shallow cranks for trolling or casting?

[FLnick87]

I like to break up my day by doing a little bit of trolling, but on the lake I fish it seems you have to get in the 13-15ft range in order to avoid constant weeds. Anyone have much luck trolling anywhere from 13-20 ft range outside the weeds? what baits do you use and how deep do they go? I have personally only caught one doing this and it was on a wades wobbler. Just trying to brodden my methods

[not_nuf_time]

Acouple weeks ago we were trolling in 27 ft with jakes, got 2 fish in an hour. Needles to say trolled for more than an hour but we weren't seeing any in shallow, so went deep and scored on a couple.

[FLnick87]

how deep do the jakes go?

[goblueM]

they can go to 20 feet if you let out enough line

[squeedunk]

I use Grandma Crankbaits, Super Shad Raps and Depth Raiders quite regularly. Depending on how much line you have out these lures will cover all kinds of different depths. I don't like my lures to run much deeper than 15-18' down because I don't want to run under the fish. Ideally, I like my lures in the 10-14' range. If a fish is down in 28' of water, a lure running at 14' is just a quick tail flick away.

Most of the time I am trolling along a break in 15' of water but I am starting to change depths more often if I'm not finding anything. On Wednesday I started in 12-15', then moved out into 20-25', then finally moved in shallow and caught a small muskie in 6' on a safety-pin spinnerbait. I'm still learning what works while trolling, but I feel like I'm starting to figure some things out. You don't need to limit yourself to crankbaits for trolling either. Many people have success trolling bucktails, spinnerbaits, and topwaters as well.

[Tim_Anderson]

The 8" Jake in a perch pattern is my best producing crankbait overall for trolling. If I let out 75-100 feet of line it dives to about 14' at just under 3 mph. This is normally what I do in the open water.

A little less line out and you should be able to fish your weedline with it. Don't be afraid to troll closer to the boat with a very short line or even in your propwash... it works! With a short line, you'll be able to follow the contours of the weedline better as the bait will follow your boat closely. You'll get less weeds that way.

Good luck,

Tim

[MikeEiden]

I'll throw out a few more votes... shallow invader and the Krisco from Llungen will stay up in the range you are looking for. And they both differ in action. Good luck...

Edit: I also like these because they are great casting cranks (great night time cranks!) also making them more 'dual purpose' versus some.

[FLnick87]

thank for the advice...still undecided but want to limit the purchase to one or two lures

[bronzeback]

I like the 8" jakes for casting. I use it as more of a twitch bait, but it has produced a few fish already this year, and it's nice because I haven't seen anybody else throwing any kind of crank bait where I fish whatsoever. Everyone is kind of caught up in the bulldog/big blade craze.

[Flakeoutdoorsguy]

I troll 17 to 22 ft at night with depth raiders and have picked up 6 fish this year doing that.