Without a doubt, the Eno River presents a unique crappie fishing experience, in part because it offers the opportunity to catch a unique crappie.
The black nose crappie is a rare but naturally occurring black crappie occasionally caught in the Eno and other waters across the state and country. It is believed to possess a recessive gene that causes a black stripe to run from its dorsal fin down to its lower jaw. It is often referred to as an Arkansas black nose crappie because it was first officially documented in Arkansas’ White River basin. It is speculated that the stripe is a form of adaptation, allowing the crappie to see better against the glare of the sun — like a baseball player’s eye black — or to provide camouflage from downward-looking prey, but it is also surmised as a hereditary trait, like eye color. Whatever the reasoning, black nose crappie are not only found in the wild, but also produced in some hatcheries.
The primary reason for their production centers around the physical marker of the stripe, allowing biologists to differentiate between stocked fish and wild fish. Also, when producing hybrid (black/white) crappie or Magnolia (sterile black/white hybrid) crappie for small impoundments or ponds, the milt of a male black nose crappie is mixed with the eggs of a female white crappie so that their offspring will possess the black nose trait in order to evaluate the success of the hybridization and sample the stocked population.
Whether the black nose crappie found in the Eno are truly wild or escapees from a private stocking is impossible to say, but anglers who have caught them say they are a harder-fighting fish that pulls twice as hard, is aggressive in nature, and even leaps from the water like bass when hooked.
The N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission has never stocked black nose crappie in any state waters.
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