Went out by myself and with the winds from the NE I decided Catawbe would be the best place to start. Got out early, before the charters, and as I was leaving the no wake zone I started marking fish every where. I set up to troll but with Rapalas not Bandits. Bam, 5 fish in the first pass going towards the reef all 19" plus with the largest at 25". Then low and behold all the charter boats started showing up, so I knew I was in the right spot. They were all drifting and doing pretty well with action so I decided to try dragging one rod with a golden nugget and crawler and casting a blade bait. I did that for and hour and a half and every boat was catching fish but not me. I hooked up a couple with the crawler but lost them all. So I said the heck with that, lets troll bandits. With only two rods, I started at 45/55 and over the next hour and half progressed down to 65 on both side (only 18-20 ft of water) nothing. Went back to casting/drifting and floated over a hump where there were always tons of marks... nothing. It was just starting to rain so I said heck with this I will troll back towards Catawbe with harnesses and caught four more just like that!

So my questions... what was I doing wrong with dragging a crawler and casting a blade, shouldn't that work? No stinger hook on the nugget was my excuse there and I was using a 3/8 blade bait and thought I was doing a pretty good job keeping it close to the bottom. I was using chrome blue and black and gold. What was up with the Bandits, 1.8 -2.0 was my speed? I was blaming 45-65 leads and just putting my rods to the side (no Church boards) so the short lead was to close to the boat. The rapalas were out 100-125+.

Anyway a good day, had to work hard to get the sixth fish but I guess that was better than being home by 8 am.

PS I wish the board would pick up again, seems very quite for as many boats and as many fish!

Best luck to all,

Tracy