Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Help Crappie

Went fishing this morning and caught 39 crappie and 4 blue gill. I was wondering if all these crappie are black crappie? Some look darker than some of the others. I put them in my pond but, got acouple of pictures before I released them.

Obviously hard to tell for sure on every one, but I'm seeing all black crappie. I'm not seeing any of the vertical banding patterns classic to white crappie.

Nice haul.

Thanks alot Bruce. I thought they all were but had to ask. I'de like to try getting some white crappie and see if I could get a cross breed going I put the fish in the pond today around 10:00 this morning and haven't seen any floaters yet. Trying to get fish to eat pellets but, they haven't seemed interested this year yet. I've got lots of minnows in pond for the fish and everything looks good but, I sure do wish I could get them to eat the pellets to get some weight on them .Is there any special brand of fish food that bg,bc and perch prefer?

I will try to locate the link but I recall a quick identification of white vs. black crappie can be related to the number of dorsal fin spines. White crappie will have 6, black crappie will have 7 or 8.

Here is the link:

http://www.pondboss.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=5;t=000402#000000

h2ofwlkillr posted a link called "Aqua Guides". This is a site from Missouri Department of Conservation. Look for a topic entitled Managing Crappie in Small Impoundments, page 2 paragraph 7.

I think I just posted this a few weeks ago. You can see what Bruce is talking about.

The top picture is a nice example of what causes confusion in crappie ID at times.

The bottom fish is a black crappie male in spawning colors. The top fish is either a female or a non-spawning male. (I am talking about the photos in the original post, not in ewests photo )

I just did the same thing YOu did i think these are all Black crappie!!!!
Man this is a VERY nice haul!!!!

I remember seeing the post ewest posted and that is what caught my atention about asking. It's amazing how different they can look and still all be black crappie . I am going to get some more Friday at the same spot, hopefuly some bigger ones. I'll post another pic Friday afternoon. I caught all those fish including some lmb that I threw back on a silver tube jig with a weighted bobber about 2 feet down I caught them all within 1.5 hours believe it or not