What Happened to Michigan's Smelt Capital?

Beulah — For the uninitiated, smelt dipping sounds miserable. You stand up to your knees in freezing river at night, using a net to catch tiny silver fish. The fun only starts when you head inside and listen to sound of the fish frying in oil.

Unfortunately, smelt dipping is an Up North activity in decline. What used to be a popular event across Northern Michigan is now confined to a few rivers in the Upper Peninsula, as the smelt “runs,” or migrations, dwindle in number.

But while smelt dipping is no longer the big outdoor activity it once was, the tiny town of Beulah held a smelt extravaganza from the 1920s to the 1950s that put it on the map.

The story started in 1912, when the DNR introduced rainbow smelt to Crystal Lake in Benzie County. Ironically, they never intended to create a new fishery. The smelt were only introduced to feed the nonnative Atlantic Salmon that were previously introduced into the lake.

The salmon didn’t survive, but the smelt thrived in Crystal Lake. The lake is wide, deep, and cold, perfectly replicating their original home in the North Atlantic.

The runs themselves happen because of the way smelt reproduce. Every year, when spring rolls around and the rivers warm up to a balmy 42 degrees, smelt leave their ocean home and travel up rivers to spawn (or reproduce) on gravel beds in rivers and creeks.

Once introduced to Crystal Lake, the fish did the same in a tiny stream named Cold Creek.

The creek runs through the town of Beulah, primarily a resort town, opening for tourists once summer arrives.

At first, only local fishermen dipped for smelt in the creek. But as the smelt population grew, word spread of the event, and more people started visiting Beulah to dip for smelt.

Soon, vast numbers of people were visiting to take advantage of the run. During one year in the 1930s, 20,000 people visited for a week and caught smelt the whole time.

Businesses took advantage of the frenzy, selling rooms for rent and offers to fry smelt for the fishermen. Lights were strung along the river for the fishermen, turned on each night at sunset.

The event was so popular that Michigan Gov. Fred W. Green came to turn on the lights and welcome the fishermen multiple times from 1927-1931.

The bonanza got so extreme that the DNR started to worry about the smelt population. They implemented a system where smelt dipping was allowed for one hour and prohibited for an hour so that some fish could pass.

Anglers would wait on the banks or inside the many restaurants before running back to the stream when the fishing opened again. This allowed a portion of the fish to spawn unmolested.

As the decades passed, the smelt run declined. To this day, no one knows why. Some people blame changing lake conditions. Some people blame invasive mussels. The exact reason is a mystery.

The final blow came in the 1950s, when the DNR named Cold Creek a trout stream, which made netting smelt illegal.

You can still catch smelt in Crystal Lake. Every winter, anglers bore holes through the ice and fish for smelt with lights and specially designed rigs.

But it isn’t the same as in decades past. Now, early spring is as quiet as the winter, and few remember the smelt runs as they once were.