Bennett loves docks, but he also likes to find deep holes along marsh banks and oyster rocks, places he says that fish will gather.

"You cast to the bank and let your bait work its way back with the current," he said. "You throw upcurrent, let it work back down, then when it gets downcurrent from you, you crank it in and start over."

Bennett likes to fish live baits for most of the summer months, when baitfish are in good supply. As the fall arrives, however, he'll fish a combination of live bait and his two favorite artificial baits, a Berkeley Gulp minnow (curlytail), and something from the MirrOlure Catch 200 series.

There is a small run of trout in the spring, but the majority of specks show up in the fall. Bennett said that, unlike his preference in fishing drum and flounder, he prefers to work on trout on the high end of the tide cycle, from two hours before to two hours after high water.

Price, who runs Wildlife Bait & Tackle in Southport and is one of the state's best-known inshore guides, keys more on the stage of the tide than the direction when he fishes creeks around his hometown -- especially for drum and trout.

"I can catch fish on a rising and falling tide," Price said (910-457-9903). "I'll fish a place on the rise, and it will be productive for a little while, then slow down. If you come back there after the tide turns and it gets back to the same level, you'll find 'em again.

"If you find fish at 9:30 in the morning, about two hours before high tide, you'll have 30 or 45 minutes or an hour of a real strong bite, then it will shut off. If you catch at the same time level in the afternoon, two hours after the high tide, you can do the same thing."

Price's knowledge of the creeks that drain Baldhead Island, particularly Cape Creek and Cedar Creek, borders on intimate. Those are some of his favorite creeks in the spring when speckled trout are spawning in them.

"The best fishing is in May and June, when they're back in there spawning, but you can catch 'em in July and August and on through the fall; you can catch speckled trout here 12 months a year," he said. "The colder it gets, the farther you want to go up the creeks because the baitfish will go farther back up the creek the colder it gets. As it warms up in April, they'll start to come back out toward the mouth of the creek."

Price fishes most of the Baldhead Island creeks, often working several of them in a day's time as he tries to find the greatest concentration of fish.

"They're all a little different. Some of them have more oyster rocks than the others. We look for little points in the marsh grass, little places that stick out a little farther into the water that might create a little eddy that can be an ambush point for fish," he said. "And we'll catch a combination of drum, flounder and trout."

Price said that Dutchman Creek in Southport and the Elizabeth River behind Oak Island are excellent creeks for puppy drum as the water warms up.

"They'll get behind Battery Island, where there are lots of oyster rocks. They seem to hold fish in that shallow water. When I go over there, if the fish aren't tailing, I'll look for birds working the surface," Price said.