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Nope, it really depends upon the tide in different areas. Some areas will find they're running better on an incoming while other places will do better on an outgoing. I don't think there's any real science to it. Of course water temp, moon phases have been said to be a factor. I think it's hit or miss. Some times the fish are found close to the surface and other times they're running deeper. I think people tend to go at night after work or as a recreational thing. The weekend days are equally busy as people will bring their families out on the ice for the day. It's a lot like tail-gating in a way. There are people that bring out little grills to cook on and a cooler full of beer or whatever. You can send your kids outside on recon missions to listen outside of other peoples shacks for signs of fish being caught. Although when the fish are running hard, everybody will be whooping it up! It's very lively when the smelts are running! There are little smelt shack rentals on a lot of rivers. They look like little shanty towns. It doesn't cost much for a night of fun. I don't even remember what we last paid for a night of fun. Not a lot, maybe $35? But you stay from one tide till the next, so 6 hours or so. You can buy your bait right there. There's a tally board in the office with people names, dates, how many were caught at what time of day. It's a lot of fun because it's like a big party on the ice at night.
Off to the shack to drown some blood worms! See Ya!
O.K. Tell me where you're smeltin' , Mainah. My DH used to take me on the York River. Creepy ice floes and long cold tide nights. I want to go where I can rent a shack and be nearly guaranteed a good catch for one tide. I do love them critters when they're fresh.
O.K. Tell me where you're smeltin' , Mainah. My DH used to take me on the York River. Creepy ice floes and long cold tide nights. I want to go where I can rent a shack and be nearly guaranteed a good catch for one tide. I do love them critters when they're fresh.
Maineah is fishing his own camp on the Androscoggin in Brunswick. But just Google smelting camps in your area. The ones we know are further north than where you are. It'd be a ride for you. I'll give you names if you want, you'll have to call ahead to reserve a camp. Sometimes they're booked way ahead of time. Like weeks if you're looking for a weekend.
O.K. Tell me where you're smeltin' , Mainah. My DH used to take me on the York River. Creepy ice floes and long cold tide nights. I want to go where I can rent a shack and be nearly guaranteed a good catch for one tide. I do love them critters when they're fresh.
Even if you can find a shack to rent there is no guarantee you'll get any smelts!
It can be very disappointing to pay $ 25.00 a head for a shack and bait and not catch a single smelt. Believe me that happens much more often than catching a pail full. There are several places to rent shacks from Kittery to Calais. As Island Mermaid said just Google smelt camps in Maine and you'll see a big list. If you can go during the week you're much more likely to get a shack to rent.
For every rental shack on a Maine river there are probably 50 private ones. We have built and maintained a smelt shack in one form or another since I was in Junior High School way back in 1971. There have been years when there was no ice, no smelts, no bait, bad storms, below zero MONTHS, early rains, lost shacks, fires etc. There have also been many many beautiful star filled nights, northern lights, crisp cold temperatures, frozen beers, venison on the stove, smelts cooked in the shack, 5 gallon buckets filled with smelts.
Our shack is on the Androscoggin River. It's 2"x2" timber framed with 1/4" luan plywood on it for a shell. It's small (4'X8') with a 6 1/2' foot peaked roof. It's the size of a sheet of plywood so it will fit between the wheel wells of a pickup truck and you can close the tailgate. It's pretty light and easily moved by two middle aged men. We heat it with a propane heater hooked to a 10 pound propane tank fed through a hose in the wall. Light is a Coleman propane lantern. Seating is two folding chairs. We have 8 lines with 1 1/2 ounce sinkers and a single size 8 hook. We also have small jigging rods with monofilament line we use for jigging. The place is quite comfortable for two people. On the coldest nights in Maine, well below zero, you can sit in the shack in just a sweatshirt and fish quite comfortably. It's easily as warm as my house in the shack. We haul the lights, heater, propane and the rest of the gear on and off in a sled. We don't leave anything of value in the shack as ,like anything else, there are thieves on the river too who break in the shacks periodically and steal everything that isn't nailed down.
Smelt shacks differ from lake fishing shanty's in the floor design. Smelt shacks have a race hole which runs the length of the long side of the shack and is from 10 to 15 inches wide. Some bigger shacks will have a race hole on both long sides. The racehole is generally cut with a chainsaw and maintained daily with an ice chisel to keep it open. Skip a few days and you're back to the chainsaw! Lake shanty's have a round hole or two in the floor and the hole is cut with an ice auger.
Bait for smelts depends on one's budget. Some folks use shrimp which is by far the cheapest at a dollar a pound. Some use sand worms which are a bit mushy to retain on a hook. Some use shucked clams. By far the most widely used bait is bloodworms. Bloodworms are running about fifty cents a piece these days.There is also an artificial bloodworm called Fish Bites which is a very good substitute to real bloodworms though they cost more. The best bait is cut sucker but it's hard to get in the winter. Many fishermen will catch suckers in the summer and freeze them for smelt bait. The worm,shrimp or fish is cut into small pieces with a razor blade on a bait board. Then it's just a matter of timing the bite and setting the hook! It's a lot of fun to catch a big pile of smelts. We had days last winter where we filled a 5 gallon pail in just a few hours. Even if you only catch a few it's nice to be sitting on a frozen river, warm and toasty, sipping a beverage, and catching fish!
i remember 20 years ago it was nothing to come home with a cpl of 5 gal pails full of smelts.and that was on a slow night.sit fish n drink.shanty wars n pranks if some one didnt pull a prank on you they didnt like you so they wouldnt bother.hook on to some ones shanty and move it some where else after they had gone home,or we would take some ply wood and put it over their holes and screw it down.cant do things like that nowa days people are way to sensitive.
i remember 20 years ago it was nothing to come home with a cpl of 5 gal pails full of smelts.and that was on a slow night.sit fish n drink.shanty wars n pranks if some one didnt pull a prank on you they didnt like you so they wouldnt bother.hook on to some ones shanty and move it some where else after they had gone home,or we would take some ply wood and put it over their holes and screw it down.cant do things like that nowa days people are way to sensitive.
Last winter the fishing was as good as it was 20 years ago ....maybe even better. I know we never had a year like last year in the nearly 40 years we have been fishing. A slow night last year was over 100 smelts and we averaged about 3/4 of a five gallon bucket. Many nights I stopped fishing at half a bucket because I just didn't want to deal with getting rid of them all and I never stayed more than three hours all season! The guy in the shack next to mine was a commercial fisherman and caught over 1300 pounds of them last winter. He made over $3500 selling them. He's a little older than me and he said he has never had a better season than last winter. He gave up on 5 gallon buckets and started using coolers screwed down on a wooden sled. He would fill both of those coolers almost every night and they held 80 pounds each! The run lasted almost two months!
They still pull pranks now and then but not as much as they used to. Putting a pail over someone's smoke stack would send them running out in a hurry! People will still pee on your lock to freeze it up tight, pull your hinge pins on your door,cut your guy ropes and stuff like that. It's the morons that smash down your door and steal everything that I get ticked at. We used to leave our lanterns and heater in the shack but too many times we found the door open and the stuff missing. It's just as easy to keep it in the sled locked in the back of the truck now.
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