Not really fly fishing, but a great way to get through the long, cold winter nights. My brothers and I ( Chris, Drew,and Bob) have been renting a shack on the Kennebek river in Maine in January for the last few years. Wood stove, electric lights, a bag of sand worms, and a hole in the ice----what a good time. It's the only time I eat , drink, laugh, drink, catch a bucket of delicious smelt, laugh, drink, and still call it fishing. In fact at my good friends annual game dinner, I am known as the "smelt man". My Maine smelts, fresh out of the deep frier, are always a big hit. Anyone out there got any good SMELT stories?
Smelt will take the fly very well. I was camping up at Rand Pond in New Hampshire which is loaded with smelt and big trout. It's a no-bait fishery but once you hook a smelt on a little stone nymph it's not uncommon for a big trout to go nuts chasing after it.
With all due respect to smelt, the excitement came from the latter experience. I fried some up and tried them, pretty tasty but I had a heck of a time filleting them.
The cleaning job is not so difficult if you have the Orvis micro knife and grip-rite finger sock that allows you to attach the blade directly to your index finger.
Some Canadians have been known to eliminate any of the normal nicities ususlly associated with the cooking of fish and fry these little fellows whole while fishing at nite , with a big fire and copious quantities of the Barly and the Malt
It is a blast. I live right across the street from a small city that gets put out on the ice. The local pizza and chinese restaurants even deliver.
The fly eating smelts are freshwater, the ones we take through the ice a anadromous sea-run rainbow smelt. a large one is about 10".
I don't have much room here, but I can offer breakfast and a shower at my apartment after an all-nighter on the river. (sold my house when Ian got sick)
Chris
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