“There are some shallow fish on a jerkbait, but we’ve caught the most fish around balls of shad,” Cable said (919/962-9697). “If you can find a ball of shad relating to some kind of structure, being still and not going anywhere, you’ll catch ‘em. There are a lot of times when you find a ball of shad suspended somewhere, and by the time you drop your marker buoy and drop down your spoon, they’ll be gone -- they’re just swimming through.

“If you pull up on a point and see shad, the bass will be with ‘em. I’ve caught 20 or more in a day, with most of them being anywhere from 20 to 35 feet deep.”

Like Correll, Cable puts in plenty of time idling around Shearon Harris, his eyes affixed to his depthfinder, looking for bait. “I will spend hours idling before I get into ‘em,” Cable said. “I learn where they are and start at those places, but you’ll spend a lot of time idling around to try and find bait. It seems like you find a lot of bass along the edge of creek channels or pulled up on an edge. Buckhorn Prong is good -- a lot of shad group up in there.

“Sometimes you’ll see ‘em black out the screen; sometimes the shad ball is so big that I know if I stop, I’ll catch ‘em -- and it can be crappie, white perch or largemouths.”

For jigging purposes, Cable uses a 6 1/2-foot graphite baitcasting combo spooled with 17-pound Trilene XL, with a Hopkins 75 Shorty jigging spoon on the business end of the line.

“The bite usually starts around the end of December, and we caught ‘em up through February last year,” he said. “Sometimes you can find ‘em with the shad up around 15 or 20 feet deep. And you can drift down 100 feet off the balls of shad and still catch fish. If they know there’s something to eat, they’ll pull up on a place where they can move just a little ways and crash ‘em.”

Cable said that typically, he catches plenty of fish when he finally finds a good showing of bait. “I like to sit in one place when I find ‘em,” he said. “And when you get into them, most of them will be the same size. If you catch a 2- or 2 1/2-pounder, all of them will be that size. If you catch one over 3 pounds, all of them will be. And we catch some big fish jigging; we caught three last year that were in the 7- and 8-pound class.”

Harris is one of North Carolina’s more-renowned trophy bass lakes, and the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission protects it with a 16- to 20-inch slot limit. That has protected plenty of 4- to 5-pound bass from harvest, giving the reservoir an awful lot of big fish.

Jerkbaits -- Cable likes a Daiwa TD Minnow or Lucky Craft Pointer -- are pulled out when he fishes shallow, especially for big fish.