I've been on Old Hickory twice trying the pushing technique with cranks. I like that you can follow the contours closer vs. pulling 80 to 100 feet behind the boat. I put in at Cairo and followed the channel starting in the 22 fow range and worked a stretch of channel going shallower in 6 foot increments. I caught several small walleye and sauger on the deeper pass several yellow belly and two short crappie. Its more getting the feel of this than loading the boat up, the 1/3 more line than the depth you want the crank at is pretty close if the line is trailing at 45 degree. I'm going to fish a MTCC tourney at Tim's tomorrow morning, I've never seen the lake, I know it has docks so I'm going to do some shooting, if there is a thermocline I may drop the cranks about 4 feet above the thermo and cover some water. Looking at the TOPO map its a deep lake with very few flats which most articles I've read is where you want to troll, we'll see

Happy fishing,
Ray