266 
BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES 
Twenty years later the commissioners of fisheries of Massachusetts, in their 
report for 1869, said that it had been both maintained and denied that smelts would 
not take the hook after they had been three or four weeks in tidal or fresh water. 
The commissioners suggested that the truth was very likely that “as the spawning 
season approaches, the gravid fish cease to feed (as among other Salmonidse) , but as 
there may be several successive runs, which spawn at different times, there are always 
fish that will bite, up to a certain season.” However, nearly 50 years ago smelt 
angling had locally become a recognized sport, according to Genio C. Scott (1875). 
He wrote as follows: 
As affording sport, the smelt is no mean game. Late in 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 minnow hooks on short snells fastened to the main line, six inches 
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 str cms of the coast, from Delaware Bay to the east- 
ern boundary of Maine; and as an article of com tierce, thousands are sold in New York markets, 
the average retail price being twenty cents a pound. The smelt is eminently the winter sport for 
the angler, succeeding the white perch in small tidal creeks. This fish will also take the fly when 
sunk to their feeding level near the bottom. 
As has been seen, as early as 1868 or 1869, taking smelts by any other method 
than by hook and line was prohibited by law in Massachusetts, excepting in a few 
specified instances. Thus, either one or both of two conditions were recognized — 
growing scarcity of smelts or the paramount importance of the hook and line fishery, 
which, as has been stated, was largely that of sport-fishing, although some fished in 
that way for the market. 
The report of the commissioners of fisheries of Massachusetts for 1875 said that 
smelts had been very plentiful that fall, as high as 80 dozen having been taken with 
a single rod in one day. 
“As evidence of the popularity and attraction of smelt fishing to our eastern 
friends,” said Forest and Stream in 1874, “it is on record that ninety-five smelters 
were counted on the wharf at Marblehead, Mass., at one time on Friday of last week, 
successfully engaged in this exciting sport.” 
No further reference was made to smelts in the Massachusetts commissioners’ 
reports until that for 1880. However, in some of the intervening years notes on 
smelt fishing or angling appeared in Forest and Stream. In that journal, in an article 
entitled “Game fishes of Connecticut,” the author says: 
This little fish is certainly worthy of the angler’s notice. It is very abundant in the eastern 
third of the coast and is taken around wharves and mouths of tide-water creeks. 
The Massachusetts report for 1917 indicated that smelt angling about Boston 
was still of considerable attraction and importance. The following is extracted from 
the report: 
This year, to ascertain the magnitude of the smelt fishery and just what value it has as an 
asset of the Commonwealth, an investigation was conducted which resulted in some surprising 
revelations. On one Sunday iporning along the coast at and adjacent to Hough’s Neck no less 
