Total Pageviews

Tuesday, May 6, 2014

SMELTIN'







The smelt are running in Thessalon so we headed out to town last nite to catch us some smelt.  We had Ute scouting the best time to come as she lives right across from the river and she could keep an eye on the activity.  We got the word on Sunday that they were "Runnnnning" so off we went.  Ute's house would be headquarters for snacks and bathroom breaks and pizza that Mary made.  Not a bad setup.  It was slow going once they started to run - at about 11pm.  Rejean was scooping and I was shining the flash lite at the net to see if he had caught any.  Mary had a "splash and scoop" technique going on and actually she was quite successful if you count one or two per scoop successful.  Her goal last nite was to get 5 in one scoop - I think she got 4.  John and Linda headed down river to the beach area and when they finally came back, he had 1/2 a pail full - far more than we had.  And since he was not going to be home today to clean them, he shared.  After that we called it a nite at about 12:30.  And they say that most people don't get there until about 1 or 2am - that's when the real run is.
We had enough for a feed so we called it a night.
Took about 2 1/2 hours to clean ours - Rejean beheading them and cutting them up the bottom and me cleaning them - we had quite a production line.
Thank goodness the smelt only run once a year.  Lots of work for these little guys.  But look at the size of the one in the second picture in comparison to the regular size ones.  We could almost fillet it.

No comments: