Every winter, little villages of ice shacks appear on Lake St. Croix. The big water of the lower river is home to many fish species anglers like to target, including sturgeon, walleye, and crappies.

This video from Sgt Outdoors on YouTube shows a day fishing for crappies on the river near Bayport. In fact, the action takes place within sight of the Xcel Energy power plant.

Please note: There is a little coarse language.

Fun facts about a funny fish name:

The common name (also spelled croppie or crappé), derives from the Canadian French crapet, which refers to many different fishes of the sunfish family.

A 1904 U.S. government report contains this passage about the meaning of crapet in French-Canadian:

Other names for crappie are papermouths, strawberry bass, speckled bass or specks (especially in Michigan), speckled perch, crappie bass, calico bass, (throughout the Middle Atlantic states, and New England),[3] sac-a-lait (in southern Louisiana, lit. “milk bag”, an alteration by folk etymology from Choctaw sakli)[4] and Oswego bass.

Republish