BECAUSE of this THREAD (and some google research, and my mother in laws father's fishing for smelt to eat), I ate the bait for breakfast THIS morning.
I was out fishing yesterday and caught lots of macks and lots of smelt. There was so much bait fish in the water that the larger fish did not seem hungry.
This morning I went into my lobster bait in the freezer and pulled out 3 smelt that were about 14 hrs old.
When I butterfly filet the bait, I noticed very white meat
WOW, super good eats, should have gone for more