On a daily basis, it's just a matter of finding the kinds of spots on which bass are holding, and which depth range, then matching up different places with similar characteristics.

"There are a lot of community holes, and you've got to fish them to see if the fish are there. They get a lot of pressure, and a lot of times they'll quit biting on those spots for a while, but you've got to check them out. They're community holes because they produce a lot of fish, and you need to know that," Cable said.

Probably the "biggest" community hole is a submerged railroad bed that enters the lake in Little Beaver Creek and runs all the way to Farrington Point, crossing the lake in a number of different areas. On top, at normal summer pool, it's about 15 feet deep, which puts it within reach of the deep-diving crankbaits that Cable likes to throw, as well as Carolina- and Texas-rigged plastics and tailspinners.

"Ninety-five percent of the time, I'll cast shallow and bring a bait out into deep water," Cable said. "I'll fish it first with a crankbait, and if I think I'm on a spot where I should be catching fish, I'll fish it with a Carolina rig or a big Texas rig if I don't get a bite on a crankbait. There are times when fish will bite soft plastics when they won't bite a crankbait, and times when they'll bite a crankbait when they won't bite soft plastics."

Cable's favorite baits are Poe's Series 400 and 400P crankbaits in all shades of chartreuse. His favorite is the "homer" color -- chartreuse with a green back, but he fishes chartreuse/brown, chartreuse/blue and occasionally a bone or shad pattern. In plastics, he prefers a ZetaBait "Ringo" -- a centipede-type bait -- when he Carolina rigs, and a 10-inch Gillraker worm with a 1/2-ounce bullet weight when he hops a Texas rig down a drop. His fourth go-to bait is a Little George tailspinner, which he casts into shallow water and hops and drags down a bank toward deep water.

Impounded in the early 1980s and covering 14,300 acres, Jordan was one of North Carolina's best trophy-bass lakes in the 1990s. Managed by the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission with a 16-inch size minimum, Jordan spit out a lot of big bass for a good 10 years. Cable said, however, that fishermen shouldn't come to Jordan expecting to catch a lot of lunkers.

"It's a real lake now, not a new lake," he said. "I can't count the number of 8-pound fish I've caught out of Jordan, but I can count the number I've caught in the last year or two -- because there haven't been many.

"When you fish offshore structure like this, you catch a lot of 2 1/2- to 4-pound fish, with an occasional 5 or 6. You don't catch many dinks," Cable said. "You look at the tournament weights, and you still see good weights, but what you don't see are the really big fish anymore. You'll hear of a 7- or an 8-pounder every once in a while.

"Back about 10 years ago, if you had a good day fishing a crankbait, you might have 10 or 12 keepers, and you'd have maybe a couple of 5s or 6s, and probably at least one 7 or 8. Now, you get plenty of 3s and 4s, and maybe a 5 or a 6."

Like Jordan and High Rock, Buggs Island (49,500 acres) has a lot of wonderful offshore structure, according to Richardson. "It's also has a lot of baitfish, and you've got different-colored water all over the lake. You can go down and fish clear water near the dam, or you can go up and fish shallow, colored water up toward the river," said Richardson, who posts Buggs Island fishing reports on his Web site (www.joelgrichardson.com).