question about Reelfoot Lake

[bdorman]

Just for fun, I looked up "Crappie" on Wikipedia. I knew most of what it said, except this:

"A commercial fishery for crappie exists at Reelfoot Lake in Tennessee. It is one of the few commercial fisheries for crappie."

Does that mean that crappie from Reelfoot is sold in stores? I've never heard of crappie on a restaurant menu or store shelves. Maybe it's ground up as "fish meal" in pet food and such? Or "commercial fishery" means something else?

Clue me in.

[REDEYE50]

Commericial crappie fishing was legal on reelfoot until a few years back it was stopped. Yes you could go to any of the restuarants and get a big ole platter of whole slab crappie. I am sure others on here can till you the year it was stopped.

[kingkrappie]

Yeah, been quite a few years back when they stopped it, now if you want to buy crappie you gotta get it from Canada. What's wild is they took 50,000 crappie per year out of the lake, and the fishing was still great! Just a 15,000 acre lake.