The Nature Library

HomeVolumesFishes

The Smelts

THE smelts are small fishes, marine or anadromous, some of them inhabiting deep water; all but one genus confined to the waters of the Northern Hemisphere. There are about a dozen genera with some 15 species, and they may be regarded as reduced Salmonidae, smaller and in every way feebler than the trout, but similar to them in all respects except in the form of the stomach. Most of them are very delicate food-fishes.