I love fishing crank baits and always have at least one tied on.  I tend to use them as a search bait primarily but will put it down if I can not get them to run through the vegetation without fouling up.  If that is the case I just switch to Texas rigged 7" culprit worm, it is slower but very effective

Cranking is where it all started for me.The dam I used to fish was full of crappie.I used to catch one after the other all day long on a small KVD sexy shad pattern.Then one day I was fishing the weed line and hooked up with my first LMB.I was shaking I was so excited.Now I'm a bass fishing junkie because of that.I still shake a hoot when I hook into a big one.Ponds and lakes seem to be full of weeds by fall and cranking becomes quite difficult.The major drought last year may have made it much worse than it should have been.