Finally got out locally

Nice to see you finally back on ice again!

In the past I spent some time looking into catch smelt through the ice. Many many many many years ago it was a regular, smelts would come in thick schools under us while fishing on wf and LT grounds on Simcoe.

If you want to trade Warner... a couple of wf for a bag of smelts... let me know.

yep, I used to do okay for smelt on Simcoe when overnighting in huts as well.

trade is good, but I am not a big fan of whitefish anymore and it may take me a while to get a couple of bagfulls of smelt

but we can do other trades

gonna give it a shot tomorrow I hope

Good to hear you got out and got yourself a little eats

How big were they?...6in?...just curious because every lake smelt I've ever seen looked like the shiners i use for bait...lol...im from Newfoundland and we ice fish for smelt but they get up to 12in. And not hard to catch by the bag full and i miss catching them...but we do fish caplin like most of you would smelt here with dip nets and buckets at night, if that even happens anymore...just what I've been told

I would say 6-9 inches is the norm...you can see bigger ones and smaller and it is mostly sight fishing but not always.

we went back and got more and will most likely do it again next week

I had caught lake smelt over 12” several times.
The big ones are not as good eating as the 6-9”.

agree 100 %

as I mentioned, we see the odd really big one, but the sheer number of smaller ones are vast.

also blows me away how many eggs there are in tese small fish. no wonder they can be so prolific

Way to go Shank👍

Thats great i hope i find some one day...lol

Thanks for sharing Warner