Hulkster,
They sound like REALLY healthy vines and I wouldn't do anything to
them if you happy with what you harvested last year. They sound like
they are head trained vines which is perfectly fine if they're doing
fine. What I would do is find the "canes" that grew last year. THose
canes will have no bark and probably a reddish-orange color. They have
buds about 6 inches apart and probably are about 3 feet long. Fruit
will only come from buds on those canes. Cut each of those canes back
towards the head of the vine ("the large stub of the vine") to leave
only 1 bud per cane. Don't forget there is a bud at the intersection
of the cane and the head. You could just leave all those buds this
year that way you'd "crop" each vine exactly the way it was cropped
last year. If the grapes weren't ripe last year cut the buds in half
and cut off half the canes all the way back to the head. SO if you
have 30 canes coming out of the head you'll leave 30 1 bud stubs. See
how that goes then next year you could build a trellis system Concord
like high-wire cordon because their growing pattern is downward but
you don't have to do that this year. With keeping with the existing
pruning system it gives you a full year to read up on you next move.

Hope this helps.

Bob

wrote in message >...
> i have been given about 20 concord grape vines to take care of, these
> vines are very old and havent been taken care of too much. i have read
> a bit about pruning grape vines but my question is is there a point when
> you cut the vine completely off at the base?? i ask this because all the
> vines are big i mean some of the bases are bigger around than a softball
> and are real knarly. or should i just leave them alone and try to work
> with what i got? it looks as though every year someone had cut off all
> growth to a large stub of vine about 2 ft high.
> the old lady called me last fall to come and pick all the grapes and i
> was surprised by the abundance of grapes on the vines, i had nearly
> 200lbs.
>
> what should i do?
>
> mike