26 replies to this topic

[Retroboy]

Interesting read. Can help but wince a little at the reference to beer cans all over the ice, but heck, they ARE reporters looking for a human interest angle.

 

Why this little fish is on some of the biggest menus around

 

Did they get anything wrong? I've never eaten them backbone and all, and eating them with hot dipping sauce (the recipe at the bottom of the article) just seems wrong given how delicate their flavour is.

[pond jumper]

 I eat pretty well everything, except for the biggest ones, ill leave the back bone and head , but the little guys I eat the bones, guts, head everything my dad's side of the family is from Nfld and I grew up eating capelin which are pretty well just a small version of a smelt, and those its customary to eat everything including the head..especially the dried salted ones.roasted over a fire...mmmmm mm just like potato chips can't stop eatin em...turn some heads at a bonefire when you roast those suckers and eat the head and all hahaha...hotsauce tho? Im like you I think that would just overpower the great delicate, sweetness of the smelt...I would think sweet thai or plum sauce would be better but that's just me

[Stroover]

I put the big ones back. Generally, the big ones are female and the small ones are male. I take a pair of scissors and snip off the head, then cut the belly open and remove the guts. Then, I batter them and deep fry them and eat them like french fries, tail, back bone, and all.

[A2F]

I don't eat them often but last winter we deep fried them in the shack . Cleaned and dipped in pancake batter , delishous

[casey hayward]

Just had a dozen for supper that were caught today in Shediac. 20 were caught just on pieces of red yarn!! Amazing to watch them bite the yarn, only 2 hit the hooks with gulp bait on.

[ipop]

I clean like stroover does, then dust in flour/pancake mix - none inside-and fry or deep fry. I take the spine out to eat then.

 

mmmmm tastey. good with any sauce on the side, from sweet&sour to ketchup to plum sauce to a nice white sauce. I like them with potatoes and peas!

[Retroboy]

Casey, think I'll try the yarn trick. Do you just thread the hook through the end of a one-inch piece or something so there's a little bit of wavy action?

[bakeapples]

I seen it tied on in the bend/bottom, double half hitch with 1/2" hanging on each side of the knot

[casey hayward]

I tie one piece about 4" long just above the bell sinker and another piece about 6" farther up. I will post a pic in the gallery and u can see the setup. There are also 2 small hooks baited with green gulp.

[Stroover]

Casey, are you saying that the yarn is just yarn attached to the fishing line with no hook on them???

[casey hayward]

Yes, that's right. Of 22 smelts caught, 20 bit only on the yarn. I actually have a line with only 4 pieces of yarn but I only caught a couple on it, I think it was overkill. 2 pieces of yarn like in the pic seems to work the best!!

[Retroboy]

I can see how that would work a treat. One look at a smelt's mouth would give away the secret. They have very long and needle-sharp teeth. One bite on a piece of yarn and they'd be hopelessly snarled and couldn't escape at all as long as you reeled 'em in quickly to keep pressure on their mouth. 

 

Now all I need to do is come up with an excuse as to why one of my wife's wool scarves has a chunk out of its tassels... "I dunno, honey. Maybe the brats were playing with scissors again?"

[Stroover]

I can't see your picture of the yarn anywhere in there, Casey. Is it just my computer, or when you click on "gallery"  is there just the title "gallery" in the upper left hand corner with nothing but a big white empty space, and a bunch of guys' avatars all the way to the right going down?

[bakeapples]

I can't see your picture of the yarn anywhere in there, Casey. Is it just my computer, or when you click on "gallery"  is there just the title "gallery" in the upper left hand corner with nothing but a big white empty space, and a bunch of guys' avatars all the way to the right going down?

 

http://newbrunswickf...ool-of-minnows/

[casey hayward]

Bakeapples thanks for putting up the link!!

[lobsterman]

I have used the yarn trick for many years. Oddly, sometimes it works super-duper, and sometimes they will come to the yarn but not bite it.

I use it all the time, and I always will. Even spearing them, I will use a piece of red yarn to get them to come to the hole, and then I get stabby.  That really works well. It's an old trick from back in the days of the pioneers.

[emptynetmaster]

The real injustice here is that I fish that same shack for days and get nothing and Casey goes out to it for a couple of hours and gets a feed with yarn! LOL guess I am going to throw away my hooks and only go fishing with Casey.

[bucbug]

More news from Renforth on the CBC.

 

http://www.cbc.ca/ne...tions-1.2530194

[Stroover]

Is the fishing at Renforth SERIOUSLY the best it's been in years? ( according to Gary Gower). I find that hard to beleive as we're catching next to nothing at Cameron Rd, just 5.7 Km upriver. This is only the 4th year we ice fish at Cameron, so I don't have much to base it on, however the first three years everybody in the shack would get their limit of 60 in one to two hours on any given day or night. This year? Nada!

[Retroboy]

From a size perspective only, from what the article says. "Fisherman Dwight Conwell says there are fewer fish being caught this year, but the fish are larger. In previous years they're quite small, four to six inches and we caught lots of them," said Conwell. "You know, it's nothing to pull 150 out in a day. This year, we're lucky if we get 25, but they're larger size so we're doing well."

 

I'd much rather have 150 small smelt than 25 jumbos. 

 

Someone else mentioned the dogfish being caught, but if that's a reference to Homebrew's catch, it wasn't at Renforth and it wasn't out of a shack.