The shad will ball up near the surface and the herring will usually be a little deeper below them. As they move in here, so do the stripers. Anywhere along a creek they can ambush them, they will. If you put a bait with a hook in it in that ambush, well, you can turn the tables on that striper."

Hall, who operates Ramrod's Guide Service (919/622-2796), tricks the ambushing stripers by using only a hook and line to get the bait out in the water. Occasionally, he will attach a small split shot weight a couple of feet above the hook as the sun gets up and stripers feed a little deeper. Using natural bait that he caught before sunup in a cast net, the guide employs matched sets of planer boards to move the hooked baits, which are referred to as free lines, out to the side and away from the boat.

The whole presentation works because the free lines are trolled behind the boat using an electric "Auto Pilot" trolling motor mounted to the bow of the boat. Ramrod can set the general direction of the trolling motor with a remote control and the motor will make any necessary course adjustments based on an internal compass. As the boat moves forward, the planer boards, to which the fishing line is attached by a plastic clip, pull to either the right or left based on the shape of the wedge built into the front of each board. In addition to the lines attached to boards, the guide trails other lines without boards behind the boat in the same fashion to cover the water directly behind the boat. In all, Ramrod usually run six boards and four flatlines while trolling the edges of the creek channels.

"I stagger the amount of line that's let out on each rod," Hall said. "I may put 40 feet of line out behind one and 60 feet behind another and add another 10 feet to the next one. The idea is to figure out how far back behind the board to fish in order to get their attention."

Hall also monitors the overall boat speed by watching the speedometer built in to his sonar/GPS unit. He generally starts at .5 mph and will adjust his speed from there. At this speed he will parallel the shoreline but always starts closer to the mouth of the creek and works his way back toward the end.

"The stripers will move shallow at night, herding baitfish toward the shallows. They often feed right at first light and will stay active for a few hours. Then by 10 a.m. in the morning as the sun gets up, they'll retreat back to deeper water. A striper doesn't like bright sunlight, so I work in his direction, trying to catch them as they move back out of the creek."