Beach bumming during Duluth’s 2016 annual smelt run
April 22nd, 2016
by Maxwell J. Reagan
Duluth was a chilly 33 Degrees Fahrenheit on the fourth Friday of April. I could only imagine how much colder it felt down at Minnesota Point. The wind that comes off of the lake and bombards the beach with icy lake air always has a chilly touch. It isn’t the warmest place to hangout at in April, but my roommates and I were desperate to get out of the house after being locked inside all winter.
We were not anticipating to see anyone down at Minnesota Point. The Friday before we had spent a few hours there having a bonfire on the beach and it was relatively empty. The three of us were expecting to have just about to entire beach to ourselves. To our surprise when we arrived at Park Point a little before 7pm the entire parking lot was full.
Cars and trucks spanned the entire lot leaving not one available space. People in sweatshirts and boots were unloading their cars with equipment and portaging it to the beach.
“It’s almost dark out? What are these people doing here?” Paul asked.
“I have no clue,” Malcolm chimed in. “Should we just head home?”
“We are already here,” I smiled. “Let’s check it out.”
Parking my white sedan in a makeshift parking spot the three of us got out of the car and sauntered across the boardwalk to the beach. Just about every person we passed made us feel a little out of place. Nearly everyone wearing waist high waders and a camouflage sweatshirt or hat.
Once we had made it to the beach and began pushing our way through the sand was when I got a better look of what was going on. Bonfires stretched along the shoreline of Superior providing small groups of people with warmth and light. These people strode down the beach carrying long nets and buckets and coolers.
“Are they fishing? I thought the fishing opener wasn’t for like another month,” Paul said.
It was then that I realized what all this was. I had researched it briefly for a possible story idea for one of my journalism classes, but later dropped the idea to pursue a story about the remains of a forgotten ship.
“No,” I said. “They are smelting.”
“Oh yeah!” Malcolm said, “I have family members who do this.”
“Smelt?” Paul asked. “What’s smelt?”
“They are just tiny silver fish,” I said.
“So they are fishing?” Paul asked.
“Yeah, but it’s different. They don’t use poles to catch them. You see those big nets?” I asked pointing to one that had been rolled out into the sand that looked almost like the size of a tennis net. “They wade out into the water with those and pull in a bunch of them at once,” I said looking out into the water.
“You ever done it before?” I asked turning to Malcolm.
“No, but I know a little bit about it,” Malcolm retorted. “This is the only time of year you can catch them.”
The three of us continued down the beach in hopes of finding some prime real estate in the sand to set up a bonfire and blend in with these local anglers. Each step took us further away from downtown and closer to the Minnesota Point lighthouse.
We found a nice spot loaded with firewood that was in between two other bonfires. It took us about 40 minutes to get our fire going. The wind was terrible, immediately extinguishing any flame we managed to obtain. By digging down into the sand and stacking driftwood to block the wind coming off of the lake we managed to get a fire started.
I posted myself in the sand around the fire and watched other groups continue to walk by us further down the beach in order to find an open place to wade into the water. One group of four passed us and noticed the only thing we had brought with us was a backpack and a camera case. They gave us a little laugh.
“You guys aren’t smelting?” a man from the group with a gnarly beard asked us.
I could see why they thought it was funny. Who comes down here just to sit in the cold? But in actuality we were having fun just observing.
Paul laughed. “Nope! Just here to watch,” he replied to the bearded man.
They continued on and nobody else gave us any guff. It was nearly dark now, but there was no one in the water yet.
“Malcolm,” I asked, “what are they waiting for?”
“You have to wait till it is completely dark. Smelt are extremely sensitive to light,” he told us.
It was not until a little before 9pm, after the sun had set, that the groups began wading into the crashing waves that splashed onto the beach. It looked like most were having a difficult time. The wind had churned up waves that continue to batter the smelters with no break in the bombardment.
I had to get a closer glimpse. Were they catching anything? I told Malcolm and Paul I would be back. Getting up from the sand I walked to our neighbors about thirty feet away.
It was a group of three standing around a roaring fire and two patrolling the shore for smelt. Four men and one woman. The three around the fire had a PBR in hand.
“You guys catching anything?” I asked walking into the light of their fire.
An older man wearing an old fisherman's cap with dark brown hair that creeped out the side of his hat looked at me.
“Not much,” the man said. “There doesn’t seem to be as much out there as there use to be.”
I peered down into their five gallon bucket and saw just a small pile of smelt that barely covered up the bottom of the bucket.
“When I was just a kid,” the man spoke, “we would bring home about five or six buckets every time we went out.”
“What happened? Why are there so little now?”
“Other fish are just eating them up,” he continued. “Smelt are not a native species and the Lake is slowly restoring the lake to its natural state.”
The man was Daniel Anderson, a local 60 something year old man and outdoorsman. An avid hunter and fisherman who had been smelting since he was just a kid.
He continued to inform me on smelting, saying that this is the only time of year you can catch them. This is their spawning season, where they migrate from deeper waters into the shallows where the water is much warmer. That leaves only about a 12 to 14 day window at the end of April to catch these little fish. However, regulation is much looser than regular fishing in that there is no official smelting season and no limit on how much one can catch. You just need a fishing license.
“ It is been sort of a local tradition since I was a kid to bite off the head of the first smelt you bring in,” Anderson said, “You want to do it for us?”
I respectfully declined saying that it wouldn’t be right since I didn’t contribute to their smelt collection. He just laughed. I wanted to ask if he would cook one over the fire for me to try, but my friends were waiting for me. I bid the group good luck and ventured back to my fire which was slowly dwindling.
“You ready to head out?” Paul asked me.
“If you guys are,” I replied.
Malcolm got up and started kicking sand on the fire.
“Wait,” I said, “Let’s see if these people want to use our fire.”
A group carrying all of their gear was walking by us on the beach. I figured it would save them some time from finding a spot and the struggle of starting a fire. They graciously took the offer.
So we headed back to the parking lot and I continued to watch the fishermen being bombarded by waves. Even though the surf was bad and the weather was cold, people still seemed to be having fun. I heard music and laughter echo from the beach and I saw people standing around a fire keeping one another company. I wanted to do this. I wanted to immerse myself in this experience. I wanted somebody to show me the ropes. Even after we returned to the car and even after we got home, I kept wanting to know the taste of those little silvery fish.
