Spring bounty: Smelters had little luck at the Lester River, but hit the jackpot at Park Point
April 24, 2012 at 7:00 pm in Duluth News Tribune
Toy Carson was resplendent in camouflage waders, a leopard-print scarf and a furry bomber hat, ear flaps down. Duluth’s Carson and her crew of smelters working the Park Point beach Monday night were squealing and shrieking as they waded ashore with another net full of writhing silver fish.
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I grew up back in the 1950s two blocks from the mouth of Lester River. Every spring we looked forward to the smell run, sadly it seems every year a fisher person would get swept into the lake, waders filled with water and they wound drown. But year after year we would go back and bring home more fish, after three or four meals of smelt, we would tire/lose our taste for them and wait until next year and do it over again! Those were the best times!!!!
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I remember reading a story about the old pro wrestler, “Crusher” being at a smelt run, way back when, but don’t remember much of the details. Anyone?
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I hope the abundant smelt doesn’t mean something’s going wrong with the lake trout and other preditors.
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I remember smelting on the Lester in the 50′s and 60′s. We’d bring big milk cans and fill them in no time. You’d walk into the water in barn boots and even your boots would fill with smelt.
We had a big family so we managed to eat pretty much of what we caught but, there’d always been at least some left in the freezer the next spring and they’d end up as fertilizer in the garden.
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