Smelt and Grunions are essentially the same.
I go through hundreds of them during grunion run season.
Easiest way to prepare is to scale, salt, dust in flour, and deep fry. Then just eat around the bones and gut.
No need to gut them or fillet them. Easy to prepare when you have a bucket of hundreds at a time.
People have been eating them this way forever. Not so popular now, but in the 70s and 80s it was a very popular thing to do. Goes great with beer.
