A few years ago, a dedicated group of North Carolina tournament crappie fishermen were plying their trades around the various waters of their home state, South Carolina and Virginia, as well as destinations even farther away. Trading back and forth between various crappie tournament trails, this group of anglers felt that something was missing. Rather than piecing together various events to decide which team was the best, they determined that there was a need for a more localized crappie tournament trail -- a trail that would cater to anglers in North Carolina and surrounding areas. All that was needed was a person to put the trail together and stand as the organizer. Enter Ed Duke.

"I had a lot of local crappie teams who were having a hard time traveling to other states convince me that we should start our own trail. North Carolina is blessed with some great crappie fishing and the anglers here didn't see why they needed to travel two or three states away -- and sometimes farther -- to compete. That's how the Southern Crappie Association got started."

Duke and his wife, Trudy, are from Concord and love to crappie fish together and make a formidable team to boot. The couple has traveled to nearly every body of water in the Tar Heel State that contains crappie.

Asking the Dukes about their favorite crappie destination is not a question to ask lightly. The couple simply does well on most all of North Carolina's waters and many in South Carolina and Virginia as well. However, Ed Duke's top picks for wintertime North Carolina crappie destinations came surprisingly fast: Falls Lake northeast of Durham and Kerr-Buggs on the North Carolina/Virginia border. Here's what the president of the Southern Crappie Association had to say about these two lakes.

FALLS LAKE
Falls Lake is a 12,500-acre man-made lake located in Durham, Wake and Granville counties in North Carolina. The lake is formed near the confluence of the Eno, Little and Flat rivers, and is in turn the source for the Neuse River. The lake is named for the Falls of the Neuse, a section of the Neuse River that falls from the Piedmont into the lower Coastal Plain and which is now submerged under the lake.

Before 1978, flooding of the Neuse River caused extensive damage to public and private properties, including roadways, railroads, industrial sites and farmlands. The Falls Lake Project was developed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to control damaging floods and to supply a source of water for surrounding communities. The construction of the dam that holds the lake began in 1978 and was completed in 1981.

When Ed and Trudy Duke set their sights on fishing Falls Lake in the winter, there's no question of where they will start.

"Without hesitation, we're heading for Ledge Rock Landing on the upper end of Falls, close to the I-85 bridge," Duke said. "Once we've launched the boat, we're going to head downriver a bit and turn right into the Neuse River. From there it's just a little piece down to the mouth of Little Lick Creek and we'll start there and work all the way down to where the power lines cross the lake."