300 smelt streams in Maine will help set restoration priorities, explains Frechette. While this environmental work continues, the smelting tradition carries on among those whose memories are tied to the aroma of woodsmoke and the warm glow of smelt shacks sitting on the ice. “It’s just in our blood. It’s always been what we do,” says Jim McPherson’s daughter, Katie. “It runs deep.”