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I will just head out and try for them starting at Current river. I will post my results.

I have observed smelt die-offs on Lake Nipigon before. Both lakers and speck fishing gets pretty good around them. Biologist told me they are caused by temperature inversions. It seems a block of very cold water gets mixed up with a bait ball of smelt and knocks them out--they float to surface and are still twitching. Some even recover. Most years I see a few floating dead smelt--this year only 1. I have noticed more bait balls on the graph and caught lots of lakers full of very small smelt keyed in on them. Water temps on surface are fluctuating wildly. My favourite speck shoal was 44 degrees one day--49 degrees the next day and 39 degrees the third day. Wind was calm all three days. No specks.

From Scott & Crossman (1973): Many populations of smelt exhibit a pronounced postspawning mortality, and windrows of dead smelt may be cast up on shore, as occurs in Lake Erie in May or June.

Fished Arrow Friday, didn't see any beds.