SquareBill

The Shimano Compre is a great rod for the money. I bought a couple of them 3 years back and still use them to this day. It is a very sensitive, durable, and fairly lightweight rod, I would definitely recommend them to anyone w/ a $100 budget. They are hard to beat for the money

Are using mono or fluoro line? I have found sometimes that when I'm fishing cranks with fluorocarbon, due to the extra sensitivity and less stretch of fluoro line, I feel the strikes just a hair to soon which causes me to sometimes rip the bait away from or out of the fish's mouth before it can take the bait in enough for a good solid hookup. This may or may not be your problem, but if you are losing fish in the first 1-2 seconds of the hookup, then it may be something to consider.

I don't know about the rest of you, but if nothing twists your **** more than a new crank that runs crooked right out of the box, then I advise you to steer clear of strike king pro model cranks-it seems that at least 4 out of 5 I have ever bought needed to be tuned right out of the box. With that being said I would say for... --squarebills/shallow cranks: Bomber Square A's, Bandits, Norman(Thin N & Mad N) --Mid depth 5-9/9-12 feet: Any Bomber's (4,5,6 A's), Norman (Little N, Middle N), Bandits, Wiggle Warts All of these are great cranks that have always ran true out of the box and produced fish for me. You can find any of these cranks for $4-5 usually, and the bombers can sometimes be picked up awfully cheap if you catch em' on sale. If you want to spend a couple extra bucks($6-8), the Rapala DT's, Bomber Fat Free Shad's & Switchback Shads are all good cranks that you won't have to spend time tuning. For the most part though when it comes to affordable, reliable, and quality cranks I don't stray to far from Bomber, Norman, Bandits, Warts, and Raps