Neely only fishes the shady sides of docks, and he noted that it's important to focus on the shade. Even in the dead of winter and even 20 feet beneath the surface, the crappie won't be in the bright sun if there is shade nearby, he has found.

The most consistent way to load up on Lake Wylie slabs, however, is by trolling -- a technique that has been popularized and perfected on Wylie in more recent years. Neely was first exposed to the general concept of trolling about 20 years ago when he saw an angler drifting with several lines out on South Carolina's Lake Wateree. He soon brought the idea home and began developing his own trolling technique.

Neely, who now has his technique down to a science, trolls with 10 lines. He fishes six off the back of the boat and two off each side, staggering pole lengths on the sides to keep the lines separated. He makes two short casts, two medium casts and two long casts with his back poles so the jigs ride at different depths. Then he adjusts the rigs as the crappie reveal themselves. Within a few hours, he might be making all long or short casts, depending on which lines the crappie are hitting.

Neely keeps his line sizes uniform at 6-pound-test and uses all 1/16-ounce jigs, having learned exactly how deep those rigs run at various trolling speeds and with different cast lengths. He typically trolls between 1.1 and 1.3 miles per hour, measuring his speed by GPS for the greatest precision.

During the winter, Neely expects most fish to be somewhere in the vicinity of the mouths of the big creeks, whether just outside the creeks in the main lake or actually up inside of them.

"It doesn't take long to figure out how far they've gone into the creeks and how deep they want the jigs," he said.

Neely fishes almost exclusively with hair jigs when he trolls, having found them to have the most enticing action and to be the least likely to snag. He noted that if a single leg on a tube jig gets wrapped around the hook, that causes the bait to run differently and crappie will not touch it. Neely's colors of choice are chartreuse and black, chartreuse and red, white, and "bumble bee."

As the season progresses and strings of sunny days or major warm rains cause crappie to move onto shallow flats, Neely will take the same style of hair jig and rig it a foot or two under a float. He'll then work along the banks of major creeks, casting the rig around dock pilings, tree tops and other shallow cover and work it with twitches of the rod. Then, when cool snaps push the fish back toward the creek channels, he'll return to trolling.

While Lake Wylie offers terrific early-season fishing, anglers should not expect to find the solitude that sometimes comes with venturing out during the cool months. Partly because of the quality of the bass and crappie fisheries, the lake receives heavy use right through the middle of the winter. Along with being loaded with fish, Wylie has two "hotspots" from power plants, making it extra popular for the winter approach. In addition, it lies between Charlotte and Rock Hill, South Carolina, so its fish-filled waters are convenient to many fishermen.

The Carolinas do not have a reciprocal licensing agreement. Wylie anglers must be licensed for the state in which they are fishing. Most folks who spend much time on the lake spring for both licenses because it opens up far more territory. Anglers who possess only a North Carolina license must be careful to stay on the proper side of the border, especially through Wylie's midsection, where the state line runs right through the middle of the lake's main body.