Smelts

 

Smelts once brought out generations of families to Point Pelee during their run, caught by the garbage pail full while sipping on my mother's tea. The Americans always came with beer that the park ranger immediately confiscated then disposed of right in front of the poor fellows, even if it was American beer it was still beer. My mother poured the poor gents tea as to ease their pain and to warm their insides, offering such varieties cherry whisky or brandy, apricot brandy, sloe gin, brandy, rye and rum in exchange for smelts. The park ranger always received the plain tea when they came snooping by, we youngsters got cherry brandy - evil (hic) mom.

All loved these tasty little morsels; floured, fried, spritzed with a squeeze of lemon juice accompanied with a squirt of ketchup to dip, children never enjoyed fish so much. The whole of Essex County smelled like a fish fry for two weeks and what a lovely smell it was,  we didn't want to see a smelt until next year. Nothing was wasted as the smelts' heads and visceral were either fed to the cats or tossed into the garden for fertilizer...again feed the cats.

September 2009 I attended a Culinary Guild meeting that had a spokesman from the area's largest fishery, smelts are the only fish not regulated. This is bad, very bad as the smelts are over fished and sold to Asian countries leaving only fingerlings for the locals.

Today as the good son, I took my mother shopping where I spied a package of frozen whole smelts, teased my mother about the smelts as minnows. She told me to buy them for dinner as it has been years since we enjoyed smelts. When we got to her house the joke was on me, they were not dressed, so I cleaned the tiny fish for an hour with a finished product that very much left to be desired. I called my brother for a smelt dinner, he was so anxious he salivated  as it was years too since he last ate smelts. 

The meal was strange but a bit fun as I informed my mother and brother that the menu was "smelt skins”, that was all that was left. We choked down the smelt skins to our dismay reminiscing about the great smelt runs of past with the spurting sound of the ketchup squeeze bottle burping out the red stuff.

My brother informed us that he buys his smelts that are a good size from the Asian Market, as the smelts were caught and processed here, shipped to Asia then shipped back here for us to enjoy.

Stupid!