Shallow Cranks

[Stouty]

Hey guys, I gotta few questions about how to use them effcently. I have seen many people talking about bouncing them off wood and throwing into cover. Im not sure about this, why would you throw into wood with a crankbait and get hungup? Also with this can you fish almost anywhere with any bait or must it be a squre bill? Please help!

[MarkH024]

Hey guys, I gotta few questions about how to use them effcently. I have seen many people talking about bouncing them off wood and throwing into cover. Im not sure about this, why would you throw into wood with a crankbait and get hungup? Also with this can you fish almost anywhere with any bait or must it be a squre bill? Please help!

Crankbait bills are designed to deflect off of rock and wood. Yes, you will get hung up from time to time, but it's the price to pay when fishing with cranks. There are lure retrieve tools on the market that do a pretty good job at recovering hung up crankbaits and more.  Crankbaits are also effective being ripped through grass.  Once you get into heavy milfoil or alike weeds, it becomes difficult to not get hung up constantly.

 

You can fish a crank anywhere, but the key is to maintain contact with the bottom or whatever cover you're fishing them through. You will have much better success with this approach vs just trying to catch fish in wide open water touching nothing.  

[Fishes in trees]

If you're fishing around woody cover, square bill cranks are better than rounded bill cranks, as far as not getting stuck goes.  Even within the category of square bill cranks, some are better than others in my opinion.  My favorite is the Wordens Timber Tiger.  I use the DC 4 and DC8 sizes more often than all the other sizes put together, but I own a selection of all the different sizes they make.

 

They aren't widely available, but they are out there.   I believe Tackle Warehouse carries them.  BPS used to, but not anymore.  They key to the Timber Tiger is the splayed angular bill, which in cahoots with little molded in side fins, makes them come through cover really well.  You have to play with one for a while to get a real appreciation of how hard they are to get stuck.  When they do get stuck, they are generally  "wedged" into a crevice, and farily easy to retrieve.  I very seldom hang a hook on anything.

 

That being said, I am sure that there are other good square bill designs out there, I wouldn't really know, Timber Tigers are the brand I've used for 6 or 7 years now.

[mjseverson24]

It all depends where you fish. Different parts of the country call for different presentation. In the upper midwest MN, WI, SD, ND, and others the techniques on crankbait fishing that are popular down south on large deep resevoirs may not be aplicable to you where you fish. Most of the good large mouth bass waters in MN are stained water shallower, and weedier lakes. these lakes do not have brushpiles stumpfields or anything like it. what they have are weededges sandbars, and rockpiles. I very rarely run my crankbaits on the bottom, they are usually a few feet off the bottom due to the  heavy vegitation in these waters. a good rule of thumb on these types of lakes you want that crankbait running just a few inches into the weeds, that way you can generate some different action ripping it off the weeds. In shallow water cover I would suggest using a squarbill, if deflects off hard cover instead of rolling like a roundbill will, and get hung up.   

 

Mitch

[Marty]

I've been fishing crankbaits for 40+ years (it seems like I say that every day) and rarely have had the opportunity to bump them off the bottom or off wood. Fortunately, those techniques are not necessary to catch fish on them. One of the things that bumping does is cause a sudden change in direction and you can simulate that with your rod. I do recommend an erratic retrieve even though a steady retrieve will catch fish too.

 

It doesn't have to be a square bill, although they are reputed to bounce off wood better. There are some outstanding shallow cranks that are rounded bills, such as Baby 1-Minus, Swim-N Image, Shallow Shad Rap and others.

[TrippyJai]

While you don't have to deflect off something to catch fish on crankbaits. Most of my crankbait bites have come off a deflection, so I'll always try to trigger bites by doing that. When I first started fishing these lures, I lost so many and didn't catch any fish at all. It was frustrating making 10 casts and 20 minutes trying to un-snag them. Read up on how to walk a crankbait through cover. How to fishing them effectively and which crankbaits to use when and where.

[BobP]

I don't mind throwing a crankbait into a laydown tree or just about any other cover except maybe a submerged bush with gnarly small stems.  I've heard so many guys say square bills come through cover best that I almost believe it.  But that won't stop me from using a Mann's Baby 1- or a D-bait with rounded lips, or any extra buoyant crankbait.  I think what helps get a crankbait through cover more than anything is the way it is retrieved and the buoyancy of the bait.  A buoyant balsa bait hits a limb, pauses, and by then has risen enough to continue on its way.  Why do this?  Because bass will almost certainly not have seen many crankbaits snaking through cover like that, and because a crankbait doesn't sink like most other "bush beaters", so you can retrieve it slower.  And yes, ricochets off of cover do trigger bass to bite.