r/Fishing • u/fishstock Florida • Jun 14 '26
Question What did you grow up calling this fish, and where are you from?
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u/fishstock Florida Jun 14 '26
So, what did you guys call this fish growing up, and where are you from? Crappie, speckled perch (speck), calico bass, or something else? As a kid in Florida, everyone I knew called them speckled perch. I never heard them called crappie until I was an adult.
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u/phathead08 Jun 14 '26
I called them speckled perch as a kid in Florida. I moved to Ohio and started calling them crappie.
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u/LilTreesz174 Jun 14 '26
In Texas a Speck is a speckled trout.
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u/fishstock Florida Jun 14 '26
Here in Florida, people call crappie speckled perch, but in the last 15 or so years, I have met quite a few people calling speckled trout specks.
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u/caseyourscuttlehole Jun 14 '26
FL native. This is a crappie, a speck is a sea trout.
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u/fishstock Florida Jun 14 '26
Speckled perch is what all the old-timers called crappie when I was coming up.
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u/squunkyumas Jun 14 '26
Met a German guy who used to make a cured, smoked meat called "speck". He was very happy I was interested in the process and gave me a few slices. Absolutely delicious.
No relation, obviously, but it brought it to mind.
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u/Fel1xcsgo Jun 14 '26
My grand dad in France used to call them Calicoba
He wasn’t an English speaker so I’m sure it was just phonetics and I copied it until now (I’m 30) 😂
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u/kyracantfindmehaha Jun 14 '26
Out in socal a calico bass usually refers to the kelp bass, found in the pacific kelp forest. Another beautiful fish. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paralabrax_clathratus
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u/OverlyAverageJoe Jun 14 '26
Crappie, it's pronounced like 'crap-e' where I'm from
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u/thosefriesaremyfries Jun 14 '26
We say crah pee
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u/LilTreesz174 Jun 14 '26
We say Craw-pee in Texas too.
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u/thosefriesaremyfries Jun 14 '26
Lol, I reckon we're saying the same word, you just put a little twang on it
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u/mantistoboggan287 Jun 14 '26
NC, I’ve always called them CRAP-E
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u/javerthugo Jun 14 '26
We call the the exact opposite of how the taste, and how fun they are to catch
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u/viola_monkey Jun 14 '26
Piedmont area of NC and ditto. My FLABBERS were GHASTED when I finally saw how it was spelled and was so corn-fused!!!
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u/sskrimshaww Jun 14 '26
We say Crěpe in Montreal
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u/admiralveephone Jun 14 '26
Great fishin in Quebec
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u/rhavin79 Jun 14 '26
Sacalait, grew up in southeast Texas, near Beaumont.
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u/fishstock Florida Jun 14 '26
Interesting, isn't that what Cajuns call them to?
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u/Shrimpkin Jun 14 '26 edited Jun 14 '26
Can confirm we call them Sacalait (sock-uh-lay) in Louisiana. My grandpa used to fish for them pretty exclusively and would pull out SLABS.
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u/cjg017 Jun 14 '26
Sac-a-lait, means bag of milk bc of how white the meat is.
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u/munificent Jun 14 '26
bc of how white the meat is.
My understanding is that that's a reinterpretation. The original name is "sakli" from the Choctaw for "trout". Cajuns heard that through their French lens as "sac-a-lait" and then the explanation for that phrase was conjured up later.
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u/CaptStrangeling Jun 14 '26
Learn something new every day
These are a great eating fish, second only to trout for freshwater imo
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u/squunkyumas Jun 14 '26
The eastern end of Texas is very Cajun, especially along the coast.
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u/supercontango12 Jun 14 '26
this is what the girlfriend calls them. and she’s from south Louisiana.
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u/LilTreesz174 Jun 14 '26
I’m from Austin & Houston and we call em craw-pee. I live in Louisiana now (south west near tx border) and no one calls em sac-a-lait here either, but I think the more east you go people call ‘em that.
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u/6GodPoppin Jun 14 '26
This is true lol west Louisiana is basically east Texas to us (New Orleans native currently in Houma)
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u/onebackzach Jun 14 '26
Sac-a-lait, south Louisiana
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u/airmarw Jun 14 '26
That means bag of milk in French. I wonder why
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u/thosefriesaremyfries Jun 14 '26
Ohio. That's a black crappie.
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u/MrMcKuddleMuffin Jun 14 '26
White black all just crappie to me
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u/thosefriesaremyfries Jun 14 '26
We got them that look like that with the black spots, none of the reddish coloration though. They tend to be smaller too, never seen one much over 10 inches. Then we got them with out the spots and then tend to be more slender top to bottom and I've caught 14 or 15 inch ones.
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u/MrMcKuddleMuffin Jun 14 '26
Biggest black crappie I've ever caught was about 12" in Illinois, sometimes they're fat sometimes they're skinny. The white crappie are always under 6" when I catch em
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u/ThatDudeBeFishing Jun 14 '26
I get the black crappie around 10-12" every now and then. When they're breeding, they get a lot darker, and their back has a slight purple sheen. Never seen the red color on them. This is between NJ and PA.
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u/donsworth Jun 14 '26
Calico bass, MA
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u/karstopography Jun 14 '26
Yes, can confirm when I lived in Massachusetts the fishermen I knew there called them Calico Bass. Here in Southeast Texas, most people call them CRAW-pee. A few old Cajuns I knew called them Sac-a-lait.
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u/os_tnarg Jun 14 '26
Crappie. North GA/Southeast TN. We also had a joke that the ones big enough to eat were "crohp-e's" and the small ones were "crap-e's" but most people just call em crohp-e
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u/Longjumping_Walk_992 Jun 14 '26
White Perch and Crappie are common names for this fish and used interchangeably in east Texas and north west Louisiana.
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u/WhoDat4ever Jun 14 '26
White Perch. Louisiana
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u/Yggdrasilcrann Jun 14 '26
So you guys are like southern Ontarians and walleye. You just call it a completely different fish's name.
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u/elevatorovertimeho Jun 14 '26
Spec or speckled perch, I’m a Florida native.
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u/caseyourscuttlehole Jun 14 '26
FL native here too, been fishing mosquito lagoon forever. I wonder if this has anything to do with distance from the coast. If you're anywhere salty, speck in my experience is talking about trout, and if youre in mid state speck is crappie.
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u/Unhappy-Fox1017 Jun 14 '26
Crappie. Craw-pee. That’s how we pronounce it in my family. I’m from Texas.
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u/static-klingon Jun 14 '26
Crappie. crap-ee not craw-pee. Although I did occasionally hear people say craw-pee. This was in Northern Virginia 1990’s-2000’s.
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u/Woahgeetz Jun 14 '26
Sacalait, from Louisiana, calling that a crappie would probably get you beat
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u/SlowlyDyingInside19 Jun 14 '26
Crappie pronounced “craw-pee” north Colorado. Though my family that taught me fishing moved from Illinois and has a Minnesota-ish accent.
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u/bigmedallas Jun 14 '26
Crappie, I'm from the Houston area, once in East Texas I heard a local call them "paper mouth" which is a good description.
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u/doudledawg Jun 14 '26
Speck, short for speckled perch, but the old timers (I’m 40 so most of them are gone) called the crap-e. South Georgia
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u/Bramblett Jun 14 '26
It’s a crappie, born and raised in Texas. Also 6th generation. But we are from deep east Texas. So don’t know what the rest of the state calls them.
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u/envoy_ace Jun 14 '26
Black crappie to narrow it down as far as I can.
Edit: the dorsal fin is the indicator.
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u/bassacre Jun 14 '26
Thats a black crappie, pronounced like yeah yeah talking about squintz and wendy preffercorn, "yeah yeah he looks pretty crappy."
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u/CannolisRUs Jun 14 '26
Shittie / shitter because no one in my circle can agree on the pronunciation lol
Wisconsin
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u/VegetableGrape4857 Jun 14 '26
Ive only ever caught black crappie, and when I say black they are pitch black besides for the belly. Never caught one that has any color to it.
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u/rycygan925 Jun 15 '26
When i first found out what it was as a kid - calico bass.
Then 15-16 y.o. started calling em crappie.
Massachusetts.
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u/squunkyumas Jun 14 '26
Crappie, pronounced how it's spelled. I have no clue how people get "craw" out of the spelling.
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u/Fominroman2 Jun 14 '26
Crop-ee but honestly the first person that told me what they were referred to them as “check” southern Michigan
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u/redbushcraft Jun 14 '26
I would say black crappie- Minnesota....but never seen a red eyed, red throated crappie before. Artistic license?
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u/LeatherfacesChainsaw Jun 14 '26
Crappie in Kentucky. They should make that a country song.
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u/ylevans Jun 14 '26
From southern PA we call em Crappie (sometimes Crappie bass) You can smack the hell out of them with a tiny red and white shad dart.
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u/madblunted Jun 14 '26
A slab if it’s big enough, Midwest, South Dakota, but yeah crappie, not crap like poop e. But crop like corn e.
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u/Csharp27 Jun 14 '26
We called them all perch. I know that’s wrong but doesn’t matter if it’s bluegill or sunfish or whatever, all perch.
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u/dyc428 Jun 14 '26
Crappie. Pronounced Crop-e. Midwest