Saint Lawrence River
The Saint Lawrence River is a large river in the middle latitudes of North America. The Saint Lawrence River flows in a north-easterly direction, connecting the Great Lakes with the Atlantic Ocean and forming the primary drainage outflow of the Great Lakes Basin, it traverses the Canadian provinces of Quebec and Ontario, is part of the international boundary between Ontario and the U. S. state of New York. This river provides the basis for the commercial Saint Lawrence Seaway; the Saint Lawrence River begins at the outflow of Lake Ontario and flows adjacent to Gananoque, Morristown, Massena, Montreal, Trois-Rivières, Quebec City before draining into the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, the largest estuary in the world. The estuary begins at the eastern tip of just downstream from Quebec City; the river becomes tidal around Quebec City. The Saint Lawrence River runs 3,058 kilometres from the farthest headwater to the mouth and 1,197 km from the outflow of Lake Ontario; these numbers include the estuary. The farthest headwater is the North River in the Mesabi Range at Minnesota.
Its drainage area, which includes the Great Lakes, the world's largest system of freshwater lakes, is 1,344,200 square kilometres, of which 839,200 km2 is in Canada and 505,000 km2 is in the United States. The basin covers parts of Ontario and Quebec in Canada, parts of Illinois, Minnesota, New York, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, nearly the entirety of the state of Michigan in the United States; the average discharge below the Saguenay River is 16,800 cubic metres per second. At Quebec City, it is 12,101 m3/s; the average discharge at the river's source, the outflow of Lake Ontario, is 7,410 m3/s. The Saint Lawrence River includes Lake Saint-Louis south of Montreal, Lake Saint Francis at Salaberry-de-Valleyfield and Lac Saint-Pierre east of Montreal, it encompasses four archipelagoes: the Thousand Islands chain near Alexandria Bay, New York and Kingston, Ontario. Other islands include Île d'Orléans near Quebec City and Anticosti Island north of the Gaspé, it is the second longest river in Canada.
Lake Champlain and the Ottawa, Saint-Maurice, Saint-François and Saguenay rivers drain into the Saint Lawrence. The Saint Lawrence River is in a seismically active zone where fault reactivation is believed to occur along late Proterozoic to early Paleozoic normal faults related to the opening of the Iapetus Ocean; the faults in the area comprise the Saint Lawrence rift system. According to the United States Geological Survey, the Saint Lawrence Valley is a physiographic province of the larger Appalachian division, containing the Champlain and Northern physiographic section. However, in Canada, where most of the valley is, it is instead considered part of a distinct Saint Lawrence Lowlands physiographic division, not part of the Appalachian division at all; the Norse explored the Gulf of Saint Lawrence in the 11th century and were followed by fifteenth and early sixteenth century European mariners, such as John Cabot, the brothers Gaspar and Miguel Corte-Real. The first European explorer known to have sailed up the Saint Lawrence River itself was Jacques Cartier.
At that time, the land along the river was inhabited by the St. Lawrence Iroquoians; because Cartier arrived in the estuary on Saint Lawrence's feast day, he named it the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. The Saint Lawrence River is within the U. S. and as such is that country's sixth oldest surviving European place-name. The earliest regular Europeans in the area were the Basques, who came to the St Lawrence Gulf and River in pursuit of whales from the early 16th century; the Basque whalers and fishermen traded with indigenous Americans and set up settlements, leaving vestiges all over the coast of eastern Canada and deep into the Saint Lawrence River. Basque commercial and fishing activity reached its peak before the Armada Invencible's disaster, when the Spanish Basque whaling fleet was confiscated by King Philip II of Spain and destroyed; the whaling galleons from Labourd were not affected by the Spanish defeat. Until the early 17th century, the French used the name Rivière du Canada to designate the Saint Lawrence upstream to Montreal and the Ottawa River after Montreal.
The Saint Lawrence River served as the main route for European exploration of the North American interior, first pioneered by French explorer Samuel de Champlain. Control of the river was crucial to British strategy to capture New France in the Seven Years' War. Having captured Louisbourg in 1758, the British sailed up to Quebec the following year thanks to charts drawn up by James Cook. British troops were ferried via the Saint Lawrence to attack the city from the west, which they did at the Battle of the Plains of Abraham; the river was used again by the British to defeat the French siege of Quebec under the Chevalier de Lévis in 1760. In 1809, the first steamboat to ply its trade on the St. Lawrence was built and operated by John Molson and associates, a scant two years after Fulton's steam-powered navigation of the Hudson River; the Accommodation with ten passengers made her maiden voyage from Montreal to Quebec City in 66 hours, for 30 of which she was at anch
Bass fishing
Bass fishing is the activity of angling for the North American gamefish known colloquially as the black bass. There are numerous black bass species considered as gamefish in North America, including largemouth bass, smallmouth bass, spotted bass or Kentucky bass, Guadalupe bass. Black bass are members of the sunfish family. Modern bass fishing has evolved into a multibillion-dollar industry; the sport has changed drastically since its beginnings in the late 19th century. From humble beginnings, the black bass has become the most sought-after game fish in the United States; the sport has driven the development of all manner of fishing gear, including rods, lines, electronic depth and fish-finding instruments, drift boats, float tubes and boats specified for bass fishing. All black bass are fished recreationally. Depending upon species and various other factors such as water quality and availability of food, black bass may be found in lakes, ponds, streams, creeks roadside ditches. Largemouth are known for their greater overall size and resistance when hooked, favoring short, powerful runs and escape to cover such as submerged logs or weedbeds, while smallmouth bass tend to jump more and fight aggressively on the surface when hooked, in order to throw the hook.
The All-Tackle world record Largemouth was caught on June 2nd, 1932, on Montgomery Lake, GA by George Perry, weighing in at 22 lbs. 4 oz. George Perry’s record fish, which some consider the “Holy Grail” of all freshwater sport fishing records, was challenged by Japanese angler Manabu Kurita on July 22nd, 2009. Kurita’s catch was certified by the IGFA, weighing 22 lbs. 4 oz, the same weight as Perry’s legendary catch. Both Perry and Kurita share the All-Take world record. All black bass are scent as well as visual predators so care should be taken to ensure no foreign scents, like bug spray, or any outdoor chemicals, or any personal chemicals, like tobacco, contaminate one's hands when handling your line, rods, artificial baits, soft plastics. Bass are filleted when taken for the table. However, both avid and professional bass fisherman prefer to practice catch and release as a method of conservation. Bass fishing in the United States evolved on its own, was not influenced by angling developments in Europe or other parts of the world.
Indeed, modern British sea bass fishermen look to the United States freshwater bass techniques for inspiration for lure fishing and to the USA, Japan and China for tackle. During the early-to-mid-19th century, wealthy sport anglers in the United States confined themselves to trout and salmon fishing using fly rods. While smallmouth bass were sought by some fly fishermen, most bass fishing was done by sustenance anglers using poles and live bait; the working-class heritage of bass fishing influenced the sport and is manifested today in its terminology, hobbyist literature, media coverage. In the mid-19th century, the first artificial lure used for bass was developed in the form of an artificial fly. At first, these artificial fly patterns were derivations of existing trout and salmon flies; as time went on, new fly patterns were developed to fish for bass, as well as heavier spinner/fly lures that could be cast by the baitcasting and fixed-spool casting reels and rods available at the time. Floating wooden lures or poppers of lightweight cork or balsa were introduced around 1900, sometimes combined with hooks dressed with artificial fur or feathers.
Production of the plastic worm began in 1949, but it was not until the 1960s that its use became popular. The plastic worm revolutionized the sport of bass fishing. In the United States, the sport of bass fishing was advanced by the stocking of largemouth and smallmouth bass outside their native ranges in the latter portion of the 19th century; as the nation's railroad system expanded, large numbers of'tank' ponds were built by damming various small creeks that intersected the tracks in order to provide water for steam engines. Shippers found that black bass were a hardy species that could be transported in buckets or barrels via the railroad, sometimes using the spigot from the railroad water tank to aerate the fingerlings. Largemouth bass were stocked in tank ponds and warmer lakes, while smallmouth bass were distributed to lakes and rivers throughout the northern and western United States, as far west as California. Smallmouth were transplanted east of the Appalachians just before the Civil War, afterwards introduced into New England.
Largemouth bass populations boomed after the U. S. Department of Agriculture began to advise and assist farmers in constructing and stocking farm ponds with largemouth bass offering advice on managing various fish species. Soon, those who had stocked largemouth bass on their farm ponds began to pursue them on a burgeoning number of new reservoirs and impoundments built in the United States during the 1940s and 1950s; these impoundments coincided with a postwar fishing boom, additional funds from sales of fishing licenses for the first large-scale attempts at bass fisheries management. This was true in the southern United States, where the largemouth bass thrived in waters too warm or turbid for other types of gamefish. With increased industrialization and development, many of the nation's eastern trout rivers were dammed, polluted, or allowed to silt up, raising
Tadpole
A tadpole is the larval stage in the life cycle of an amphibian that of a frog or toad. They are wholly aquatic, though some species have tadpoles that are terrestrial; when first hatched from the egg they have a more or less globular body, a laterally compressed tail and internal or external gills. As they grow they undergo metamorphosis, during which process they grow limbs, develop lungs and reabsorb the tail. Most tadpoles are herbivorous and during metamorphosis the mouth and internal organs are rearranged to prepare for an adult carnivorous lifestyle. Having no hard parts, it might be expected. However, traces of biofilms have been preserved and fossil tadpoles have been found dating back to the Miocene. Tadpoles are eaten in some parts of the world and are mentioned in folk tales and used as a symbol in ancient Egyptian numerals; the name "tadpole" is from Middle English taddepol, made up of the elements tadde, "toad", pol, "head". "pollywog" / "polliwog" is from Middle English polwygle, made up of the same pol, "head", wiglen, "to wiggle".
Tadpoles are young amphibians that live in the water, though a few tadpoles are semi-terrestrial and terrestrial. During the tadpole stage of the amphibian life cycle, most respire by means of autonomous external or internal gills, they do not have arms or legs until the transition to adulthood, have a large, flattened tail with which they swim by lateral undulation, similar to most fish. As a tadpole matures, it most metamorphosizes by growing limbs and outwardly absorbing its tail by apoptosis. Lungs develop around the time of leg development, tadpoles late in development will be found near the surface of the water, where they breathe air. During the final stages of external metamorphosis, the tadpole's mouth changes from a small, enclosed mouth at the front of the head to a large mouth the same width as the head; the intestines shorten to accommodate the new diet. Most tadpoles are herbivorous; some species are omnivorous. Tadpoles vary in size, both during their development and between species.
For example, in a single family, length of late-stage tadpoles varies between 33 millimetres and 106 millimetres. The tadpoles of Pseudis paradoxa grow to the largest of any frog. Despite their soft-bodied nature and lack of mineralised hard parts, fossil tadpoles have been recovered from Upper Miocene strata, they are preserved with more robust structures preserved as a carbon film. In Miocene fossils from Libros, the brain case is preserved in calcium carbonate, the nerve cord in calcium phosphate. Other parts of the tadpoles' bodies exist as organic remains and bacterial biofilms, with sedimentary detritus present in the gut. Tadpole remains with telltale external gills are known from several labyrinthodont groups; some tadpoles are used as food. Tadpoles of megophryid frog Oreolalax rhodostigmatus are large, more than 10 cm in length, are collected for human consumption in China. In India, Clinotarsus curtipes are collected for food, in Peru at least Telmatobius mayoloi tadpoles are collected for food and medicine.
According to Sir George Scott, in the origin myths of the Wa people in China and Myanmar, the first Wa originated from two female ancestors Ya Htawm and Ya Htai, who spent their early phase as tadpoles in a lake in the Wa country known as Nawng Hkaeo. In the Ancient Egyptian numerals, a hieroglyphic representing a tadpole was used to denote the value of 100,000. McDiarmid, Roy W.. Tadpoles: the Biology of Anuran Larvae. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0226557634
Zooplankton
Zooplankton are heterotrophic plankton. Plankton are organisms drifting in oceans and bodies of fresh water; the word zooplankton is derived from the Greek zoon, meaning "animal", planktos, meaning "wanderer" or "drifter". Individual zooplankton are microscopic, but some are larger and visible to the naked eye. Zooplankton is a categorization spanning a range of organism sizes including small protozoans and large metazoans, it includes holoplanktonic organisms whose complete life cycle lies within the plankton, as well as meroplanktonic organisms that spend part of their lives in the plankton before graduating to either the nekton or a sessile, benthic existence. Although zooplankton are transported by ambient water currents, many have locomotion, used to avoid predators or to increase prey encounter rate. Ecologically important protozoan zooplankton groups include the foraminiferans and dinoflagellates. Important metazoan zooplankton include cnidarians such as the Portuguese Man o' War; this wide phylogenetic range includes a wide range in feeding behavior: filter feeding and symbiosis with autotrophic phytoplankton as seen in corals.
Zooplankton feed on bacterioplankton, other zooplankton and nektonic organisms. As a result, zooplankton are found in surface waters where food resources are abundant. Just as any species can be limited within a geographical region, so are zooplankton. However, species of zooplankton are not dispersed uniformly or randomly within a region of the ocean; as with phytoplankton, ‘patches’ of zooplankton species exist throughout the ocean. Though few physical barriers exist above the mesopelagic, specific species of zooplankton are restricted by salinity and temperature gradients. Zooplankton patchiness can be influenced by biological factors, as well as other physical factors. Biological factors include breeding, concentration of phytoplankton, vertical migration; the physical factor that influences zooplankton distribution the most is mixing of the water column that affects nutrient availability and, in turn, phytoplankton production. Through their consumption and processing of phytoplankton and other food sources, zooplankton play a role in aquatic food webs, as a resource for consumers on higher trophic levels, as a conduit for packaging the organic material in the biological pump.
Since they are small, zooplankton can respond to increases in phytoplankton abundance, for instance, during the spring bloom. Zooplankton can act as a disease reservoir. Crustacean zooplankton have been found to house the bacterium Vibrio cholerae, which causes cholera, by allowing the cholera vibrios to attach to their chitinous exoskeletons; this symbiotic relationship enhances the bacterium's ability to survive in an aquatic environment, as the exoskeleton provides the bacterium with carbon and nitrogen. Bacterioplankton Biological pump Census of Marine Zooplankton Diel vertical migration Gelatinous zooplankton Ocean acidification Phytoplankton Plankton Primary production SAHFOS Sir Alister Hardy Foundation for Ocean Science Ocean Drifters Short film narrated by David Attenborough about the varied roles of plankton Sea Drifters BBC Audio slideshow Plankton Chronicles Short documentary films & photos COPEPOD: The global plankton database. A global coverage database of zooplankton biomass and abundance data.
Guide to the marine zooplankton of south eastern Australia, Tasmanian Aquaculture and Fisheries Institute Australian Continuous Plankton Recorder Project An Image-Based Key to Zooplankton of North America
Shad fishing
Shad is a type of fish, much valued as a sport fish. The male shad is an excellent game fish, showing an occasional end-over-end; the pregnant female does not fight much, but is kept for the roe. The current world record is listed by the IGFA as 11 pounds 4 ounces, set at Holyoke Dam, Massachusetts, on 19 May 1986 by Robert A. Thibodo. American shad exhibit little-understood feeding behavior while spawning. Unlike salmon, shad retain the ability to digest and assimilate food during the anadromous migration. Like other fish, their feeding instinct can be triggered by a variety of factors such as turbidity and water temperature. Anglers use. Spin fisherman use a flutter spoon. A downrigger is used to place the artificial lure at the desired depth and location; this is in the channel, or deepest part of the river. Much of the shad's migration places them in the lower portion of the water column which makes this the typical depth of choice for fishing. Except in unusual conditions, shad stay deep, requiring weight on the line or fly.
Many fly fishermen use an unusual 1/64 oz. "micro-jig", that resembles a tiny casting bass jig, although it has short nylon feathering to the rear. Shad can be taken either by slow trolling or drift casting, i.e. casting upriver and letting the lure drift with the current. Most fishermen use a Y-shaped "shad rig", consisting of two lures spaced one to two feet apart, with a weight on a swiveled line between them or in front of them; the two lures are either two "shad darts"—a small bright jig -- or a shad dart in front and a spoon spinner in back. Sometimes a live grub is threaded onto the dart; the shad stay near the bottom unless the water is unusually high, so the rig is designed to keep the lure a foot off the bed. During the shad spawning run, multiple species of shad run together. Fishing regulations may vary between species. For example, in some locales, Hickory Shad may be kept; the two species can be difficult to distinguish, so anglers must use caution when shad fishing to be able to make proper identification.
In the north of the US, April–June is when shad spawn in the coastal rivers and estuaries once water temperatures have reached 58 °F. Fishing conditions improve as water temperatures warm and flow decreases. California: The Sacramento River provides the best-known shad water in the state, is ideally suited to spin fishing; the water is best accessed via boat. There are smaller, more accessible waters suitable for wading fly anglers along the Sacramento's' tributaries. Oregon: Most of Oregon's coastal rivers have shad runs, but there are some standouts. East of Portland, the Bonneville Dam poses a significant obstacle to the Columbia River's shad run; as a result, the most popular areas are just downstream from the dam, though shore fishing can be dicey depending on water levels. Washington: The Columbia River delineates the border with Oregon, so some of Washington's best shad fishing is to be had in the Bonneville Dam area. There is a small non-Indian commercial gill net fishery several miles downstream from Bonneville Dam.
There is a tribal commercial fishery. The tribal fishery is composed of a dip net/hoop net fishery from platforms in the Bonneville Dam pool and a live trap fishery at The Dalles Dam. Connecticut: Unlike the Delaware, shad on the Connecticut River have to pass a number of dams, each one thinning the numbers that push farther upstream; the river is big to fish without a lead line and a boat, so waders have to look for confluences like that of the Farmington River near Windsor. The Hammonasset River around Clinton has some good fly water. Florida: The St. Johns River meanders through swamps and savannas, a different shad river from the Delaware’s stony rapids and draws; some excellent fly water can be accessed from Route 46 between Titusville. In times past, the St. Johns held an annual shad tournament in February, an estimated 1,000 boats could be seen trolling the river north of Sanford. Today, there is a bag limit of 10. Georgia: Shad rivers include the Ogeechee, Woodbine River|Woodbine, Satilla and the Savannah River at Bluff Lock dams near Augusta.
Maryland and Washington, D. C.: Hickory shad, smaller cousins to American shad, are found here. They have a predilection for small bait fish imitations; the Potomac is sufficiently narrow in places to afford shore fishing opportunities. Spinfishing has been the historical norm, but flyfishing has been popular recently. American shad populations are recovering in the Susquehanna rivers. Massachusetts and Vermont: Holyoke Dam — the state's most famous spot — is where the current world record was set in 1986; some coastal rivers like the Palmer and the North have less crowded conditions. Shad go all the way up into Vermont as far as Bellows Falls, though the Vernon dam has decreased the run by this point. New York and New Jersey: There is a shad run over 300 miles along the Delaware River. Most of the better wading fly water are above New York. North Carolina and South Carolina: Try Cape Fear River at the Lock & Dam No.1 and the Tar River upstream of Rocky Mount railway bridge. The Cashie River is wadeable hickory shad territory.
The most notable South Carolina runs occur in the Cooper Rivers. Bank and boat angling opportunities are available below St. Stephen Power House on the Santee Re-diversion canal. Boat and wade fishing opportunities occur below Lake Marion Dam. Virginia
Fish
Fish are gill-bearing aquatic craniate animals that lack limbs with digits. They form a sister group to the tunicates. Included in this definition are the living hagfish and cartilaginous and bony fish as well as various extinct related groups. Tetrapods emerged within lobe-finned fishes, so cladistically they are fish as well. However, traditionally fish are rendered paraphyletic by excluding the tetrapods; because in this manner the term "fish" is defined negatively as a paraphyletic group, it is not considered a formal taxonomic grouping in systematic biology, unless it is used in the cladistic sense, including tetrapods. The traditional term pisces is considered a typological, but not a phylogenetic classification; the earliest organisms that can be classified as fish were soft-bodied chordates that first appeared during the Cambrian period. Although they lacked a true spine, they possessed notochords which allowed them to be more agile than their invertebrate counterparts. Fish would continue to evolve through the Paleozoic era.
Many fish of the Paleozoic developed external armor. The first fish with jaws appeared in the Silurian period, after which many became formidable marine predators rather than just the prey of arthropods. Most fish are ectothermic, allowing their body temperatures to vary as ambient temperatures change, though some of the large active swimmers like white shark and tuna can hold a higher core temperature. Fish can communicate in their underwater environments through the use of acoustic communication. Acoustic communication in fish involves the transmission of acoustic signals from one individual of a species to another; the production of sounds as a means of communication among fish is most used in the context of feeding, aggression or courtship behaviour. The sounds emitted by fish can vary depending on the stimulus involved, they can produce either stridulatory sounds by moving components of the skeletal system, or can produce non-stridulatory sounds by manipulating specialized organs such as the swimbladder.
Fish are abundant in most bodies of water. They can be found in nearly all aquatic environments, from high mountain streams to the abyssal and hadal depths of the deepest oceans, although no species has yet been documented in the deepest 25% of the ocean. With 33,600 described species, fish exhibit greater species diversity than any other group of vertebrates. Fish are an important resource for humans worldwide as food. Commercial and subsistence fishers hunt fish in wild fisheries or farm them in ponds or in cages in the ocean, they are caught by recreational fishers, kept as pets, raised by fishkeepers, exhibited in public aquaria. Fish have had a role in culture through the ages, serving as deities, religious symbols, as the subjects of art and movies. Fish do not represent a monophyletic group, therefore the "evolution of fish" is not studied as a single event. Early fish from the fossil record are represented by a group of small, armored fish known as ostracoderms. Jawless fish lineages are extinct.
An extant clade, the lampreys may approximate ancient pre-jawed fish. The first jaws are found in Placodermi fossils; the diversity of jawed vertebrates may indicate the evolutionary advantage of a jawed mouth. It is unclear if the advantage of a hinged jaw is greater biting force, improved respiration, or a combination of factors. Fish may have evolved from a creature similar to a coral-like sea squirt, whose larvae resemble primitive fish in important ways; the first ancestors of fish may have kept the larval form into adulthood, although the reverse is the case. Fish are a paraphyletic group: that is, any clade containing all fish contains the tetrapods, which are not fish. For this reason, groups such as the "Class Pisces" seen in older reference works are no longer used in formal classifications. Traditional classification divides fish into three extant classes, with extinct forms sometimes classified within the tree, sometimes as their own classes: Class Agnatha Subclass Cyclostomata Subclass Ostracodermi † Class Chondrichthyes Subclass Elasmobranchii Subclass Holocephali Class Placodermi † Class Acanthodii † Class Osteichthyes Subclass Actinopterygii Subclass Sarcopterygii The above scheme is the one most encountered in non-specialist and general works.
Many of the above groups are paraphyletic, in that they have given rise to successive groups: Agnathans are ancestral to Chondrichthyes, who again have given rise to Acanthodiians, the ancestors of Osteichthyes. With the arrival of phylogenetic nomenclature, the fishes has been split up into a more detailed scheme, with the following major groups: Class Myxini Class Pteraspidomorphi † Class Thelodonti † Class Anaspida † Class Petromyzontida or Hyperoartia Petromyzontidae Class Conodonta † Class Cephalaspidomorphi † Galeaspida † Pituriaspida † Osteostraci † Infraphylum Gnathostomata Class Placodermi † Class Chondrichthyes Class Acanthodii † Superclass Osteichthy
Crappie
Crappies are a genus, Pomoxis, of North American fresh water fish in the sunfish family Centrarchidae. Both species in this genus are popular pan fish; the genus name Pomoxis derives from the Greek πώμα and οξύς. The common name, derives from the Canadian French crapet, which refers to many different fishes of the sunfish family. Other names for crappie are papermouths, strawberry bass, speckled bass or specks, speckled perch, white perch, crappie bass, calico bass, sac-a-lait and Oswego bass; the recognized species in this genus are: White crappie – P. annularis Rafinesque, 1818 Black crappie – P. nigromaculatus Both species of crappie as adults feed predominantly on smaller fish species, including the young of their own predators. They have diverse diets, including zooplankton and crustaceans. By day, crappie tend to be less active and will concentrate around weed beds or submerged objects, such as logs and boulders, they feed by moving into open water or approaching the shore. The Pomoxis species are regarded pan fish and are considered to be among the best-tasting freshwater fish.
Because of their diverse diets, crappie may be caught in many ways, including casting light jigs, trolling with minnows or artificial lures, using small spinnerbaits, or using bobbers. Crappies are popular with ice-anglers, as they are active in winter; the current all-tackle fishing world record for a black crappie is 2.25 kg and for a white crappie is 2.35 kg. Angling for crappie is popular throughout much of North America. Methods vary, but among the most popular is called "spider rigging", a method characterized by a fisherman in a boat with many long fishing rods pointing away from the angler at various angles like spokes from a wheel. Anglers who employ the spider rigging method may choose from among many popular baits; some of the most popular are plastic jigs with crankbaits or live minnows. Many anglers chum or dump live bait into the water to attract the fish to bite their bait. Crappies are regularly targeted and caught during the spawning period by fly fishermen, can be taken from frozen ponds and lakes in winter by ice fishing.
Before state fisheries departments began to implement more restrictive, conservation-minded regulations, a great number of crappies in the Mississippi River states, were harvested commercially in the 19th and early 20th centuries. At one point the annual crappie catch sold at fish markets in the United States was reported to be three million pounds. A commercial fishery for crappies existed at Reelfoot Lake in Tennessee until 2003, it was one of the few commercial fisheries for crappies in recent decades. By information from International Game Fish Association IGFA the most outstanding records: Black crappie: a 2.26 kg fish caught on 21 April 2005 by John R. Horstman from a private lake in Missouri, US White crappie: a 2.35 kg fish caught on 31 July 1957 by Fred Brigh in Water Valley, Mississippi, US Ellis, Jack. The Sunfishes-A Fly Fishing Journey of Discovery. Bennington, VT: Abenaki Publishers, Inc. ISBN 0-936644-17-6. Rice, F. Philip. America's Favorite Fishing: A Complete Guide to Angling for Panfish.
New York: Harper Row. Rice, F. Philip. Panfishing. New York: Stackpole Books. ISBN 0-943822-25-4. Malo, John. Fly-Fishing for Panfish. Minneapolis, Minnesota: Dillon Press Inc. ISBN 0-87518-208-9. Nelson, Gary. Panfishing. Minneapolis, MN: North American Fishing Club. ISBN 0-914697-37-4
