Beaver Bay smelt fry and outdoor sports expo draws 750 to celebrate North Shore tradition

About 750 people packed Beaver Bay for a day built around fried smelt, live music and an outdoor sports expo, turning a longtime local tradition into a meaningful early-season test of North Shore traffic. For a small town where spring events can affect how busy nearby counters, shops and lodging feel, the crowd underscored how much the Historic Green Door Smelt Fry still matters.

The all-you-can-eat smelt ran from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, May 16, at the Baptism River Barbecue Co. food truck, with live music all day from the Green Door Municipal Bar, Lovin’ Lake County and the City of Beaver Bay. The Outdoor Sports Expo added vendors, local outdoor and adventure businesses, raffle items and a silent auction benefiting local outdoor youth sports in Lake County.

That combination has given the event a wider reach than a fish fry alone. The expo began in 2018, after Beaver Bay Days ended, as organizers looked for a way to keep a community tradition alive while raising money for kids’ outdoor activities. Over time, it moved outdoors under a 20-by-30 tent and grew into support for the Silver Bay Junior Golf Program, the Two Harbors Junior Golf Program and the Silver Bay Clay Busters Trap Team, along with reimbursements for state fees tied to youth snowmobile, ATV and gun safety certifications.

The smelt fry itself reaches back to 1958, when the Beaver Bay Fire Department used the fundraiser to help raise a down payment on a Studebaker firetruck. Firefighters and their wives coordinated the original fry, which ran annually until 1995 before ending in 1997 as smelt populations declined and volunteers became harder to find. Dan and Kaylee Cahill Mathews revived it in 2021 through Baptism River Barbeque Company, using the original Green Door recipe and the traditional method of flattening the spines so the fish butterflies out for a crispier fry.

That revival found an audience immediately. Even in difficult weather, the first returned fry drew more than 250 people, a sign that the memory of the event had not faded in Beaver Bay. Sherry Anderson of Beaver Bay helped preserve the recipe through local memory, and authenticity became part of the draw for residents who remembered the fry as more than a meal.

This year’s turnout showed that the event has settled into something larger than nostalgia. It delivered a crowd to downtown Beaver Bay, supported youth sports fundraising and gave the North Shore another signal that the tourism season was beginning to open.