Research shows crankbaits are the most popular bass fishing lure of all. Surveys say the average bass angler owns more crankbaits than any other lure. But one in every four crankbaits will never work well. Two will only ever be average, and only one treasured crankbait in every four will entice most all your crankbait bites.

This doesn't apply only to bargain bin baits. Price is not a factor here. You will get lemons and lackluster performers in every bunch of high-dollar dolls too. What is the biggest mistake I see crankbait anglers make? It is fishing with those two to three out of every four crankbaits that have little chance to succeed.

Over a season or two, say a guy buys twenty cranks. He never does too well with most of them, and he thinks crankbait fishing is overrated. Fact is, ten of those twenty lures are only ever average. Five are unadulterated duds. And the other five that have the best chance, he never tunes them to unlock their maximum potential. Maybe he doesn't know how to tune them or what to look for when tuning them? Soon, he takes up Internet poker as a hobby that is more fun than drowning his sorry lot of crankbaits. That's a sad story.

Like a garden, your crankbait patch needs to be pruned and groomed regularly. Lures that are not catching fish are dead wood. You need to weed them out so that more productive lures can replace them.

The process to separate good cranks from bad starts before you even take them out of the package. Actually, before you even buy them. Inspect the troops lined up for display on the store shelf. When the sales associate is not looking, rummage through a rack of cranks to cherry pick the ones where the two body halves look glued together properly, with no mismatches on the seams. Look for a neat seam seal that did not need remedial sanding or smoothing on the seam. Accept no dips or indents in the plastic, no drips in the paint, no sags in the topcoat finish. Look at the hook hangers eyelets to ensure each was seated properly in the injection mold, that a hook eye isn't cockeyed. Make sure plastic flowed fully and formed properly around the sprue stem of each hanger. Sometimes the plastic leaves a hollow there, and you don't want that.