Run, Smelt, Run! Parade photo via Magic Smelt Puppet Troupe Facebook page.

Dressing up as a silver fish in late spring could become weird again. After eleven years of marches normalizing smelt fashion on the Lake Superior boardwalk, the annual Run, Smelt, Run! Parade could be making its final march on May 26.

The event combines a handful of things that Duluthians can’t seem to get enough of: dressing in silver, congregating at the Aerial Lift Bridge, hoisting large puppets into the air, wearing paper-mâché fish heads and honoring the Smelt Queen.

However, this menagerie could come to an end with the retirement of Jim Ouray, founder, organizer and King Neptune of the smelt parade. The first Run, Smelt, Run! Parade was held in 2012 and the concept has not changed drastically since then. The event starts with an inaccurate oral history of smelt at the Aerial Lift Bridge, after which the parade makes its way down the lakewalk and ultimately ends at Zeitgeist Café for a smelt fry and party.

Smelt are a small silver fish that used to be abundant in Lake Superior. For a suspenseful couple of weeks in late April, the smelt enter streams and are quite easy to capture. Smelting became a niche pastime in the 1960s and ’70s, but the smelt population dwindled by the late ’80s, causing interest in the slender, spineless fish to wane.

Jim Ouray in his smelt workshop. (Photo by Delaney Shipman).

Enter Jim Ouray, a puppeteer with smelt on his brain. Ouray moved to Duluth about 15 years ago, and with 40 years of puppeteering experience, he knew he wanted to create a puppet spectacle in Duluth. The idea for the smelt parade came to Ouray in a dream.

“I was making a big puppet in my backyard,” he said. “I was sculpting something, but really didn’t even know what I was doing. I was just making it and then my neighbor, my actual neighbor, yells across the fence. ‘Hey, what are you making?’ And I was kind of on the spot, and I said ‘umm, the smelt queen!’ And I woke up and I said ‘the smelt queen!’”

After his dream, Ouray helped found the Magic Smelt Puppet Troupe and began planning the inaugural smelt parade.

Though the parade holds a tender and joyous place in his heart, there are many moving parts necessary in order to pull it off, which Ouray is almost solely responsible for. His responsibilities fall under two categories: administrative and artistic. Ouray’s administrative responsibilities include recruiting grants and permits, promoting the event, creating a poster, managing insurance, paying for smelt accoutrement storage, hosting workshops and coordinating the general smeltery of it all. This is the part of the role that Ouray is most keen to let go of.

“If it’s going to continue, I really want other people to take over,” he said. “And then I would maybe be a consultant, or maybe a bit player or something like that. I still enjoy — I mean, I’m the Neptune character. And I love that — I love getting dressed up. And dancing.”

Photos from past Run, Smelt, Run! Parades by Brian Barber.

Ouray much prefers the artistic side of the gig: conceiving an angle for the introductory smelt history skit, creating costumes and designing images for the festival. His passions lay in the wide scope of possible artistic expressions. Parading and puppeting offer Ouray a particularly enticing form of self expression. In his workshop, he has photos of parades in Trinidad, Carnival and New Orleans, places he’s visited with parades he admires.

“It’s so cool,” he said. “It’s like the Super Bowl, but it’s like parade art.” The photos feature men in bright suits and outrageous headpieces.

“We get families in here, we get little kids or the moms bring the kids,” he said, “but when I really feel like, when the dads come and they say, ‘sure, we’re gonna, perform in the gray.’ I think it’s significant, whatever the mentality of our culture.”

Some men don’t participate in flamboyant forms of self expression, like the men in these photos or the men who participate in the Smelt Parade. Hence, if you can get the dads to participate, you’ve made something special. Parades are a cultural exploration to Ouray.

“So I guess I feel like it’s important to me, as a deep purpose, as opposed to just having fun. It’s to sustain or maintain a set of values that’s not either modern or capitalist or greedy. This stuff is so out of whack now,” he said.

The Carnival and Trinidad influences can be seen in many different facets of the smelt parade: unity of color (silver and gray), a king and a queen (the Smelt Queen), absurdly large costume pieces (paper-mâché smelt heads and an extravagant Smelt Queen puppet), brass bands, irreverence (an inarguably epic celebration of the humble smelt) and a second line.

Paper-mâché smelt heads in Ouray’s workshop. (Photo by Delaney Shipman).

In a second-line parade, the viewers are just as much a part of the parade as their paper-mâché’d, smelt-headed counterparts. Second-line parades are common in Carnival, Trinidad and New Orleans, but Ouray speculates that the Smelt Parade is likely the first second-line parade to reach Duluth.

“If there were second line parades in Duluth already, I may not have started this number, it was really just kind of selfish,” he said. “Because it’s the most fun that I know how to have.”

Ordinary folks follow the parade line down the lakewalk and are encouraged to wear silver or gray.

“A lot of people are making costumes at home right now,” Ouray said. “I mean, I know this, guaranteed, there’s gonna be a lot of people on Sunday that I have never met. Because of the aesthetic. The concept has percolated or infiltrated the community.”

The joy of the smelt parade is that, really, anything goes.The parade attracts young and old alike, all of whom embrace the silver fish garb, something that Ouray particularly enjoys about the parade. 

“I’m really proud that it just appeals to all ages,” he said. 

Participants are encouraged to make their own costumes — at home or at Ouray’s workshops — based on their interests, which is what produces the merry party of smelt popes, smelt Beyoncés, smelt warlocks and smelt mothers with their smelt babies. Parade goers will bear silver smelt-shaped cutouts on a stick or at least dress in silver or gray. The people are excited to partake in the smelt parade year after year. 

“People do have strong feelings about it. And that’s why I wanted to announce, you know, that I had just, like, run out of gas,” he said.

Ouray is excited that he has had a hand in creating the cheeky, celebratory atmosphere that congregates at the lakewalk every spring, but it is not because he no longer gets joy from the smelt parade that he has decided to retire; it is because of the mound of responsibilities that he must juggle in order to pull it off. Ouray has done an admirable job putting on the event each year, and he’s not asking anybody to do anything, but he’s decided it’s time for him to step down from organizing.

“If anybody wants to rise to the occasion,” Ouray said he’d be happy to pass the responsibility on to someone new. “I’m not really trying hard (to find a replacement), I’m just sharing information.”

The smelt parade has become a staple of springtime in Duluth for many, and with Ouray stepping down it’s possible the 2024 edition will be the final puppet run to grace the shores of Lake Superior. So Ouray encourages the citizenry to get dolled up in silver attire once again and follow the ol’ paper-mâché smelt head in the second line alongside the Magic Smelt Puppet Troupe on May 26. The parade begins at 3:30 at the Aerial Lift Bridge.