Crankbait crappies

[Boedigheimer]

My wife and I took a short vacation in Arizona and hired a guide to fish crappies, we trolled no.5 chartreuse shad raps. I vowed to work cranks into my crappie arsenal when I returned home, but I couldn't get myself to tie on anything but a jig (confidence issues).

My question is how often do people use crankbaits for crappies? And what brands, sizes etc.

[Matt Johnson]

I very rarely use crankbaits, mostly because I don't like dealing with the treble hooks and I tend to lose too many on the larger, toothy fish

When I do use crankbaits though, Yo Zuri makes several nice options, as does MisterTwister...

Several different color options and styles. Here's a link to a few of the colors... BigySmal MisterTwister Cranks

Some pretty cool colors and options for throwing cranks for pannies...

[markkstanley]

I plan on doing quite a bit of cranking and spinnerbating for crappies this summer. SLow trolling to cover water on Minnetonka. I'll keep you posted. I've done it in North Carolina when I lived there so I know it works. Of course I can't load up 2 dozen rods like they do down there so it will take a little longer to get educated on what works. Only problem I see is the toothy critters Matt mentioned. Southern crappie fishermen do not have to deal with pike.

[juggs]

I've used them on crappies. They're a great way to cover a lot of water but you have to have certain conditions in place to make it work. First is water temperature. Crappies probably won't chase a crank in cold water. What the temperature cut off is I don't know. Another issue is depth. Since crappies suspend a lot in the summer, you want to make sure the crankbait is running at or above the level of the fish. I used this method to pinpoint them on a smaller lake and then switched to a plain jig presentation once the fish were found. Ironically, most of the crappies that I hear of caught on cranks are by accident. Usually these are bigger fish since the angler is targeting walleyes or bass, but there are plenty of smaller crankbaits on the market that work very well for crappies. Heck, there are even cranks made for bluegills. Other like presentations are spinners, beetle spins and small spinner baits. These give you more flexibility depth-wise than crankbaits.