Smelt Camp
On the last high tide of the season, I rented a small shack over a perfectly-cut ice trench at Jim Worthing’s Smelt Camp in Randolph, Maine with some camping buddies. We dropped lines and waited for schools of anadromous smelts to swim by as they ran down the river looking for an exit to the ocean. Sea run smelt camps have long been a winter tradition in Maine. The species once bred in rivers and streams as far south as Chesapeake Bay, though dams and other man-made changes to river systems have taken an extreme toll on their reach. We were here, more or less, to understand how such small fish could garner a large enough reputation to keep seven smelt camps on the Kennebec and its tributaries busy all winter. At times we were glued to our lines, hawkishly watching and earnestly waiting; just as often our attention wandered to the production of properly toasted hot dog buns on the wood stove or grabbing a new brew from a bucket at the door of our hut. An excuse to sit in quiet company with a friend might be smelt camp’s most enduring tradition (but the tasty fried fish help, too).
