102 Tisninc ry American Waters. 
THE SMELT. 
This is a small, delicate fish, supposed by some to belong 
to the salmon tribe, though it is not nearly so much like it 
as is a shiner like a shad. It is almost translucent, and from 
five to eight inches in length; its meat is soft, white, and 
sweet, with no bones but the spine and ribs, which are so 
small and tender that they are eaten with the precious mor- 
sel of a fish when fried hard in olive oil, or rolled in flour and 
fried in butter so as to be crisp. Its scales are impercepti- 
ble, but the skin, traced in small diamond lines, is like the 
canvas skin of the trout of Long Lake. It is ash-colored on 
the back, with white sides and belly. This is a favorite bait 
for trout or salmon, and an excellent sample for a spinning 
bait. As affording sport, the smelt is no mean game. Late 
THE SMELT.—Osmerus “perlanus.—Yarrell. 
in the autumn, when ice begins to border the streams, the 
angler rigs a long perch-rod with a small multiplying reel, 
and a fine line rigged with half a dozen small trout or min- 
now hooks on short snells fastened to the main line, six inch- 
es apart, and baited with pieces of shrimp or bits of clam, 
and resorts in boat up small tidal streams, anchors and angles 
for them during the flood tide, when it is not uncommon to 
take from a fourth to half a dozen of these pearly beauties at 
a time, as fast as he can bait his hooks and cast them near 
the boat. There is nothing prettier than these gems dangling 
and shining at the end of the line, when they emit the odor 
of fresh cucumbers. On the approach of winter, anglers of 
all ages are seen on the bridges and along the saline streams 
of the coast, from Delaware Bay to the eastern boundary of 
Maine; and as an article of commerce, thousands are sold in 
