Transcripts

BOB EKSTROM: As you can see, they've got some teeth there, and they're a pretty effective predator.

LEIF ENGER: The fish being described by the DNR's Bob Ekstrom was caught just a few hours ago on the southeastern corner of Lake of the Woods. About 7 inches long, sleek, opalescent, it's a striking little corpse that resembles a baby barracuda.

BOB EKSTROM: They're just a pretty basic, straightforward, feeding machine.

LEIF ENGER: If you've never thought of a smelt as an unwelcome predator before, it may be time to start. Smelt are piscivorous. They eat fish. Very small fish, such as the fry of lake trout, walleye, and others that anglers would rather keep for themselves. On Burntside Lake, near Ely, smelt have become so entrenched, that DNR officials say they've seriously hurt lake trout and whitefish populations, and only a vigorous stocking program has kept walleye counts high. Here on Lake of the Woods resort owner Gary Dietzler says, he suspects a fairly large smelt population already exists. This past winter, several adult smelt were caught through the ice by customers at his resort.

GARY DIETZLER: The first time they showed us one, we thought they were pulling our leg. We thought they had some with them, used them for bait or something. But the next to come out, they were flopping. And you just almost got to think that if they caught three by hook and line, there's got to be quite a few down there.

LEIF ENGER: Though a lot of Minnesotans think of smelt as a North Shore original, recalling the wild runs of the 1970s, they're really an exotic species, an Atlantic Ocean fish that can live equally well in Freshwater. Researcher Howard McCormick at the Environmental Protection Agency in Duluth, says smelt were introduced early in this century to a small lake near Lake Michigan. Once they reached the big water, it was a matter of time.

HOWARD MCCORMICK: You can just follow the water route up through the Mackinac straits, and then up through the Saint Mary's River into Lake Superior.

LEIF ENGER: Smelt arrived at the Twin Ports by the 1940s, and more recently have begun appearing in lakes further inland, Burntside, Rainy Lake, and now just downstream, Lake of the Woods. It's suspected the spread has been helped along by anglers who caught smelt during the spring spawning run, and used them as bait in other lakes. However it happened, the DNR here has begun gill netting smelt, trying to get a handle on how many there are, and where they breed, and what they eat.

Just North of the long sandy beach of Barrier Island, Ekstrom, and co-worker Dennis Topp, worked the 200 foot length of a smelt net. The catch is a few dozen shiny bodied fish, mostly tullibees and perch, and one tired hammer handle pike that likely went after a tullibee and got its teeth snagged in the net.

DENNIS TOPP: They spent the rest of the night there waiting for us. Probably a moral in there somewhere.

LEIF ENGER: Not a sign of smelt in this net, which Ekstrom calls good news. Despite local anxieties, he points out that Lake of the Woods is not perfect smelt habitat. Much of it is shallow, while smelt need cold deep water to survive. There are thousands of predatory birds, pelicans, and cormorants, that eat tons of small fish every year. Perhaps most importantly, Ekstrom says, the lake's existing pecking order of fish may be its own best smelt control program.

BOB EKSTROM: It's called walleye, and sauger, and Northern pike. They'll eat them. And hopefully there'll be enough predators in this lake that they'll be able to keep the population from exploding.

LEIF ENGER: Bob Ekstrom of the DNR Fisheries office on Lake of the Woods. Leif Enger, Main Street Radio.