The year was 1967. Toledo Bend was new, but George Brewer was old. At least he seemed old to me.

Brewer was the father to one of my childhood friends, Larry Brewer. Larry and I were fishing with his dad that day when a large white crappie nailed Mr. Brewer’s spinnerbait, a lure he hoped would attract a bass.

“Oh, no,” he said after the fish’s one and only surge. “It’s a crappie (he pronounced it crap-py, with a long A sound). I’d sooner catch a cold than a crappie.”

Two things about that experience impressed me. First, Mr. Brewer knew that he’d hooked a crappie (which most folks pronounce croppy) long before he saw the fish. A relatively inexperienced fisherman, I was impressed by his deft touch and his knowledge of what was pulling on the other end of his line.

Second, I’d never realized that my friend’s father was prejudiced. Mr. Brewer was a bass snob. He fished for the thrill of doing battle with a fish that might beat him. To a bass snob, catching crappie is like taking candy from a baby.

A big crappie weighs two pounds and lacks the strength to pull the drag on a spinning reel loaded with 6-pound test line. A 3-pound crappie qualifies as a real monster. If you think you’ve caught a three-pounder, do yourself a favor. Don’t weigh the fish. Just estimate the weight at three pounds and be satisfied at that.

Show your friends photos of the fish, and most of them will agree that it was huge and surely weighed three pounds. Few fishermen, even those who fish seriously for crappie, have caught a genuine three-pounder.

Crappie fishermen don’t talk much about the big one that got away. They talk mostly about the stringer of 10-inch fish that didn’t get away. Crappie is the fillet mignon of the warm-water fishing world. Walleye might be better to eat, and you can certainly make a case for Alaskan halibut fresh from the cold, pristine waters of Bristol Bay.

When it comes to Texas freshwater fish, crappie are the ultimate panfish. Or, in the words of Wally Marshall, a.k.a. Mr. Crappie, “the crappie is a fish you catch and release in the hot grease.”

Marshall is in the process of introducing the latest in a long line of Mr. Crappie products. It’s called Mr. Crappie Fish and Critter Fry, and it’s a secret blend of corn meal and spices concocted to bring out the delicate flavor of fried crappie fillets.

Before you do a taste test on fillet of crappie, you first have to catch a mess of fish. Luckily, April through mid-May is a good time to do it. The fish move shallow to spawn this time of the year. Find brushy or grassy cover along the bank, and you’ll find some crappie.

You can catch them from a boat or from the bank. Marshall likes to wade fish. He dons chest waders and slips overboard, stalking the shallows with the intensity of a great blue heron. Marshall uses a long rod that he designed to dabble ultralight jigs in water as shallow as a foot deep.

Many crappie fishermen rely on live minnows to tempt fish, and minnows are a deadly bait.

Anglers like Marshall and Bob Young, a Lake Fork crappie guide, prefer tiny jigs, which work fine when the fish are active. Young fishes 200 days a year at Fork and averages about 50 keepers a day. A keeper is a legal fish 10 inches or longer. For every keeper Young catches, he catches at least one fish smaller than the minimum size limit.

When the water temperature started warming in earnest two weeks ago, the Lake Fork crappie action kept pace.

Young and two customers caught complete limits (75 total crappie) of the best fish he’s seen since last spring. The biggest ones weighed just above two pounds, but the smallest ones weighed more than one pound apiece.

“Right now,” said Young, “we’ve got crappie in the shallows, we’ve got crappie under the bridges, and we’ve still got some crappie holding out in the deep water.”