There are bigger fish to fry, but for smelt lovers, the fun-size fish is a real catch

Ask folks to tell you what smelt tastes like, and you find out real quick it’s a tougher question than you think.

Debbie Calcagni, the self-described “lunch lady” who serves up plate after plate of it on Wednesdays this time of year at River Street Pier in Howard, turns to her co-workers for help when put on the spot. It doesn’t net a lot of descriptors.

“It’s hard to explain the taste of smelt,” she said. “They’re little, and they’re good crispy. There is a little bit of fish taste to them.”

Dawn LeClair, who owns City Limits Bar & Banquet in Manitowoc with her husband, Guy, admits that as terrible as it sounds, “It’s the one fish I don’t like.” She surveys available staff within earshot. The consensus at City Limits, where the finger food fish is on the menu year-round on Thursday and Friday nights? “It’s an acquired taste.”

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Carolyn Tielens helped clean 800 pounds of the little buggers last year for the New Franken Fire Department’s annual smelt fry, a two-day, wait-all-year indulgence for smelt lovers held in May. It’s not that she hasn’t eaten her share of them, too, but she asks her husband, New Franken Fire Chief Kevin Tielens, to come to her rescue for description details.

It turns out smelt tastes like (drum roll on your Styrofoam take-out container, please) ... 

“Smelt,” the fire chief says. 

There you have it. It's that simple.

The appeal of the fun-size fish you can pluck off your plate and eat like french fries is that they are their own little Wisconsin thing. If perch are the undisputed rock stars of the Friday night fish fry that get all the glory, smelt are the scrappy lesser-knowns you’re more likely to catch at a mom-and-pop establishment on a weeknight. The little fish in the big pond of Lent fish fries, if you will, but not without a loyal fan base.

“This time of year, we couldn’t get it in early enough, because people, they love their smelt,” Calcagni said. “Either you like them or you don’t, you know what I mean?”

Memories of netting them by the buckets

River Street Pier, 1984 Velp Ave., begins serving them after the first of the year from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Wednesdays and keeps them coming until people have had their fill. That’s generally not until May, when people start heading back to cottages up north. 

Each fish is rolled in flour, dipped in a beer batter and dropped in a fryer one at a time. They’re served with fries or potato salad, coleslaw and rye bread with or without a slice of raw onion. (Side note about that slab of onion: “We always ask people if they want onion. If they say ‘what?’ then you know they’re not local,” Calcagni said.)

But it’s probably the side dish of nostalgia that comes with smelt that makes it taste so good for so many. Smelt lovers of a certain age have fond memories of dipping for smelt with a net as a kid and coming home with oodles of them. 

Calcagni recalls hauling them by the 5-gallon pails full. Her mom would let her stay home from school the next day to clean them.

“It was an operation. You cut the head off, you slit down the middle and then you took your finger in there and you slid all the guts out,” she said. “But they were little.”

The reward was a fish fry that night and plenty in the freezer.

As a teenager, Carolyn Tielens remembers how the smelt would run around Easter time. You could go anywhere on the bay of Green Bay or Lake Michigan, wade in with a net and come home with a washtub full in no time, she said.

Others may remember Red River County Park near Dyckesville as a hot spot.

Those days are gone, and the smelt population in Lake Michigan has significantly dwindled.

Maricque’s Bar, the Green Bay fish fry institution at 1517 University Ave., used to have it on its menu in season when it was available from Lake Michigan or Canada, but that hasn’t happened in recent years, said owner Jamie Maricque. Much of the smelt at area establishments now comes from waters farther away, including the East Coast.

1,423 plates of smelt in 11 hours 

Smelt served at the New Franken Fire Department’s biggest fundraiser of the year comes out of Lake Erie and has become more difficult to get, Kevin Tielens said. They arrive pre-cleaned by machine, which means their heads are off and most of their insides are gone. A crew of fire department members, friends, family and any other willing volunteers who don’t mind a “putzy” job that comes with the lingering waft of eau de smelt put on gloves, aprons and boots at the fire station to give them an extra cleaning the night before the fry. 

“We’ll open up each single one and run our finger through and make sure all the innards are gone,” Carolyn Tielens said. Each fish also gets a double rinse in water. “I think because they’re super, super clean, that’s why they taste so good.”

From there, it’s into a refrigerated truck to the fry site at the New Franken Sportsmen’s Club, where they’re breaded, deep-fried and gobbled up in impressive quantities. Attendance at the 20-year-old event keeps increasing.

Last year, they sold 1,423 plates of smelt in 11 hours. That’s one big handful of fish — “And it’s a big handful,” Tielens stresses — for a single plate; two for a double. It’s served with fries or potato salad, coleslaw and rye bread. For those who can’t quite stomach smelt, there are third-pound burgers, but it’s really not an event for smelt sissies.

“We have people who will come for lunch on Friday, and they’ll come for supper on Friday, and then they’ll come back for lunch on Saturday,” Tielens said. 

That’s right. Three square meals of smelt in less than 27 hours.

“We’ve had people who have never tried it before and have loved it. Others haven’t been real fond of it, and that’s the way it is every time you try a new food,” she said. “But people who love smelt always come to our fish fry.”

This year’s fry is 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. May 3 and 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. May 4. The closest thing to a slow time generally comes from 1 to 3 p.m. on the first day. When it’s gone, it’s gone. If there are extra fish that never hit the fryer, the fire department sells them at cost.

Is bigger better? Smaller tastier?

When it comes to smelt — or “shmelt” as you’ll frequently hear it pronounced — size matters, but it depends on who you ask.

At LeRoy’s Bar, 701 Knapp St. in Oshkosh, where smelt is served 4 to 9 p.m. Mondays year-round, owner Pete Daehman says you want them 4 to 5 inches long “and about as big around as your index finger.” 

City Limits, 3627 County CR in Manitowoc, weighs out a half-pound for its dinners served Thursday and Friday nights. A smelt basket special for $6.50 on Thursdays brings in the regulars. The bar prides itself on having what LeClair calls “a nice size to our smelt.” Not too puny and not too big.

“The bigger they are, the fishier they taste,” Calcagni said. 

“The smaller the fish, the better they taste,” Tielens said.

The Howards Grove Rod and Gun Club touted the size of its smelt for its annual all-you-can-eat smelt fry on March 3 at Klemme’s Wagon Wheel, where they started serving at 10 a.m. for the breakfast crowd. “The BIG ones are back!” proclaimed a new release.

Big, small, for breakfast, for lunch, for dinner, in a basket, on a plate, with or without that onion ... don’t judge. Just dig in.

At River Street on a recent Wednesday, a Korean woman came in with her caretaker hoping to get her smelt fix but was concerned she wouldn’t be able to get up on the bar’s pub-height chairs. Calcagni and a co-worker helped.

“She was the happiest little lady I have ever seen,” Calcagni said. “She loves smelt. The only thing I could understand out of her mouth was, ‘See you next Wednesday.’”