THE SMELTS 
251 
even my enthusiasm in the sport could well overbalance. But there were scores of fisher- 
men on the ice when I left, for the smelt seems to bite better the colder it is, and after this month 
the fishing gets poorer, and the fish move gradually to other quarters. 
“Smelt fishing through the ice,” continued the speaker, “does not differ much from the same 
mode of angling for pickerel, but the element of uncertainty is unknown in the former sport. You 
may fish all day sometimes for pickerel, then be obliged to buy enough to save yourself from going 
home ‘skunked,’ but when you cut your holes in the ice and put in your line for smelt, you are 
just as certain of being kept busy pulling out fish as you bait your hook. A smelt isn’t as big as 
a pickeral, but he’s a game fighter, and there is an excitement about ‘tending’ the lines that pick- 
erel fishing does not create. The people up in Maine look upon smelt fishing as the sport of the 
year, and they come from miles about the country to enjoy it. Even the Indians from the far 
back country tramp in to the coast during the season to excerise their skill in luring smelt. The 
tackle for smelt fishing is very simple. The line is an ordinary stout linen cord, about four feet 
long. To one end of this is attached a piece of lead about three inches long and the size and shape 
of a three cornered file. This is called a file-sinker. To a swivel in the other end of the sinker 
is tied a pink-colored snell, made of common fish line, to which is attached a hook such as is used 
in fishing for catfish. The snell is two feet long. The water acting on the triangular sinker hung 
on swivels, keeps it constantly twirling about, and the bait, which is an ugly looking insect called 
the clay worm, always in motion. Each fisherman will have out an average of four lines, in as 
many different holes, if he seeks the enjoyment of the sport under the protection and shelter of a 
tent, or ‘house,’ as the natives call them. If he, like many of the local anglers, is braving the 
elements with the sole intention of extracting profit from the catch, and dances and trots about on 
the ice regardless of extraneous aids to combat the wind and storm, he is likely to have or a dozen 
lines to care for, spread over an area a hundred feet around; and if the fish are biting good he will 
have but little time to think of the cold, as he will be kept busy hauling up his lines and keeping 
the holes open. 
“It has only been within a few years that such a thing as smelt fishing under shelter was known. 
The fishermen had either to stand out unprotected against the gales and storms that seem to be 
kept ‘on tap’ along the coast for use at any moment, or pull their lines and go home. To be sure, 
they would pile up walls of ice and patch them with pine boughs, but as it frequently is necessary 
for the fisherman to change his location and the ice barricade could not well be taken along, the 
building of them was generally time and labor thrown away. By the way, that is a peculiarity of 
smelt fishing. The fish may be biting so that you will be kept constantly hopping from one hole 
to another to stand your catch. Suddenly your ‘tipups’ will cease to tip. The smelt have taken 
it into their heads that the locality is not safe for them and have moved. Well, in a case of this 
kind, as I said, the angler would find his ice and pine boughs useless, and he would have to desert 
them to hunt up the spot where the fish had changed their base. But one season a man named 
Job Secor went up from Boston to try smelt-fishing. He tried it for a day and froze one foot and 
both ears, and then went away. But he didn’t go home. He went to Belfast, and had a heavy 
wooden frame ten feet square made by a carpenter. He procured some sail canvas and covered 
the frame with it, leaving an opening for a door. The frame was on runners. When the house 
was finished he had it drawn upon the ice and placed over the holes he intended to fish through. 
Then it occurred to him that he might add still further to his comfort, and he bought a small box 
stove, ran a pipe from out of one side of the house, started a roaring pine wood fire in it, and, seated 
on a bench, fished as comfortably as if he were in his room at the hotel watching a stove pipe hole 
in the floor. The house was secured to the ice by grappling irons. If smelt ceased biting in one 
spot, he simply loosened his grapples, shoved his house along on the runners, and ‘squatted’ in 
more favorable quarters. No one who fishes for smelt simply for the sport there is in it has gone 
on the ice since then without one of the houses. Many who make a business of smelt fishing have 
adopted the plan, and now, in the height of the season a stranger going, for the first time to any 
of the rivers or inlets along the coast, would imagine that a small army was in camp there. 
“On a good day for smelts the average catch per line will be at least 100, or say, 30 pounds. 
The fish net the business angler about five cents a pound, and have a ready sale in the local mar- 
kets. On Wednesday of last week I was having a busy time in my house. I had only two holes 
in use, for the fish were biting so lively that I couldn’t take care of any more. It was snowing 
