I have been told to retreive a craink bait smooth and steady and also jerk it. what is the most successful retreive to use?

The one that works for the mood of the fish. Tinker with it until you come up with something. Generally I just chunk and reel. You can fish it stop and go or sweep it like a Carolina rig. You can run it fast and stop and twitch it then burn it. You can plow the bottom with it or ram it into things. You can be as creative as you want there is no "best retrieve" until you find the one that works for the day.

Just like Chris said, there 's no best way, the idea is to make the bait move erratically alternating the speed, the twitching, letting the bait float and then begin to retrieve again. It 's very important "WHERE" or "TO WHAT" you are casting your bait.

If I am fishing in an area that doesn't have much to delfect the bait off or if my bait runs to shallow to delfect of any kind of structure then I give mine a twitch now and then during the retrieve to throw the pattern off for a split second.

i have found that coming in contact w/ structure ,bottom included triggers more strikes than retrieve speed unless ur using suspending baits ...jerk baits...etc. just yesterday i was fishing shad pods w/ shad rap could not buy a bite untill i got it down where it was bouncing off bottom , then i started getting bit.like previous response u just gotta keep trying different retrieves untill fish tell u what they want