Four species of crappie

[Fishless]

Watched a fishing show this morning, they were fishing for crappie in Illinois and they said they hoped to catch all 4 species of crappie, I thought there were only two white and black crappie.

Well they caught four species, caught white crappie, black crappie, hybrid crappie (mix between white and black) and what is called a black nosed crappie. When they caught the black nose it looked like a black crappie but had a fairly wide black stripe running from its upper lip back across the top of the fish to its first dorsal fin almost looked like they painted it on, the host a crappie guide he said it is a more aggressive fish (can't remember where it orginated but it was not in the US?). Looked them up on google and several states have stocked them. Interesting didn't know there were hybrid whites (have caught a lot of whites and blacks in Pleasant) but never looked close to see if they were hybrid, you had to look close in the show to see the vertical lines on the black speckle of a hybrid

[Fish Hawk]

I wonder if the aggressive crappie would eat larger gizzard shad

[Fishless]

I wonder if the aggressive crappie would eat larger gizzard shad

That would be interesting to find out of course trying to get game and fish to do anything would be nearly impossible

[Pflug]

Interesting, I thought there were only 2 as well. What was the show called?

[alecpow]

Interesting, I thought there were only 2 as well. What was the show called?

Nope, I think there were never two, at least not since I know of them

[weedman]

According to the American Fisheries Society, Scientific Names of Fishes, there are only two crappie in the Sunfish Family, Black Crappie, Pomoxis nigromaculatus, and white crappie, Pomoxis annularis. Hybrids are just that, a hybrid and the black nose crappie is a black crappie that exhibits a color variation setting it apart from black crappie, but not yet recognized as a separate species from black crappie that I can tell. As far as I know, black nosed crappie could hybridize with either of the other two, but I'm not sure about what it would take to do so.
https://fisheries.org/docs/pub_fish_names.pdf