Smelt joining fish in peril

Threatened listing expected in May

By Sharon Nesbit

The Gresham Outlook, Mar 19, 2010 (1 Reader comment)

Commercial smelt fishermen on the Sandy River at Troutdale around 1910-1915. The man at the left is John Nasmyth, the man on the right is unknown.

Troutdale Historical Society / Gresham Outlook

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No need to tell Troutdale that smelt are in short supply.

The Pacific smelt, which once swarmed into the Columbia River system by the millions, will be added to the nation’s list of threatened species on May 17.

The announcement on March 16 came, ironically, at a time when people once expected a smelt run to appear in the Sandy River at Troutdale.

The decision by the National Marine Fisheries Service to protect dwindling smelt populations confirms what river watchers have known for some time, that the vast runs of spawning fish in the Sandy are no more, and neither are the crowds that came to dip them up. A 1940 run drew 7,000 people to the Sandy River in a single day.

The last Sandy River smelt runs were in 2003 and 2001, when the fish returned after a 12-year absence. Those runs brought a few smelt dippers to the river, but the rich and fatty fish, favored by explorers Lewis and Clark and the Cowlitz Indians, have been absent so long that most people no longer know what to do with them.

Len Otto, longtime river resident and son of a family that was once the center of Troutdale’s smelt fishing, welcomes the listing.

“I’m not surprised. It is probably overdue,” he said. “Anything we can do to help those fish come back, I’m for.”

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