TROUTDALE, Ore. - Something slimy and scaly took over the Sandy River Sunday. Millions of them, actually. An enormous school of smelt is passing through the area for the first time in a decade.

Smelt are small, six- to 10-inch-long, salmon-like fish that migrate annually up the rivers of Northwest Alaska to spawn, including the Buckland River. Smelt usually start their journey about a ...

They caught smelt in their nets all up and down the Pacific coast. Jack Napiontek wrote that the December photo brought back memories of times he went smelt dipping with his grandfather. He attended ...

As of Friday, with less than 24 hours before the next opening, nary a smelt had been spotted east of Portland. Last month, a school of smelt 12 miles long and countless millions in number, made ...

The first signs of smelt arrived in the Lower Columbia River a couple weeks ago, but fisheries managers are bracing for another poor return this season. “The prognosis for smelt is not good this ...

By the time he was a junior in high school, Johansen had started fishing for rainbow smelt. His family couldn’t afford a car for him, so he would pack his gear, buy a bottle of milk and a couple ...

The river’s smelt runs have been a yo-yo on a string since the 1800s, she writes in an article published in the December issue of the Cowlitz Historical Quarterly.

Martin examines the recent history of smelt, too. They were listed under the federal Endangered Species Act in 2010 — but in 2013 and 2014, big runs entered the Columbia and its tributaries again.?

WOODINVILLE -- We learned in high school that all life forms are carbon-based, and on a recent weekend we managed to reduce about 40 fat smelt to their molecular base.