Beaver bothering

Tis a balmy night: the first one of spring. The stars shine brightly and peepers peep but the fog hangs thick, like a woollen shroud, over road and water. And I stand silent, rubber suited, nerves jangling, arms braced, net poised.

Voices: mutterings in the blackness. Two shady figures slowly materialise, walking around the edge of the weak pool of illumination that my headlamp casts; their faces shadows under baseball caps. When they speak the conversation is clipped: polite in a gruff kind of way but evasive at the same time. I take note and respond accordingly.

“Anything moving?”

“Nope,” I reply.

“Been here long?”

“Nope,” I reply.

“Been anywhere else?”

“Nope,” I reply.

“Hmm, looks like we’re too early, eh. Or, too late.” And with that they disappear again into the inky blackness.

My fishing partner smiles. “You meet all kinds and some are talkers but no one wants to give too much away,” he says. “If the smelt are running, they want to be first to the action.”

Yes, smelt fishing it is. Another first for this English city boy escaped to Canada.

I readily agree to try almost anything new. And, if that thing has the word ‘fishing’ in it then you know I’ll be there. I’ve waded tidal rivers at dusk, casting for sewin. I’ve stalked carp in mist enveloped lakes before dawn. But these nocturnal wanderings up creek and down culvert are a new and altogether more clandestine experience.

KABLOOSH!

My heart jumps into my mouth. My foot slips off the culvert that I’m perched upon and I almost, almost drop the long pole to which the dip net is fixed.

“Don’t drop the net,” chastises my partner through a fit of giggles. “You’re annoying the beavers.”

I regain both my composure and my position on the culvert and lift the net again. A silver flapping meets my gaze. This is the magical jewel-like fish that we have come to harvest.

Glinting in my headlamp. Smelt.

Now I could leave the description at that. Smelt. But that would be cheating you, the reader. Smelt, you see, is one of those dual purpose words like sheep, moose or wildebeest. It can mean a solitary beast or a vast herd.

There are no smelt herds roaming the watery plains tonight, I’m afraid. My smelt is a smelt. A forlorn little specimen no longer than my middle finger (and I don’t have very big hands, either).

What this single fish does, however, is spur us on.

“It’s a scout, an eager male rushing to spawn,” enthuses my smelting partner. “The run is on, we just have to wait and there’ll be more.”

There were. Eight more, to be precise.

As we wait for the sadly absent myriad silvery smelt, the darkness becomes less oppressive. The night world opens up to us. A fox trots by unconcerned by our presence. The first bull frog of the season practices a rasping croak. Glow worms glow, so warm is it as we sit and wait.

But the smelt, they remain an enigma.     

And so, as I sit, eyelids drooping, I wonder about smelt. Do they really still run in such numbers that folks can fill pails, pans and baskets in minutes? Is their run triggered by water temperature, the cycles of the moon, or a synchronised inbuilt urge to spawn? Do they really have to wait until bloody midnight!

The questions are left unanswered. All I know for sure is that those smelt (all nine of them, thanks to my generous smelting partner) will taste divine seasoned and fried, with a thick slice of homemade bread.

Good enough for me to go disturbing beavers again, next year.