Tis the season for these tasty little rascals. Here in south Louisiana they are called sacalait for “sack of milk” due to their delicious table fair. Besides top water trout fishing and sight fishing reds this is a favorite fish to target for us here at DockSide TV as you can see in many of our videos. The coolest thing about sacalait, also known as crappie in more northern areas, is how they gang up. This species seems to school up more than any other fish I have ever seen. In fact most days you will go long stretches with out a bite then Bam!!!! Fish on every cast. They could be all ganged up under one dock or on an isolated brush pile or even way out in the middle of no where in twenty foot of water. An average size for south Louisiana is about ten inches and typically it is usually the black crappie species. Just a little further north crappie get up to eighteen or nineteen inches weighing upwards of two and three pounds. The black crappie is shown in the picture above where the white crappie has a slightly larger mouth and a more defined stripe style pattern rather than scattered speckles all over the fish, both act very similar and both taste delicious.
Where to catch these awesome fish around here??? Well there are some excellent places around Des Allemands and the Bayou Black area. We typically fish around St. Tammany Parish focusing mostly around the Pearl River. The Pearl is sky high again this year so fishing it can be pretty tricky. Bayou Lacombe and Liberty can hold a few but they don’t hold as many as the Tchefuncta River just to the west. Another good thing to do is get a small john boat or kayak and sneak into as many interstate ponds as you can. Gravel pit ponds seem to hold the biggest crappie around. We also fish some private lakes up in Mississippi that are excellent in the winter time.
The reason we call this time of year “Sacalait Season” is due to the spawn. This is when crappie gang up and set up to spawn. Anytime between February and March crappie will go into this process. The most fun is when they get shallow on the beds and where they will eat anything in sight. In this DockSide TV video below we are still catching them deep but they will be moving up to the banks to spawn at anytime. Check out this latest DockSide TV and check out the new Glow mini and the Spike It Markers. This episode will Premier at 8pm on Wednesday February 26th where we will be answering questions live as they the video premiers during its first viewing.
