How does one go about using a crankbait? When should you use them, and are there any tricks????

Go to the Bassresource.com home page and search for crankbait articles.  Do a google search and you will have countless hours of reading.  I would also highly recommend Mike Iaconelli's article on crankbaits- he breaks down the different actions of crankbaits and when to use each.  

Bass-Whisperer, as The Natural pointed out there many great articles on crankbaits right here on this site, plus some very knowledgeable crank fishermen. If you are new to cranks, keep it simple, do not get caught up in the crankbait arms race where the latest and greatest are must haves, those $3.00 Bombers and Normans have caught tons of fish. They key to cranks is to CONCENTRATE, do not just chuck and wind, think about what its doing and feel what its doing through your hands.

    A rare insight into crankbait fishing

The biggest key to becoming a better crankbait angler is to pay attention to the vibration. Try to block out distractions and tune in to what your bait is doing. Feel the vibrations the whole cast and retrieve. Use the force! Concentrate on the vibration and keep a positive attitude. The more you pay complete attention to the steady vibration of the bait the easier you can detect a difference or change in the vibration. You can tell when your bait comes in contact with cover or when its about to. You can feel the rush of water that means a fish just rolled on your bait. Sometimes you just loose the vibration which means the fish has your lure or when you feel slack. Most strikes are not bone jarring but a slight difference in the vibration and almost feels like an interruption in the vibration. Most guys say well with a crankbait the fish hook themselves. Well, unless you spend hours sharpening your hooks and if the bass turns with your bait more than likely your missing fish. If you do not react to the strike you can have the sharpest hooks but guess what they can still spit it. You don't set the hook like a jig or worm but I sweep my rod to gather any slack and line stretch just that tension is enough to drive the hook but if your sitting there waiting for the fish to hook themselves your going to be waiting a long time. If your using a dead pulling crankbait where all you feel is the pull and not the vibration you will never feel the difference in vibration and will never have a clue how many fish hit and spit your bait. Color is a factor to what bait to use in what water color or clarity but your first step should always be vibration. Depth control, lip style, line size all need to be factored in also. When figuring out what retrieve to use I try to make an educated guess of what I think the activity level of the bass should be then tweak the way you work the bait as you learn more through the day. I feel that a single rattle or no rattle work best because it gives a bass more of a direction of where the bait is. Sound from rattles kinda spreads out and doesn't give much of a direction just an are of noise but vibration gives more of a pinpoint direction. Baits with tons of rattles in them call bass from an area and in clear water to slightly stained water can be very effective. You need to understand that rattle noise and vibration are two separate things. You can't put them in the same category. Vibration gives a pinpoint direction and rattles give a general direction. Rod position will effect the depth of your bait and will change the amount of feel you have. I try to point my rod to my bait and as the bait runs deeper follow it with my rod. If I keep my rod high it will loose depth if you point your rod to the side you will have a hard time feeling that rush of water I was talking about. Casting distance will effect the amount of room the bait has to reach its deepest running depth. Its kinda a game of angles if you get good at it you can hit structure or a depth zone with some consistency. Different lures that are identical will have different running depths so you need to play with them to figure out what depth they run. The depth on the lure package in most cases is an average running depth. Lur Jenson and DT lures are the few that have an accurate running depth not an average but always factor in casting distance and how much running room your bait has to reach that depth. A Bill Norman bait kinda slowly works its way to the depth and about when the bait reaches the boat is the max depth it will run. It took most of the cast distance to work down to that depth. As a bait gets close to the boat it looses depth and starts working its way to the surface. So if I make a long cast with this bait and reel it in about 30 feet out away from my boat is the max depth that bait will run.

The DT baits are different because it digs as soon as you start reeling and in a short distance gains depth. Most baits don't do that and take more running room to reach the same depth. The wider the wobble the more resistance the bait has and the less depth the bait can go. It just takes them longer to get there and may not reach the depth they have marked on them unless you cast them a mile. For a bait to dive deep quick it needs to have a tight action. You have the floatation of the bait fighting the lip that's trying to make it dive. You also have the wide wiggle that puts up resistance. Your line is adding floatation to your lure. Some line by itself floats and the resistance of the line cutting through the water cuts down on how deep the bait will go. Colors lol well let me put it to you this way most bass grab a bait from under it or behind it. (look at the bass in my picture what do you think the last color it saw before it hit that bait and notice the location it hit that bait) The belly color and the colors viewed from behind is the most important. Bet you never thought about it that way huh. The back color only comes into play when the bait is plowing the bottom like a crawfish. The sides only come into play in clear water (flash)or when the bait deflects off of cover and turns the bait so that the sun reflects off of the side color. A lot of the neat finishes that crankbaits have unless there is enough light to reflect off of it (which means the bait needs to tilt to the sun to reflect with the right mechanical action already in the bait) or if the bait glances off of something to reflect the light they serve no purpose other than they look pretty. If the bait doesn't reflect off of the sun the color appears dull or a shadow. Crawfish colors for bottom bouncing lures and shad or yellow for anything not hitting the bottom. Clear water flash comes into play. If the lake has shad I throw shad baits if there is a lot of bluegills then I try to match it. Dirty water bright or dark colors because your dealing more in shapes and vibration. Super clear water I fish more chrome colors. If I am fishing a place that has shiners then gold works. Shiners in stained water or heavy stained water appear yellow or dark or white depending on the amount of stain the water has. In spring red because it looks like a bluegill and they are the first to move to the shore after ice out. You can put a ton of thought in colors and styles if you want but really it boils down to the vibration and the way a bass views the colors before they hit your bait. Most of the time a bass just sees an opportunity to feed and if its the right size it has been feeding on it hits it. Spend more time on vibration and depth control than pinning down a new color that nobody has. You will get a headache. There are times like after a hatch that you need to match the size and general color of the hatch or if there is alot of stain in the water you need to use a brighter color but most of the time a basic color selection and a good selection of different kinds of vibration is the key. There is a lot of times I use odd colors for the wrong clarity of the water and still catch a bunch of fish because I match the right vibration to the right clarity of the water. Color is important when they can see it but vibration is top on my list. Bait signature is the vibration and water displacement that every bait has. The more water a bait displaces the greater the bait signature. This means the more water displacement the better a bass can find your bait in low visibility. This is important in choosing the right vibration with the right water clarity. I always label lures in three main categories tight wiggle medium and wide. Tight wiggle baits are for clear water because bass feed mainly by sight not sound or vibration. Medium wiggle baits I use for clear to stained water and wide wiggle baits are for stained to muddy. I do this because the less distance a bass can see under water the more a bass uses its hearing.

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You don't want to throw a tight vibrating bait in heavy stained water because bass would have a hard time finding it and it will not stand out. If you ever took a close look at a rattletrap it runs in a straight line but kinda looks like its fighting to stay straight. The bait kinda shifts to the right a little then to the left a little then rights itself. Well, that's the way real shad swims. A live shad doesn't run dead on straight to get anywhere. A crankbait that mimics that same pattern when cranked will displace more water and look like what a bass was born to eat shad. Tight vibrating crankbaits that are just a hair off tune will mimic that same action. Wood baits are the best for this action but some plastic baits can do it to. Lucky Craft BDS, Bandit, and Norman baits are some that I have tuned to mimic that off center action (sometimes its the luck of the draw). Most wood baits do it on their own most of the time without messing with them. Distressed live bait: If you ever watched a shad get spooked you should know that it darts around trying to get away from a would be predator. Shad and other live bait act completely different when they figure out that they are on the dinner plate. They boogie in a random direction to try to get away. Many fishermen try to bounce their bait on the bottom to make it have a random action. This is fine and it works but if you take a wood bait and tune it slightly out of tune your bait will do some wild stuff. You don't need to bounce it off of anything just reel. Some "special crankbaits" will search a good distance right and left.  I was fishing one today that when I started my reel it shot right 3 ft then straightened out then shot right and left randomly. The thing about it was each cast the lure acted different. This random action makes your bait different then most of the baits that people throw.  They also have a unique vibration pattern that is different from the mechanical action of most plastic baits that the average guys use. The bait acts like a distressed live bait. Foreign: Baits that have a lot of rattle or an odd vibration or action strikes the curiosity of a bass. In some cases it turns the bass off. You need to understand that a bass that lived all of its life in clear water has developed its sight the most because that is what it mainly uses it to feed. By the same token a bass in muddy water bass has developed its hearing the most because it uses it the most to feed. If you take a clear water bass and drop it in a muddy lake it would have a hard time hitting your crankbait with 100% accuracy until it adjusted to the muddy water if it does at all. You need to understand this when you choose your crankbait and the speed you reel it. Lakes that are clear most of the year then a storm muddies it up this is when it is wise to slow down and use more vibration because the bass is still in the clear water mode. Where a bait signature becomes foreign is when you use a wide wobbling lure in clear water. Some bass will be duped by a strange vibration but most will be turned off because it is foreign to the environment. You take that same bait and fish it on an overcast day, over heavy cover or low light and things change. Tuning: (regular baits not wild search baits) A medium and deep bait that is perfectly tuned when you throw it out and point your rod at your lure and reel. When your bait reaches the boat it should run almost under it and the very front of the lip should be what you see as it reaches the surface. It should not run right or left of center at the boat. Some baits take time to tweak to get it right and other baits for whatever reason will never get right and need to be weeded out. A perfectly tuned bait will dive the deepest and vibrate the most when it is tuned correctly. Bait runs right bend the eye left. Bait runs left bend right. It just takes a slight bend in most cases and if it takes a dramatic twist you might want to ditch the bait.

Some plastic baits the two halves are not matched up right and will be difficult to tune and would be a good bait to give to your buddy. Some Bandits are like that and I have had some Fatfree shads that way too. Strike detection: When in doubt set the hook! It takes some time to know what weeds feel like and stumps but while your getting the right touch its a good idea to set on anything different. If you have a hard time feeling the strike or the vibration of the bait graphite is a wonderful thing and a glass rod has its place but composite is the best of both worlds. I stuck a fish today that if my line broke I would have thought it was just a stump. Sometimes it is tough to determine a strike so I set the hook on anything. This time it turned out to be a 3 pounder.

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Knock on wood

Out of the many ways of presenting a crankbait all anglers will agree that bumping the stump is high on the productivity list of techniques. This is power fishing at its best and with the right gear can put some big fish in the boat. Anytime that you put a lure in a jungle of stumps and snags without the heavy gear to ****** and drag them out you stand a good chance of being left with a lost fish and a broken heart. Most tournament fishermen use 14-20 lb test line to help resist against aberration and beef up to a heavy action rod to give the fishermen the power to help control and move the fish out of the cover. This is not for the faint of heart and if you are worried about loosing your prized crankbait your not going to put the bait where it needs to be to catch fish. You would be amazed how well a bait with six hooks on it will get through cover without snagging if you choose the right bait. The lip style can be critical and having a working knowledge of each lip style can make or break you. What you need to understand is that a square bill has one kick out feature on either side of the lip. When a square bill rams into a stump it will turn and hit the corner of the bill and kick out away from the object. This style is the best for heavy cover. A coffin bill has two kick out features on either side of the lip. When this lip rams into an object the first corner kicks out the bait and the second corner really kicks it out away from an object. This style bill works best on a single stump or object. This bill reacts the most when deflecting off of an object and you don't want to use it in heavy heavy stuff because it will kick out away from one stump and snag into another. A round bill don't have any kick out features unless your using a Fat Free shad style lip. When a round lip crankbait makes contact with cover it will travel the closest to the object to get around it. This is the lip style you want to use for standing timber. The materials that a crankbait is made out of can be factored in also. I have always been a firm believer in using wood crankbaits for wood cover. I like them over plastic mainly because a wood bait will react more that a plastic bait in cover. Wooden baits hunt plastic baits will not. This year try a little wood knocking you might be surprised how effective this technique can be.

Chris obviously has some good info, and I'll add that when you tie on a crank, use your rod tip to move it around just under the surface to see the crankbaits action.  Chris also talked about being in tune with your bait, and feeling what it is doing at all times, which is key.  An easy way to judge how fast your crankbait is wobbling is to not only feel the vibration, but look at your rod tip...it will wobble in sych with your crankbait.  

Awesome posts Chris, very informative

When should you use them?

I use crankbaits all year long and there isn't many situations where I can't use a crankbait.

Excellent posts Chris. That was a lot of good information that can only be learned by trial and error, but you explained it very well.

chris   kb here   where i fish on my home lakes in no.central indiana   about 40 miles away from whittler   on lake shafer and freeman  the water is from stained to muddy  about all summer   with all the crazy wave runners..  have been bass fishing these lakes for 30 years and one thing i dont understand   why one day i can throw a wide wobble crank  "bandit "  and catch fish  next day same place cant get a bite goto a c.c. big o   "tight" wiggle and catch fish. this i dont understand. and if your bait dont dig the bottom you wont catch many fish. so if the water is 5'deep i use a 8-10' crank   kb   got any advice how to up my catch  kb  you say there are three different actions in viberation

i'am i wrong in saying a bandit is wide and big os is tight  if iam correct what is a med wiggle kb  i have also caught more fish  after i have gone to a   jerk bait kind of retrieve  than i ever have.  jerk,jerk  pause jerk  etc you know what i mean. i guess iam  some what like you i would rather throw a crank more than any thing.  but i do it all. the best i can. i have narrowed my lures down to   rapala,cotton cordell  . bandit,bomber, and the ones i make. have gotton rid of a lot of cranks i had that i bought and never used i thought if i could not catch fish with these cranks  and buzzbaits and spinner baits and some plastic  i would call it a day.   any advice for a old man   kb

You need to think of it more in terms of vibration. A Bandit, fatfree shad, has more of a midrange vibration. Bomber model A, Balsa B, has a tight vibration. The 3 1/2" shallow Bill Norman bait, Orion Rick Clunn, has a thump or low pitch vibration. If that gives you a reference. A wiggle of a crankbait is how far left and right the bait pivots. The vibration is what you can feel transmitted up the line to your hands. You can have a wide wiggle crankbait that has a high pitch vibration. You can also have a tight wiggling bait that because of the size and shape of the body displaces more water than a bait with a wide wiggle. When you can feel a bait thump that is a low pitch vibration. When you take a crankbait and bounce it off the bottom you change the vibration of the bait. You can take the wrong wiggle and tight vibration and fish it in the wrong water and it works because you are creating more noise/ vibration by banging it on the bottom. I have had days that one day they want a fatfree shad the next day a Bandit and the next day a Bill Norman bait, the next day a spinnerbait, the next day a Hank Parker spinnerbait, the next day a Balsa B or other handmade crankbait. Sometimes the bass are picky or conditions have changed and bass want something else. Fishing pressure and changing conditions are what changes what works.

I could write for hours on this topic but I'll save you some time.

they are the easyest bait to use. Basicly you just caast out and reel it back in.

You can change speed in murky water and in clear water you are better off just reeling steady depending on how active the bass are.

Crankbaits are a good year round bait and can be used with tramendiouse results in the spring and in the fall.

winter is another good time to use them. However use them slow and get them down deep or the fish might not hit it as much.

Bring them through tree branches and bounce them off the bottom of the lake river or resivour you are fishing.

Bring them over the weeds fast or erratic.

workingthem off rocky bottoms is another great way to use them.

hope this helps!!!

god bless

I want to fish alot more cranks this year! I am a plastic man and I want to become better at crankin. So thank all of you for the input on cranks. I think I can now fish them and be more sure of what I am doing.

      Thanks again for all the info! ;) ;D

I want to fish alot more cranks this year! I am a plastic man and I want to become better at crankin. So thank all of you for the input on cranks. I think I can now fish them and be more sure of what I am doing.

      Thanks again for all the info! ;) ;D

Since you love plastics, you might want to try one of my favorite tricks. Its called worming a crankbait. It was made famous by Bill Dance back in  the day. You fish it the same way you would a t-rig worm. Reel a little and raise the rod tip. Lower the rod. Repeat. Raising the rod brings the crank up about two or three feet and results in vicious reaction strikes. Good luck with your cranks.