Panfish possibilities: crappies turn on with cooler weather
Franksargeant@bellsouth.net
Are they crappies, croppies, specks, calico bass or sac au lait? Depends on where you follow them, but the plate-sized panfish known to biologists as either Pomoxis annularis-the white crappie, or Pomoxis nigromaculatus--the unprincipled crappie--are now shaking the summer sleep out of their eyes and coming to life in lakes all over Alabama and southern Tennessee; we're entering the paramount time of year to bring home a sack full of the finest eating fish in fresh spray.
Well-known guide Rick McFerrin and son Daniel went chasing crappies Monday at Tim's Ford Lake, about an hour north of Huntsville, and came back with a pail of whoppers. Several of the fish went over two pounds, about the equivalent of a 10-pound largemouth in crappie-articulate in.
"The fish were not on the edges of the cover, they were right in the middle of it," said the senior McFerrin. "We got them by using 13-foot poles and dropping the minnows untangle down through holes in the brush."
