Meriwether Lewis enjoyed his hooligan. The explorer, naturalist and personal secretary to Thomas Jefferson at the White House penned some journals while leading a Jefferson-sponsored expedition west across North America, as you’ll recall. In February 1806, Lewis received a gift he reported as a “species of small fish that now begin to run” on the Columbia River. Lewis took a taste and pronounced the little smelt—called “hooligan” in Alaska—the best fish ever. It was better even than his former favorite, the whitefish he’d caught in lakes further east. “They are so fat they require no additional sauce,” Lewis raved.

If Lewis returned to the Oregon coast today, he’d find that smelt—or “Eulachon” as it’s officially named—has just landed on the list of endangered species last month.

The National Marine Fisheries Service (an arm of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) added the pacific smelt—called “a little fish with a big history” in one NOAA press release—to the endangered species list in response to the most recent of two petitions asking for a listing. The protected sub-species is any hooligan swimming from Northern California to the southern waters of British Columbia where NOAA’s management authority stops at the Canadian Border. The Cowlitz Indian Tribe in Washington State was the petitioner. In the Pacific Northwest hooligan need protection, NOAA says, because they provide an important food source for birds, salmon, and people.

The story in Alaska is quite different.

Southcentral Alaska hooligan runs are expected to be as healthy—and as sporadic—as ever this year. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game will once again allow no-limit dip netting on Anchorage-area streams. The fishing opens April 1, the day this newspaper hits the streets (so get your net and round up some clean buckets).

Dan Bosch, a local Fish and Game sport fishery biologist, says there has never been a shortage of hooligan—or a bag limit—on Cook Inlet, even though the runs can pop up unexpectedly or be really light on any given stream from year to year.

“I don’t think that they hold the same fidelity to local streams as salmon do,” Bosch says of the little fish. He added that several years ago the Russian River near Seward had a run so large the hooligan—the biggest can measure ten inches—were trying to jump-climb a waterfall on one river tributary. “They go from a run where hardly anybody notices to a run where suddenly there are hooligan everywhere,” Bosch says.

Therein lies the problem with fishing for hooligan. Flashlight has a few rules of thumb to overcome it: 1) have a fishing license and legal dip net in the vehicle until mid-June; 2) if you plan to fish the Seward Highway, know someone who commutes from Girdwood and get their cell phone number; 3) lastly, look for birds over the streams.

“You can also look for the dipnetters,” Bosch says, but “a wise dipnetter will look for the seagulls and eagles. If there’s no birds there, don’t waste your time, because all you will be doing is sieving water.”

As a footnote: The hooligan Meriwether Lewis received was one of several gifts from a welcome party led by a man Lewis called “Comowool” who was a Clatsop Chief. The Clatsop are now part of the Chinook Indian Nation. The chief was following a long traditional of Native Americans bailing out a bunch of white people who arrived with no knowledge of local trails, often without proper clothing or even knowing which fish and game to eat. To be fair to Lewis, he was relatively progressive for his time, having grown up in the homeland of the Cherokee Nation, a part of the country now called Georgia.

scott@anchoragepress.com