With smelt numbers very low in Lake Michigan and public access now ... up in the Milwaukee area and was attracted to smelting so strongly that he bought his own dip net rig while in high school.

The typical smelt net has a long, extension handle to allow the fishers to reach out to where the schools are moving through. The net is pulled downstream to catch the fish as they swim upstream.

The vast smelt population of Lake Michigan and Lake Huron (where some 95% of U.S. fresh water smelts lived) had suddenly vanished. Two years ago fishermen took 5,000,000 Ib. of smelts there; last ...

Longfin smelt are the sixth fish species in the bay estuary to be added to the federal endangered species list. The fish were listed by the state as threatened in 2009.

Winston Luo, a middle school student at Oregon Episcopal School in Portland, points out his family on the banks of the river. “That’s my grandma and that’s my aunt. That’s my niece.