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Updated: March 21, 2026 @ 10:35 am
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My good friend and fishing partner Corky, Jon McCorkle always says, “The size of the fish you decide to keep depends on how hungry you are for fish!” So when I found about six anglers jig fishing for smelt through the ice on a new lake I was exploring, I assumed they must be terribly hungry. These guys were serious and successful. Three were out in the open and three were in portable ice shacks with all the windows and doors closed to create a dark shack. Two shacks had blue lights and another was set up with green lights, bright and colorful, glowing inside the shack. Dark shacks allow you to look down the hole and visually spot fish like you’re looking into an aquarium. How far down you see depends on the clarity of the water.
Smelt, a silvery minnow fish are generally netted in the spring when they make their annual spawning runs. Lake Superior is a popular destination for smelting. Many organizations from fire departments to church groups put on smelt fry’s to raise money. A group of anglers with long seines and dip nets can easily fill up a few garbage cans with smelt in a night if they time the run right. The dark shack anglers were using the colored lights to attract plankton which will then attract hungry smelt. Smelt, this small silvery fish in the family Osmeridea are related to trout and salmon. That makes sense because trout and salmon are often living in the same waters with smelt, a main food source.
That’s where Corky comes back into the picture. Jon’s actually fished for smelt and caught them on hook and line. “A friend and I were ice fishing Grindstone Lake in Minnesota when we got these weird marks on our fish finders. Our ice fishing sonar beam’s were reflecting right back at us showing we were in two feet of water yet we knew we were much deeper. That’s when I dropped a bait into the marks. After several missed bites, “swings and misses,” I finally caught a smelt. We were getting sonar flashes off the giant schools of smelt.” That’s why Corky is also known as the “Fish Whisperer.” He can speak to smelt as well as brook trout and crappie.
I was on Lake Sunapee in New Hampshire, more on that later. I had made friends with Korey, owner of Berk’s Bait as a great local connection for fishing info. Another friend and fishing partner, Minnesotan, Eric Duffy was surprised anyone would fish for smelt when there are big trout and salmon in the same lake. Korey made that an easy answer. “Those four inch smelt sell for $15.00/dozen. We got over 320 last night. That adds up to $399.99. Obviously New Hampshire has different bait laws than Wisconsin. To be continued…
Jim Bennett is an outdoorsman who lived and worked in the St. Croix River Valley and can be reached at jamesbennett24@gmail.com for comments or questions.
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