Smelt are in down on the Cowlitz. Most of the spots we tried were "onesey, twosey"... but when we got to Castle Rock, we hit the mother lode.

I got a limit of smelt (20 pounds) in two dips. First dip was in the 13-14 pound range and the second one was less. Weighed the bucket of smelt and with the bucket itself subtracted out, it came to 21 pounds.

Turns out you don't need a fishing license or food fish stamp for netting smelt. A game warden showed up and told me that.

Found a good smoked smelt recipe in the Luhr Jensen book. I got a new smoker for an x-mas present and it made it's maiden "run" yesterday. Group at work approves of it... the smelt I mean.