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Buffalo white crappies


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Some buddies and I caught a couple white crappies on Buffalo and were wondering if there is a resident population out there. Has anyone else run into some whites out there or mostly blacks?

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Most of the crappies I have caught were black. How deep are you catching your crappies? I noticed alot of guys out in the middle near the deep water north of the flats.

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Caught a very nice white crappie out from the courthouse earlier this winter. It is the first white crappie I've ever caught that I am aware of. Guess there's a first time for everything, right?

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jigginjim,

The few crappies we caught were in the 20-24 foot range. We fished on Sunday, and it was pretty slow most of the day, with a little heightened activity later in the afternoon.

Jim

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Jbell, There is a deep area north of there about half mile. The water in that area is around 22ft. Looked like a lot of guys out there. Looked as if someone drove a small car out from the north access. The ice there does not look good. It has a crack about 6" wide and when i walked over it moved. I fished the 22 ft area last year and ok, but some of other guys had the hot holes.

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Are you all sure you are catching white crappie? What criteria do you use to decide they are whites vs black crappies.... Just curious.

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The easiest way to tell is that white crappies have 6 dorsal spines compared to the black which has 7. the anal fins are also slightly different. Buffalo has always had white crappies but there seemed to be more of them years ago. SMALLIE I see you are a fisheries biologist would'nt have been testing us would you?

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Good job Swamp.... you at least, have done your home work. grin.gif

Others........ welll??

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blacks crappies regardless of color phase (dark to lighter) will have checkered pattern. Whites have noticable dark vertical bars rather than the checkered pattern, running down the sides.

The distance from the eye to the front base of the dorsal fin and the total lenght of the dorsal fin is equal on the black crappie.

On the white crappie the length of the dorsal fin is less than the distance from the eye to the front base of the dorsal fin.

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In addition to the other posts, I have noticed that the whites are not as deep as blacks of same length. A couple things I have noticed is that white crappie meat is much more tender than blacks as well as thier skin much easier to tear during skinning. It also seems like they fight much harder than blacks of similar size in deep water. I'm not sure if it is because of the shape difference, or if whites can handle being pulled from deep water better (air bladder issues).

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