Tips on using Fishing Crankbaits

The crankbait is a very versatile fishing lure, and the fisherman needs to be versatile and adaptable when using one. A crankbait is very useful in covering a wide amount of water in a short period of time, which is very helpful when you are fishing a new body of water about which you have little information, or when you need to cover a lot of water while finding where the fish are.

A lot of emphasis seems to be placed on what depth a crankbait is designed to run at. Although that can be a helpful measure, your exact performance will differ depending on a number of factors. In general, the heavier the line you are using, the shallower a crankbait will run. In general, the faster you retrieve a crankbait, the deeper it will run. Holding your rod tip up will make it run shallower, placing your rod tip down will make it run deeper. That is why you'll notice on Thefishingnut, that we don't get carried away with claims of how deep our crankbaits run, rather, we get carried away with facts as to the lip shape of our crankbaits.

In general, the shallow zone for a crankbait could be defined as shallower than 6 feet. A crankbait running at this depth needs to have a smaller, more vertical lip. Crankbaits running at medium and deeper depths will have larger and more horizontal lips. The deepest running crankbaits may have a lip as long as the body of the bait, and it will be almost horizontal to the body. It's unlikely that you will be able to have an unweighted crankbait run below 20 feet.