You might get a kick out of this- 1965 description of our favorite fish
I was at the dump the other day and went to the paper recycling bin to dump my old newspapers.
Laying in the heap were 3 volumes of an old (1965) World Book Encyclopedia. I'm not too good to do a little dumpster diving, so I snatched them up. I wanted to examine these fine examples of mid twentieth century letterpress (raised type) printing and case binding.
When I got them home and began to peruse the pages I found that one of the editions was "Ci-Cz", hence it would contain "Crappie". Finding the correct page I read the following description:
CRAPPIE, KRAP ih, is a freshwater fish which is closely related to sunfish and black bass. It is found in sluggish, shallow waters of the middle western and southern United States. The crappie is silvery olive with dark green spots. It is about a foot long when full grown. It has a high fin on its back and a similar one on its belly.Each of these high fins contains five to eight spines and about 18 soft rays. The tail fin is shaped like the letter F. The crappie has a large mouth. It feeds on insects, small fishes, and other animals. Crappies are good to eat, and they are a good game fish. Spinners may be used in trolling or casting for crappies. Crappies are called by many other names including bridge perch, bachelor perch, chinquapin perch, strawberry bass, calico bass, and sacalait.
Scientific Classification. The crappie belongs to the family Centrarchidae. The white crappie is classified as genus Pomoxis, species P. annularis. The black crappie is P. nigro-maculatus.
Now the question: does anyone else find both the description of southern waters (sluggish, shallow) and the description of the fish (sillvery olive with green spots, "F" shaped tail, really?) as hillarious as I do? The guy that wrote this must have never been south of Chicago and never seen a crappie. I do, however love the cajun name for the fish "Sacalait", I may start using that.:Rofl
