I have my plan set, but I was wondering - I've got one scholarship open at Tark-Tulane.  Conference money is minimal, and I'm at a C prestige.

What kind of thing do y'all do in this situation?  Wait to poach? 'Cause you can't poach anyone who'd cost more than $20K to a C prestige.  Go early?  

I mean, of course you have to let the big dogs go first, but what have you guys found to be the best way to fill that spot with a decent player?

I would probably try to find a guy with a lot of high potentials that I could redshirt. As you said -- who would you really be able to poach that would be worth poaching?

I would stay local and go after someone like girt described. Anyone too ready to play right away will be scooped up.

Honestly Corn, in your situation, having one open schollie, I'd go for broke.  Aim for the moon.  Worst case scenario, you take a walk-on and get the extra 15K next season to try again, hopefully with an improved prestige.  Or you could take Daalt's suggestion and find a guy with a bunch of high potentials (hopefully the high/high variety), redshirt him, and have yourself a really solid player four years down the road, nothing wrong with that either. 

One thing I would NOT do is restrict myself to just local recruits.  Sticking to nothing but locals is the quickest way to mediocrity in my opinion.  Diamonds in the rough CAN be found, you just have to look for them and know what you're looking FOR and that means scouring the whole country (not to mention the international players, lots of nice bargains there).  And "scouring" the whole country does not equate to "scouting" the whole country, that's not a typo.