Trouble With Crank Baits?

[Brett Strohl]

We've been fishing a pond the last week or so that almost no one has fished in the last 2 years to my knowledge.  The fish absolutely refuse to bite on crank baits.  We've tried about everything we have and have only had one bite on a crank in 30+ hours of fishing.  Has anyone else had this problem?  I don't think most of the fish there are old enough to have been acclimated to cranks.  Although they seem hesitant to bite on anything in general, even though we do get occasional bites on plastics. 

[smalljaw67]

You won't always get fish to hit cranks, they have to be actively feeding for them to chase and hit. Try other moving baits like spinnerbaits or soft plastic swim baits and if none of those are working try jigs and worms. I try to fish conditions, if it is bright and sunny with no clouds I know the fish are going to be tight to cover so fishing will not only be tough but the baits that are needed will be jigs and soft plastics fished slow. If I got cloud cover and a front scheduled to blow through, then I'll pick up the square bill or spinnerbait and begin my search, I'm not including deep water tactics because you're on a pond, deep water is going to be less than 15' in most cases. The point is not to try and force feed the fish, that isn't going to work and if you want to get a fish on a crankbait, I suggest waiting until you have an overcast day or perhaps a light frizzle, no lightning or anything extreme, just a normal low pressure day, that is when you want to throw a crank around at the pond.

[Brett Strohl]

Cool thanks for the advice!  

[Avalonjohn44]

You can try two things: Silent and/or smaller cranks. Or just go back to plastics and go with what worksl.

[fishballer06]

I've got a small, private pond back by my parents place that the fish will never hit a crank. The owners of the pond feed the fish there almost daily with bread, corn and hot dogs. It's the oddest pond ever because most of the bass in that pond are 3-6 pounds each, and you can only catch them on doughballs and nightcrawlers. I guess since they've been raised on that food their entire life, that's all they'll eat.