Smelt Derby extinct after 54-year run

In spite of tremendous support by members, the Rotary Club of La Conner is retiring the annual Smelt Derby.

For the handful of smelt in the Channel, the Derby’s demise is good news. Not so for the humans who gathered each February to fish and frolic during the beloved late-winter community event.

Longtime Derby committee member and judge Patsy Good has been doling out prizes for the largest smelt, the smallest smelt and the strangest catch since 1996. For the last several years, Smelt Derby fans “have sat on the docks and not caught anything, and that’s discouraging,” she said. “Last year I ended up with six or seven trophies that I couldn’t give away.”

Six fish were caught in 2018, two in 2011. By noon in 2013, the only catch was a pinecone.

“We got to a point where we had two dozen people fishing for five fish,” said John Milnor, who has been Rotary president and Derby chair many times. “The Smelt Derby is a year older than the Super Bowl, but once we hit 50 years we were fighting each year to keep it relevant.”

Where’s the beef . . . er, smelt?

Old timers say that in days of yore you could practically rake in the smelt in the Swinomish Channel.

That was when smelt could dine on seafood processing waste discharged by the Moore Clark plant. When the plant closed in 1992, the smelt migrated to other feeding grounds.

While smelt can still be found at Coronet Bay, they are declining throughout intertidal areas in the Puget Sound. Some marine biologists see a link between their decline and the dwindling marine bird and orca populations.

The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife is surveying smelt spawning grounds as a first step in trying to build healthy forage fish populations for orcas and other predators. But it’s too late for the La Conner Smelt Derby. While hundreds of Skagit Valley residents have fond memories of the Derby, “unfortunately, it’s time to let a really traditional thing go,” said Good.

Politicians, queens and riots

The Smelt Derby has been held almost every year since 1955, when it was founded by Red Reynolds and other locals.

Families came. Politicians stopped by to have their pictures taken holding fishing poles. Good attended with her mother and sisters almost from the beginning. “Back in the day they used to shut down the street,” she remembered. “The 1890s had live music, and it was a big party that got kind of out of hand.”

In 1978, a warm Saturday attracted crowds to the Tavern, the 1890s and the Lighthouse. “The party spilled out onto First Street, overwhelming the policing abilities of the Town’s first responders,” wrote the late Weekly News columnist Jim Smith in 2010. “It wasn’t really a riot: it was simply the Smelt Derby run amok.”

The first Smelt Queen was chosen in 1994. “I don’t remember who came up with the idea, but we decided we needed something more exciting than smelt,” said Guemes Island artist Cathy Schoenberg, then a resident of Pull and Be Damned Road.

Architect John Kaguaras, in a slinky dress with a ribbon in his hair, was crowned Queen at a party at the yacht club. Other contestants were “Misplaced”, “Misdirected” and “Misadvised”. The competition was repeated in 1995. Linda Reynolds Gravley declared herself Smelt Queen in 2011.

“It wasn’t part of the Rotary but nobody minded because it was La Conner, and we’re an eclectic group,” said Good. She still owns a Smelt Queen T-shirt made by Schoenberg that says “it takes a jerk to catch a smelt.”

Support for scholarships, literacy continues

“The spirit of our club is to try to make the Smelt Derby work, but that’s life,” said Milnor. “Things change.”

What won’t change is the Rotary Club’s commitment to La Conner Schools.

Besides scholarships, the club supports the Dolly Parton Imagination Library, which supplies any child living in the La Conner School District with a book a month for five years. The club also supports schools in Guatemala, occasionally traveling to help build restrooms, desks and chairs.

“The La Conner community has been a great supporter of Rotary literacy programs by its support of the Smelt Derby,” said Milnor. “We know that this great community will continue its support by buying from our tulip stands and contributing to our annual Harvesting Hope auction.”