“Well... I was wonderin if since them smelts are nuthin but minnows and as such are nuthin but bait!”
You touched on part of the problem if one is a Smelt in the Delta.
Smelt are a favorite appetizer or main course for Striped Bass, Large Mouth Bass and Steelhead that cruise up and the Delta for food, fun and sometimes to spawn.
One of our younger relatives has become a Striped Bass expert on the Delta. He fly fishes at least 50 times a year and averages anywhere from 12-30 caught and release Stripers each trip with flies that look like Smelt.
He watches for signs that the Stripers have herded up a large number of smelt schools into an area the smelt can’t get out. When he sees the nervous water, he will roar up wih his 100 hp motor kill it about 100 yards from the frenzy and use his electric motor to get within 80’ of the smelt slaughter. He casts his flies right on the edges of the frenzies.
The schools of Stripers rip into their appetizer or main course in frantic food fight/eating frenzies. The smelt are eaten or slaughtered in minutes. A few escape, a few float on top of the water dead or dying, the rest are in the Stripers’s bellies. The Striper’s leave and look for another school of smelt.
I don’t know if it is the same smelt that comes to the surface in local lakes in late September/early October. In the lakes huge trout and large mouth bass are the predators eaters. If you get near one of these frenzies, the action can be fast and furious.
A few years ago a wannabe Fly Fisher was with me in a local lake. I kept cruising around outside the coves looking for a feeding frenzy on the smelt. I spotted a feeding frenzy and brought my boat in and killed the gas motor and used the electric motor sparingly. In about 12 minutes I had caught 6 huge trout and the same number of large mouth bass and released all but one for dinner.
I realized that my fishing wannabe was just sitting in the boat and not casting. He couldn’t believe the carnage re dead and crippled smelt. That was his last fishing trip.