Some years ago when I first heard about someone catching a "crappie" around here I thought "what the hell is a crappie and where did it come from". I've been fishing that lake since I could walk and I have never heard of a crappie. Then a fisherman showed me his stringer of crappies. I figured he was nuts because what he had there was a stringer of strawberry bass! Did you grow up catching crappies or did they have another name back then?

rock bass. ya, i know they're different but thats what we called them.

Strawberry bass here but also knew they were called crappie

Pronounced Croppy in Indiana where I lived as a kid, Crappie in Georgia.

Mike

Large ones are referred to as Slabs or Black Slabs.

When it comes to fried fish, it's hard to beat pan fried crappie!

We like them corn meal battered with salt and pepper and deep fried.

Excellent that way!

Mike

Yep. Corn meal batter is the way to go!

Croppy / white perch in these parts

Crappies here in NC. I prefer House Autry batter for my fish.

WTF is a strawberry bass? Where to you yahoos come up with this schidt? They're crappies, dadgummit.

Pronounced as "croppie" around here. Sometimes called "specks" or "papermouth".

Granddad used to call them paper mouths.

Specks (or speckled bass) in MI

Yep, "Paper Mouths".

Always use the net on the bigger ones.

I have heard of folks around Reelfoot Lake in TN call them sac-au-lait. Reelfoot is reputed to be the best crappie fishing destination in the U.S.

Around here hillbillies call them crappie, I pronounce it croppie, even though I too am a hillbilly. Folks in florida call'em specks and folks in Louisiana call'em sockalay. What ever you call'em, we all call,em good!

Next time yall do the corn mill thing dip them in egg first and put some Tony Casheries ( can't remember how to spell that, where's the spelling Nazi's when you need them) Cajun fish fry seasoning in it. I do about a 5:1 ratio. Its gooder-n-sheit!

Sac au lait = Louisiana

Most folks here call them croppie. Some of the older black folk call them white perch.

I was once fishing on Lake Caddo with a bunch of coon asses calling them Sac au lait.
Took me quite a while to figure out what the hell they were talking about!

Most Texans call them Crappie, pronounced as Croppie.

Douglas in east tn about 30 minutes from my driveway. If you can't catch 100 a day in the cold water months you can't fish, its awesome with the exception of an occational dead year probably caused by overharvest and a bad spawn. Weiss in alabama is killer as well. Reelfoot was one of the greatest and once was the only fishery in the country that allowed commercial harvest of crappie. As far as I know it isn't what it used to be. I have never fished it but I have also heard the bluegills are BIG in reelfoot and the duck hunting in the early season is great.

I had forgotten about that. Used to work with Cajuns in the paper mills and that's what they called them. They also called perch chinkypins.

Specks. End of story.

The hell? We're talking about freshwater fish not speckled sea trout. No matter what we call 'em I'm sure we can all agree they are tasty!

what he said ^

I love Copper River Reds

like Halibut

but I'd trade a freezer of halibut for crappie filets anyday!

That's something totally different

Chinky pins = shell crackers

Specks, strawberry bass, paper mouths, moon eyes. Calico bass, crappie. All the same and one of the very few things I miss about living further south.

Yep. Strawberry bass, ha! Yankees could screw up a wet dream, and do.

Some of the guys were hard to understand. I thought they were calling all perch that. Thanks for the heads up.

We (S. Ga.) always called them white perch. "Crappie" still sounds, er, crappy to me.

If the perch are biting, the specks get thrown back

Caught many crappies in Texas this past winter.
Enjoyed them deep fried after breading, but also used a marinade mixture of soy sauce, lemon juice, and olive oil with a good shake of Slap ya mama. Then grill them in fish grillin' basket on the gas grill for some darn good eatin' as well.

Where?

The genus name Pomoxis derives from the Greek πώμα (cover, plug, operculum) and οξύς (sharp). The common name (also spelled croppie or crappé), derives from the Canadian French crapet, which refers to many different fishes of the sunfish family. Other names for crappie are papermouths, strawberry bass, speckled bass or specks (especially in Michigan), speckled perch, calico bass (throughout New England),[3] sac-a-lait (in southern Louisiana, lit. "milk bag", an alteration by folk etymology from Choctaw sakli)[4] and Oswego bass.[citation needed]

They were always crappie, pronounced croppy as others have said, in the part of OK I grew up in.
Mouth gets to watering just thinking about them this time of the year even though it's been a decade since I've caught or eaten any. Last weekend in April or the first weekend in May was always time to break out the tin boat, noodle rods, 1" mister twister curlytails, and the electric knife. If it didn't rain and muddy up the ponds it was sure to be a bloodbath punctuated by a family wide fish fry with gallons of sweat tea, fried potatoes from Grandmom's big iron skillet, home made jalapeño hush puppies, and sugared peaches over vanilla ice cream. Damn to have a time machine.

White perch in East Texas,, at least in the "old" days. Cajuns call them Sac au lait...sack of milk.

Crappies, anything else is just ridiculous,

Strawberry's, How in the Hell can someone make that kind of association?

Paper mouth Crappies = Big!

Where I grew up in Alabama we always called them "crop-pee", spelled crappie. We also fished for bream which is pronounced "brim" not "breem". My now deceased father-in-law, a native east Texan, while we were fishing on Lake Livingston years ago kept talking about a "gasper-goo". I had no clue what he was talking about. He could not believe that I had done any fishing at all, having never heard of one. One of us caught one and I then realized what he was referring to was what I knew to be a gar - AKA alligator gar. We both got a lesson in dialect. Both southern, but just a bit different.

In Texas they are usually called crappie and sometimes paper mouth. In Louisiana crappie or sac-a-lait. And there are two species - black crappie and white crappie.

I think you best google gasper goo and alligator gar. Not the same critter by a country milE.

Gasper goo is a drum

Around here when we catch white perch, we fry them with yellow corn meal.

Not sockalay lol.

Sac-a-lait.

Pronounced sack-ah-lay.

Yep. That's what my Granddad always called drum.

Nope, gasper goo are drum. Growing up northeast of Dallas crappy(pronounced croppy) were white perch or speckled perch.

Here in Georgia it is crappie/white perch or specs. Mostly old timers call them white perch or specs. I have about give up bass fishing and all my fishing is for crappie. They are a great eating fish.

When I was a kid growing up in Mass. , the locals called them "calico" bass, which made sense given their coloring. From reading the outdoor mags, I eventually figured out what the rest of y'all called them.

In MA, we also had "kivers" (sunfish) and "white perch" which were a silvery shiner like fish about the size of a yellow perch.

No idea. Started long before I entered this world.

Chocolate covered strawberries are big down here.

Yep, them crappie have lot's of names. I just call them delicious. And right now is the time to be out catching them.

We call drum sheephead around here

In Idaho they're croppie, except by some immigrants from other states.

Specks is what I grew up calling them (Florida) and for many years. Then I moved to LA and of course specks is speckled trout, so sac au lait or perch.

My one buddy in LA would call and say 'lets go perch jerking'

Then of course there's the ever popular choupique, which I HATE, and they will take a minnow when perch jerking.

We call those dogfish

As and aside, I don't fry anything in regular corn meal. Too gritty and dirties up the grease. No flavor. The big name down here is Zataran's fish fry, but I find it too bland. Best stuff to me is Louisiana Fish Fry New Orleans Blend. It is corn meal, but in a fine powdered form, like flour. Best seasoned fish fry I've ever found. No need to add anything. I fry shrimp, fish, and even boneless chicken in it. Dip in milk and fry.

Great stuff.



Clyde


sac au lait= crappie

specks=speckled trout

gasper goo= freshwater drum (my grandmother used to make this in a gravy)

sheaphead and drum are saltwater in the same family. Both are black and grey, but the sheep head has teeth like a human.

yep, sac-a-lait in french that means sack of milk, we use jig poles with a hair or tube jig to catch them

Agreed as to the nix on cornmeal, only I find it too sweet. I like to start with Fryin' Magic and doctor it up a bit.

tuffies on a 1/0 smooth shank gold eagle claw is good slab medicine here, they're running about 6ft right now

Growing up in Ky, NC, and GA we always just called them Crappy, though far north in KY Id hear the yankees say Croppy.
Perusing this thread its nice to see at least some can spell Sac au lait.
Also interesting to hear yankees call them Strawberry bass. wtf?

Y'all talkin' bout these ?



And these?

Always knew them as Crappie, but said like "Croppy".

We had the "Crappie-thon on Chautauqua Lake for years. Never did catch Tangle Free Tom (worth up to I believe $25K if you used the right equipment from the right store).

Also heard of them as Calico...

Amen! The other white meat. Yum.

We would call them bait.

When I was a kid up north, they were referred to as calico bass or just calicos, and some people called them tarpon, though I have no idea how that ever started.

No,... the grow'd up ones!

Not hard atall:::BlueGill, Perch. IMO, Crappie meat is mushy,yes, even when taken from cold water.

Grinnel here. Trash fish

Bowfin in other places

We always called 'em white perch.

And just how big are growed up ones? And maybe you could show us some pictures of them?

I've got into a few slabs before. Tip of fingers to forearm long

SE PA and NJ always called them Calico Bass.

For reference, Not my image

Caught on Ross Barnett



Can see some big fish weights behind the men

yeah, never see it spelled before but had heard those La. folks say it.

Big crappies are called slabs, and I can pronounce that, spell it too. chuckle.

lbj-buchannon-austin

Truffles? WTF is that?

Tuffies not truffles, get your damn eyes checked.

It's a minnow.

I've got a big ass foam trucker cap I bought for a dime at a thrift store hanging over my workbench. It's got a picture of a crappie on it and says "Oakeechobee perch jerker". Think I payed a dime for it and had a laugh because it had a crappie on it and said perch jerker, never knew anyone called them perch. Of course growing up everyone I knew called bluegills, redears, and any other brightly colored sunfish perch. Never knew there were such things as yellow perch.

Crappie, pronounced croppy here.
Mostly see blue gills or sun perch. Although that is what a lot of people here call croppy.

First time I fished for those in 1963 on the Colorado just below Parker Dam the fellow who took me said we were going to catch "croppy" and a lot of them. Never had heard the term before, but he was right. It was a big/fun croppy day and we, and several friends/neighbors, ate a lot of good battered fish that evening. I couldn't wait to go again.

Also known as Minnesota Fatheads. miles

crappie, or more generically.. panfish.

Ruger tell you that?

Croppies and to a lesser extent, paper mouth.

Always have known them as crappies, pronounced exactly like it's spelled.