Donald Trump has form with the smelt. In his 2016 presidential run, he complained that California’s authorities were prioritising the endangered fish (which are native to the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta) over farmers’ irrigation needs. ‘Is there a drought?’ he asked a private audience of farmers ahead of a rally. ‘No, we have plenty of water.’ Environmentalists, he said, were wasting water in their efforts ‘to protect a certain kind of three-inch fish’.
Last week, he levelled a similar accusation against California’s governor Gavin Newsom – or, as he calls him, ‘Newscum’ – for using the state’s water (which could have fought the LA fires) to provide the ‘essentially worthless’ smelt with a habitat.
Firefighters and farmers are unhappy, but fishermen might approve: as well as catching the smelt for food, they also use it as bait to catch larger species like bass. The smelt makes things easy for fishermen by being a poor swimmer. Its slowness means that in New England and Canada people can enjoy the pastime of ‘smelt dipping’, which involves standing with their feet either side of a narrow stream, spotting the silver fish with a head-torch and scooping them up with a bucket or net. Larger-scale operators used to head out over frozen rivers in horse-drawn sleighs. The ice would provide a ready-made counter on which the smelt could be preserved and sold to passing buyers. If you wanted to eat them there and then, you’d dip them in flour and fry them in butter over a small stove. Smelt bones are so soft that you don’t need to remove them before eating.
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