It’s a long way from the dark waters of a Louisiana bayou to a rock-lined pond on the Colorado prairie. The connecting point is the same, a dramatically spotted panfish with a passion for minnows and small grubs and a penchant for pleasing kids ages 8 to 80.
In an earlier life, I knew it as a speckled perch. It swims through my fondest angling recollections in the shade of tall cypress trees where my father and I drift in a wooden rowboat he made by hand. I remember every one as the size of a paddle blade, and the only thing better than lifting one from a sunken treetop was their delicacy in the pan.
Now, many miles to the north, I know them just as fondly as black crappie. The fact that latitude and water temperature has shrunk them by several inches has done little to dim my ardor.
On a recent evening, an aggregation of anglers has gathered at a city park pond just west of Greeley where the setting sun peeks through a cloud bank building over mountains to the west.
One assemblage includes grizzled veterans who at another time might be wrestling giant fish in some far-off ocean. A few yards away, a father teaches basic casting skills to two young daughters. Another man appears to have come straight from the office, missing only his coat and tie.
For each, the attraction is the same, a darkly speckled fish that in this place only occasionally grows past 9 inches, barely large enough for a couple tiny bites, let alone a meal for a family of four.
For Colorado urban dwellers, crappie have become the fish of choice, both as a primary learning tool for kids and a welcome close-to-home jiggle on the line for anglers of every age and experience.
Jim McKissick, assistant hatchery chief with the Colorado Division of Wildlife, understands the association more than most.
“My dad was a crappie man, period. It’s how we learned to fish,” said McKissick, born in Missouri and raised in Kansas. The veteran anglers recently returned from his homeland, where he joined family members on an outing at Melvern Reservoir in east Kansas. “We hit the season just right. We caught about 150 crappie averaging 12 inches. It doesn’t get much better than that.”
Foot-long crappie, even larger, are far from rare in Colorado. You’ll find them in various larger reservoirs and, occasionally, in ponds along the Front Range. A state-record white crappie — distinguished by its lighter coloration and fewer spines in the dorsal fin — weighing 4.375 pounds was captured at a Northglenn pond in 1975. The black crappie record is 3 pounds, 4 ounces from a private pond in La Plata County.
While black crappie are self-sustaining in many waters, DOW keeps most populations perking with an expansive stocking program that each year plants more than half a million, mostly between half an inch and 2 inches long.
It is perhaps fitting that McKissick, that ultimate crappie veteran, acts as a sort of official gatekeeper to determine distribution.
“We get requests for about twice that many,” McKissick describes a system by which area biologists vie for a limited supply. “They put in their bids, then we tell them how many we’ve got at the hatchery. Then they have to prioritize.”
DOW also transplants larger broodfish from ponds that might have an oversupply as a way to supplement limited hatchery stocks. Crappie are produced almost exclusively at DOW’s hatchery in Wray, although some fry are moved to the larger rearing unit at Pueblo. More than 30 lakes and ponds are stocked each year.
The wildlife agency devotes its hatchery energy solely to black crappie. “I think it’s related to temperature. I assume the cooler temperature is more conducive to blacks,” McKissick said.
Whatever the reason, black crappie do very well in Colorado. So do the anglers who fish for them.
Charlie Meyers: 303-954-1609 or cmeyers@denverpost.com
