Name calling fish wars

I have a good friend who will not acknowledge any fish called a “crappie”. Even when people travel from around the country to his backyard to try and win thousands of dollars catching “crappie”, he would rather fight than bite on the “c” word.

“Crappie fishermen….hrrrmmmpp! They don’t even know what they are catching,” he’ll say. “They are white perch. Always were. Always have been. Always will be. We’ve got white perch.”

I really agree with him, but I held out as long as I could. I caved to crappie. I mean, I’m too old. I have to pick my battles. How would Matt Morgan feel if I referred to this week’s American Crappie Trail National Tournament as the World White Perch Championship?

There’s a lot of backup data. As far as I know, there are absolutely NO baits on the store shelves anywhere that say “white perch lures”. No boat manufacturer sells “white perch boats”. That goes for sacalait as well, with all due pardons to my south Louisiana buddies. I “googled” best baits for white perch and saw an article acknowledging “white perch” and catching them on crank baits. But the pictures? They were of bar fish. Nope.

The more I learn about this, the more I just tend to stick with giving in. But I don’t have to like it. I even looked up the etymology for crappie/white perch/sacalait. Now I’ve lost a lot of you fishermen, haven’t I?

For the record, etymology is the study of the origin of words and the way in which their meanings have changed throughout history.

Here ya go. The official booksmart Etymology of “crappie”: 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.

So, that won’t work either. Nope. Nobody wants to catch a crapet. Or eat a crapet filet. Or even fish in a crapet tournament, right? The Canadiens don’t win anything often, but apparently they’ve won this one.

Okay, this discussion has gone on long enough.

We wouldn’t even be having it on this page if it weren’t for the $100,000 on the line this weekend in the big FISHING tournament. Folks fishing it just aren’t talking about whatever fish they are catching or what they are catching them on. And the locals aren’t supposed to share information if they wanted to. At this point with all the pressure, they don’t want to. So I don’t have much to write about. PS – If you want to know more about the ACT event, just check out a few of our previous posts.

So I’m gonna leave you with something I bet most all us white perch fishermen, crappie fishermen and sacalait fishermen can agree on. Watch this short Bobby Garland video (some of which was shot right here in Farmerville last year) to the end.

And be safe out there this week!