Thread: Pulling Cranks 101

I've been reading thru this thread and figured it was time I joined in. I started trolling for crappie way back in the late 60's at Grenada when I was just a kid with my dad . We pulled bombers and Arbogaster lures (the ones with the metal diving lip and plastic skirt) back then. We didn't have fishfinders or graphs so a lot of time was wasted and plenty of lures lost but we caught fish. Most of our trolling was done from a big old steel hull diesel powered cabin cruiser called "Big Momma" and back then she was the biggest boat on Grenada lake. A bad storm and flood that took away the boat slips and big piers at the Grenada landing claimed the life of Big Momma and ended a long saga of summer fun for us young crappie anglers.
We'd been hearing about big catches of crappie coming from Enid lake just a few miles north so My dad bought a new 15 ft. Duracraft and a 9 1/2 Johnson and we left Grenada lake for good in the summer of 71. The bait of choice on Enid was the old wooden dive bombers and boy did they catch fish. Four "loose and limber" spinning rods and four Zebco 33's and a box of Bombers was all you needed back then to catch a lot of big slab crappie. Dad installed a couple of big tractor umbrellas on that Duracraft to keep that July sun from cooking us and we rode many a mile in that little boat from Point Pleasant to Billy's creek and out from Water Valley landing.
In the spring of 75 I found a mid 60's Duracraft 28 foot pontoon that was in dire need of some tlc sitting in a pasture in Phillip, Ms. and from that day forward our trolling made a definite change for the better. Plenty of room to sit comfortably, a roof over our head, and now we could pull 5 rods instead of four. A BBQ grill added to the front of the deck turned outings into a family affair and some of my family's fondest memories ore of times spent together on that old pontoon boat with my dad and family.
I lost my dad to bone cancer back in 1992 and his last summer with us we made some ramps and wheeled his chair onto the deck of that old pontoon boat, knowing it would be his last few times to do what he loved most in life. For the next ten years I went back to Enid nearly every weekend either alone or with my son and we always put out one old spinning rod with a Zebco 33 and a christmas tree colored bomber on the back of the boat for "Papaw". It always happened that that old rod and reel combo out fished the other four in numbers and size.
Bomber Bait company stopped making the old wooden dive bombers and store shelves soon emptied of all the good ones only to be replaced by plastic look-a-likes with rattles under the Pradco label but these didn't seem to run true and the crappie just didn't seem to like them as much so we tried several other different style baits. I finally found that the Bill Norman deep lil' N's would catch crappie at Enid and I bought up a bunch of them. This was just about the time that Bandit was starting up just up the road from Enid, but I never bought into the Bandits but stuck with the "N's" and what few bombers I had left in my tackle box.
As life goes on and time changes everything my occupation moved me away from what I loved most in life, and my weekend trips to troll Enid are but a distant memory now. The old pontoon boat sits tornado damaged in a pasture in Vaiden, my tackle box of "N's" in Texas with my son. I have a few old bombers still in my possession, destined for a shadow box for my wall. I , at 60, now reside in Pearl, ms. My dad's old Duracraft boat is still with me and this past summer I restored it and have been out on Barnett in it a few times to try my hand at trolling without success. A limited income prevents me from purchasing all the latest gadgets that you fellas use and without GPS it seems that trolling here on the res. is practically impossible but that's not going to stop me from trying. I have managed to pick up a few Bandit lures in what seems to be the best colors and I will be out there as soon as the weather permits to give it a shot. If any of you guys see a black Duracraft with grey carpet wearing the registration MI-3905-AE out trolling on Barnett, stop by and say Hi.....
happy fishing, Fred

Great story Fred!!! Thank you for sharing

Awesome story! I hope you can continue to fish and can learn a few spots on your lake. Good luck!

Here's a short but true story with a tip that might help a few of my fellow trollers:
I took my son out on the old pontoon boat one day (he was maybe 13 at the time) for a day of trolling at Enid (back in '91 or '92). We launched from Cossar park and dropped the "N's" just off the point at Bean creek. Within minutes we hung a slab on rod #2. My son immediately claimed rod #2 as "his" for the day and he reeled in the first fish of this outing. I had a variety of colors tied on that morning, rod #2 pulling a chartreuse with blue back gelcoat deep lil' N. Maybe 5 minutes passed before rod #2 doubled over a second time with another "big-un". Well it didn't take me long to reel up the other four and get more chartreuse blue back "N's" tied onto the other rods. All baits looked identical to me, all swimming true, all tied to 10 lb. stren. Bam ! #2 hammered again, and again, and again. By noon I was rather aggravated and getting rather hungry. The morning tally: rod # 2 caught 13 nice perch (one of which won my son a free rod and reel for biggest crappie of the month at a local bait shop), the other four rods combined - 3.
We reeled them in and headed toward the swimming beach in Long Branch creek, parked there and my son hit the water for a cool down as I fired up the grill to cook a few hot dogs for our noonday "feast". He was swimming and playing with a couple of other kids and payed no attention to me as I slipped over and clipped the "N" from rod #2 and swapped it to rod # 4 (my rod). I chuckled to myself as I was tying them on that he wouldn't know what I'd done. Soon we were back out on the water and dropped the lines on the center of Long Branch creek and headed east toward Point Pleasant, just off the flats when rod #4 bent nearly double. By the time we got to the point I had boated 4 more on rod 4. He looked at me with the most serious stare one could get from a 13 year old and finally said "Dad, I KNOW what you did!"
We ended that day with a cooler of really nice fish all caught on the same color bait, most caught on the same lure. As we got back to the boat ramp that evening, before untying the lures from the rods I walked up to my truck and got a sharpie marker from the glove box and marked that special bait for future reference. When I got home I got a paint pen and numbered all my crankbaits on the bottom of the bill and dabbed a little clearcoat over the numbers. That special bait was given the honor of wearing old #2, and for the rest of the summer it continued to out catch all my other identical lures. I have no clue why ...they looked the same, I shook them and listened to the rattles.....all the same.....I weighed them ....all the same....but there was something different about #2. If only the fish could talk....

P.S. - old #2 was lost later that summer (hung on a snag off the treeline at Water Vally landing) so if anyone reading this happens to find an old chartreuse blue back "N" with a #2 painted under the bill I sure would love to have it back. I might even pay a reward..... happy fishin' , Fred

thanks, guys. I appreciate it. I'll write a few more as my memory allows. Should I keep them here or on a separate thread?

Here is a question for you guys. I have an old combo-selector from when I was a bass fisherman. Have any of you used one to help decide which color to start with on a given day? Did it seem to get it right? You know, now that I think about it... the temperature and PG gauge that this thing has might be a handy tool to have in the boat as well......

I tried one years ago (probably still in the locker on the old pontoon boat) but it didn't really seem to help. I let the fish tell me what they want....

Great story Fred!!!