Doug... What ....?

Sat that one on the tee didn't you?

I've trolled every style of crankbait for white bass, sauger, crappie, bass, cat fish for well over 40 years. I was influenced greatly as a pre-teen by the catches of a guide named Dutch Owens. My Dad ran Port Ken Bar ,now Green Turtle Bay Marina, on Barkley less than 5 years after it was flooded. Dutch Owen used the 1st Lowrance Green Box flasher I had ever seen and fished Cumberland River ledges with a metal plug he made that was very much like a Buck Perry Spoonplug. He was catching fish others chose to ignore while they beat the banks.

The lure of deep water fishing followed me into being able to fish with some of the pioneers of Carolina-rigging and casting to off-shore structure while fishing BASS tournaments in GA. When I moved my family back to KY, I became somebody who lots of bass fishermen wanted to follow and watch as I fished roadbeds, drop-offs and channel junctions. This deep water fishing morphed back to trolling, something I had tried as a teen. Spending hours in a Skeeter Starfire with a single rod stuck between my back and the seat as I dragged 2 5 gallon buckets behind to slow down, helped me find new areas to fish. One thing that is funny about that time is we were mad if we hooked a big crappie becaus eit meant we had dragged the baits off the top of the ridges and into deep water. Our methods were much too heavy to be able to finesse a crappie. It was yank them to the boat and we lost most of them.

My tactics have changed a lot since those times. Trolling is an easy way to take a group of clients out and get them into fish even if they don't have a clue which end of the rod to hold.