Mom would bread 'em and fry 'em....then serve them, crusty and delicious, complete with the heads.
Nobody ate the heads though....not with those little eyes looking at you.
Leni
beady little eyes just saying “Please don’t eat me”...
In the fifties my father had a route for the local dairy picking up milk from the dairy farms. When the smelt would start running, he and all my uncles (five) would load up in the milk truck with empty milk cans and go smelting. They would return with thirty to fifty of those big milk cans full of smelt. By the time they where all gone I would be so tired of little fish but ready again next year. Haven’t had any now in over forty years.