Wrecking the Crappie

[Zach Matthews]

I can take absolutely no credit for this. My buddy Verlyn Black, who is in my Sunday School class, is generous enough to let me serve as a deck hand a couple times a year during crappie season. He has it ridiculously dialed in. We caught 48 today, which was a ho-hum day for him, and I went home with 25 nice keepers, which are going to get fried and some of which are marinating into ceviche right this minute.

Verlyn doesn’t mess around when it comes to counting fish. No ballpark estimates on his boat.

This was on Allatoona Lake. One of the things I’ve noticed about Allatoona–and this includes hunting season there as well–is that its locals just don’t seem to have the same sense of respect you expect to see elsewhere. When we started catching fish with some regularity we had another, middle-aged crappie angler motor in on us and immediately start trolling the area we were working. He approached within 50 feet at one point. Verlyn is not a confrontational man but he had to say something and he was absolutely right. I was just really disappointed that an adult man could be so rude to a guy nearly twice his age. It was pretty pathetic.

Zach

[R Black]

That’s what I grew up on Zach, jigs or minnows or both, for crappie in the cedar trees with my Grandpa.

Fried crappie, hushpuppies, fried potatoes, maybe some cream corn or greens. Mm mm.

[T. Wiles]

When are you inviting us to the Itinerant Angler fish fry?
Nice slabs! Almost walleye time up here…just another week or so.

[Clay Smith]

that is awesome

[Zach Matthews]

On advice from Bill Butts we made ceviche out of about a third of the crappie. It was delicious–Scott Kitchens can attest.

Here’s the recipe we used/came up with:

Cube deboned crappie filets into 1/2″ segments
Marinate in juice of lime for 4 hours
(1.5 lbs. of crappie took ~1 1/4 cup of lime juice or the juice of about 10 storebought limes)

The citric acid will “cook” the crappie. When it is done marinating, cube avocado, tomato, dice red onion and cilantro, then drain crappie and mix all together salsa-style with salt and chili powder to taste. I think Tracy left the chili powder out of this batch and it could have been a bit spicier to my palate.

Thanks again Bill for the suggestion!

[Joe H.]

Looks great! Anyone ever try ceviche with Salmon? I have a freezer full and am getting tired of grilling it…

[R Black]

Hey Joe, I’ve never tried it in ceviche but have you tried it blackened?

[Author]

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