Smelt Fishing

[Jeremy]

You can only dip for smelt on saturdays but can you fish for them any day of the week? I was thinking about tying up some little (size 20 or 25) flies and was wondering what those little guys eat if anything so i could make a good pattern? Figured i could rig up my old mickey mouse pole with some new 1/2 lb test and go knock em dead, anybody have any good ideas that might work?

[Clamman]

Smelt eat plankton, so it would have to be an extremely small fly. They also don't feed while they are on their migration run. Might be hard to induce a strike. Also check current hook size regulation on the Cowlitz, your method might be inovative, but potentially not legal.


ISG

[Biteme]

I would recommend that you check the regs closely with regard to saltwater and freshwater methods of take on smelt. this is something that I was thinking of trying with a herring jig instead of a dipnet and at first reading of the synopsis seemed to be legal but when I read further it is illegal to take smelt in freshwater with anything but a dip net. Might call odfw for confirm of this though

Dennis

[Grits]

I can't tell you about the legal stuff but as a kid we would catch them with egg size gold hooks with a small piece of red ribbon. Usually we would put about six hooks on a line and it wasn't uncommon to hook two or three at a time.

[Jellyhead]

Hey Jeremy,

Go down to Wal-Mart in St. Helens and look by the walleye gear, down at the bottom of the rack there are smelt/herring jigs. Looks like 8-10 gold hooks, prob. size 16, with a little dab of flourescent paint on them.

I don't know if they'd work, but who knows?

Good Luck ,

Aaron