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