Incredibly Inaccurate Fish

I tried to tame 2 crappie a while back , a bit to large for my tiny aquarium , so I went out specifically and found a really small Arkansas black nose crappie.
The first 2 were a black and a white and the black one ate a worm in front of me.
The accuracy of it's strike on a wiggling earthworm was good .
So in the next episode of taming a crappie I bought a small herd of rosie reds and told said fishee , you are on your own bud , when they are gone I will get you a few more .
About 3 days or so went by and the number went down about 1 or 2 a day and after 3 days or so ,all 5 rosie reds were gone , never saw it eat one.
So then I went and got said fishee a nice mess of about 15 or 20 and created my/it's own little bait school . Now mind you this , I was in the here we go watch this mode and the fishee was in the this kinda freaks me out mode ......rotfl
A day went by and there was finally some chases going on , the crappie would sit in the same spot against a big rock and rarely come out, it appeared to lie in wait looking for the perfect chance .
It's approach was always like you see on LS vids and such and it liked rising to them more than any other form of pursuit.
Well let me just say this , the bait school got reduced a fish or 2 here and there , BUT >>>>>>
that crappie is highly and rather incredibly inaccurate on it's strikes , not sure why but missing them is the norm for sure , still never seen it ketch one ....
have seen it miss them a huge number of times , no clue why the missing is the norm :dono
you would tend to think in a small enclosed environment the crappie would be at a bigtime advantage and this is just not so .
the bait is fast and scatters on the approach and knows full well what is up when it ventures out after them .
so the next time you are thinking about that there 3 lber ....you might want to consider this .....
it probably went after your jig or minnow or crankbait and just simply missed the target nonono
and created that rather infamous No KABOOM type scenario ...:yikes:Roflrotfl:banghead:crazy:

Probably harder for a crappie since they are more of an ambush predator, not big on chasing dinner. With aquarium so clear baitfish see him coming so no ambush, lot's of misses. Turn off the light at night and I bet the crappie is more successful and you'll see fewer minnows in the morning but you don't get to see it eat.

Very cool bro. Did ya name your “pet”?

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Originally Posted by JUNGLEJIMJIGS

Probably harder for a crappie since they are more of an ambush predator, not big on chasing dinner. With aquarium so clear baitfish see him coming so no ambush, lot's of misses. Turn off the light at night and I bet the crappie is more successful and you'll see fewer minnows in the morning but you don't get to see it eat.

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within basically seconds of the lights out , YES SIR , that there crappie comes out and goes after them , but to be very sure of this , it still missed 99% of them on the strike and in some cases I was sure it was over with and no dice , off went the baitfish all freaked out ....:dono

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Originally Posted by BuckeyeCrappie

Very cool bro. Did ya name your “pet”?

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nope , the jury is out on if it stays with us long enough to get a name ....rotfl
I typically release wild critters back to where they came from if we decide to keep one a bit ...
some stay a week or so and some maybe a month , but 99% go free pretty quickly ....
we used to raise baby turtles to big enough to stand a chance ,about a year on them ....
but in the end , it ain't really all that right to cage a free range critter for very long ....
wild critters do not really make very good "pets" most of the time from what I have seen ....
we released "Ivy" this spring , she was the lost box turtle that showed up 3 years ago in our yard ....
she did really well the first 2 years and was what we deemed to be pretty happy ....
she came when called to eat and knew my wife's voice well ...but ...
she came out of hibernation this year in full on I have to go mode ....
she lost her turtle mind and it was obvious she was miserable ....
I tend to think it was based on her urge to mate , not sure , but one thing for certain , she stopped and looked over her shoulder at me as she crawled off into the blackberry thicket for about 30 seconds or so and had a for sure look on her face of I hope this ain't a mistake .....

The crappie I caught and put in my tank one died early on from stress I assume. The other never did eat worms and I bought some minnows. I too have yet to see him eat one but they are disappearing from the tank. My wife however did see him eat a minnow. It surprised her how fast it was. The bluegill has come to love the nightly feedings of worms. He really is a better fish in the aquarium and knows the deal now.

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Originally Posted by SuperDave336

The crappie I caught and put in my tank one died early on from stress I assume. The other never did eat worms and I bought some minnows. I too have yet to see him eat one but they are disappearing from the tank. My wife however did see him eat a minnow. It surprised her how fast it was. The bluegill has come to love the nightly feedings of worms. He really is a better fish in the aquarium and knows the deal now.

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we think it ate a worm last night in the dark , it was there when we hit the lights and we saw some light movement and some back to its spot and some jaw stretching and turned the light back on and the worm was gone ...:dono
one thing for certain , some minnows are way smarter than others , one stays away from the pack hiding above the power head where it isn't visible from below the surface ....and it will run back to that spot fast as heck if you run it off from it's hiding spot .....smart one no doubt ....

Had a couple of small Crappie in my 40gal, years ago. They attacked minnows with a vengeance whenever they were introduced into the tank, and it didn't matter if the minnows were put in two at a time or five or six at a time. Minnows didn't stay around more than a day or so. Even saw the Crappie stand on their heads to trap a minnow against the bottom gravel, when said minnow tried to hide underneath the Crappie.
Biggest mistake I made with them was introducing a small Warmouth into the mix. Didn't matter whether I added a nightcrawler or a handful of minnows with him in the mix, as he made short work of them, many times before the Crappie even had a chance to single out one. :Rofl Kinda funny to watch him chase after a lone minnow with minnow tails & a nightcrawler tail hanging out of his mouth. :yikes

I kept a pair of crappie and a mini LMB over the winter in a 100 gallon tank about 35 years ago. They went on a feeding frenzy anytime new meat was added to the tank. The bass was more likely to go after nightcrawlers first, but the crappie definitely ate them. I saw the crappie eat minnows some of the time, though mine weren't deadly accurate and missed quite often. I'd hear splashes at night sometimes,so I figured they were on the hunt. I learned not to put crayfish in the tank, as the one I put in there caught & ate the baby bass.

Jim

Fishing the back of The Wastehouse in Pearl river one Fall it was super clear water. We were using shiners and with the water so clear you could see the nervous shiner down in the water darting around while little Crappie 5-6in long were trying to eat them but kept missing their prey. To me they must be the worst aim I have ever seen at eating live prey.