March 26, 2023

Smelt are a kind of small, greasy fish, which people catch by dipping nets in the water as huge schools of them travel down the river by the thousands. People literally scoop up their limit of ten pounds in minutes and get out of the way for the next person to dip a net in. I have not tried it, as crowds are not my thing, and I don’t know what I’d do with ten pounds of fish!

But, as much as people love catching smelt, animals love it even more, because it’s a moving feast swimming slowly upstream. I heard from other fishermen that the smelt run was about to enter the Lewis River, near Woodland, WA, where it empties into the Columbia, and so we headed up there on a cold, rainy day in late March to see what we could see.

To my surprise, we saw: Pelicans!

Just like the humans enjoy scooping up the smelt, these guys do too, and they were built for it!

We also saw Bald Eagles!

When I was a kid in the 70s they told us the eagles were all going to go extinct from DDT poisoning. So even though the eagles have recovered and are not too hard to find, I still get really excited to see them.

And the biggest surprise – sea lions!

Look at those fat boys, feasting on the smelt!

So that was a pretty successful visit. I didn’t realize such a variety of critters would be hanging out waiting for the fish! I can’t wait to make this an annual trip!