Cranking question

I have been reading and reading and then some more on pulling cranks during the summer but there is one thing I haven't seen much detail on. Maybe I have overlooked it,if so please point me in the right direction. When you all are looking with your electronics for fish set up to crank on, what shows up in the screen to say hey this will be a stretch worth trying? I pull jigs in the winter and spring and key on either schools of fish close enough together so I will go through a few before that pass is made or I will be able to see scattered fish maybe only 5 or 10 on screen at once that are a good ways from each other but still distinguishable. Or do you all just note the presence of cover and bait and give it a go? Thanks again for all the good info y'all contribute to the site.


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I will see fish and pass that way again by following the gps track. What I like to see are clouds of bait with bigger signatures of fish mixed in. From day to day their happy depth may change a little but usually they tend like a given depth. The water I trolled in TN, I tried to stay between 10' and 17' and sometimes they would be in the deeper water today when they were in 11' a couple of days before for no apparent reason. Good luck with it, I had a ton of fun with it.

I look for bait fish and I look for channel ledges and creek runs etc

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G gave very good advice. As you put in time on the water, you will find various features on your lake the fish, and baitfish, prefer. What is working on one lake will not work on others. On kentucky lake during the summer, for cranking, the amount of current being released is more of a factor than others. Hope this helps. Remember to drink plenty of fluids and get a umbrella.

I actually get into my boat in my garage, turn on either my Helix 10 or my 1199HD and study the Lakemaster maps of the area I plan on fishing. I look for areas that are similar in depth and structure to areas I have caught fish in. Once on the water, I will look for baitballs and fish close to edges or cover. I try to avoid much of the cover a spider-rigger or 2 poler would seek out. I want to be CLOSE to structure but not IN it. I have some areas in KY and Barkley lakes that have to be as colorful as Christmas trees from all the cranks I have left there.

Crankbait fishing is all about covering water and seeking out the most aggressive crappie in a given area. If I hit an area that produces fish, I may punch a waypoint but 100% of the time I will troll that area in many different directions. Lots of times crappie will bite say running from north to south but not south to north. I'm going to give them all the chances they need to decide if they want to eat what I'm offering.

Give you a example of fishing a few mornings ago. I started out where I previously caught fish. Depth finder showed fish but few bait balls as I crisis crossed a river channel. Depth of river channel was 15' and depth of the lake above the channel was 10'. After 30 minutes of just hitting one dink turned and headed towards deeper water. Went about a half mile upstream in the lake and the bait balls got thick on the depth finder, hitting the sides of the channel as river now was 20' deep filled with bait balls, we started hammering the fish. They were in another quarter mile length of River channel along the sides around bait balls in 12 to 15' of water depth about 7-8' down. Covering water trolling jigs and cranks watching the depth finder is part of my strategy in finding fish the crisscrossing and covering the area changing colors, playing with depths the baits are running is the other half. As the water gets hotter, fish will move. Not far,,but they seek their comfort zone and all the different kinds will be there as well as we caught 5-6 diff kinds of fish on cranks besides the crappies. There is not much cover in the lake we were fishing, so I look for bottom irregularities like secondary creek channels intersecting main River channels, humps, droppoffs, possibly old stumps or rocks next to channel edges, things that might also attract them as well as long slow dropping points near deep channels and water. Bait balls are a definite to work thru. Learning to read structure on a fish finder is key to finding fish for me as I end up nowhere near a bank most of the times. If I find cover, I work it thoroughly also. The depth finder becomes my eyes as I also watch the surface for feeding fish or bait movement. I still study paper topo maps of the water I fish even tho I use the map cards on depth finder as I find them more detailed and the older the map, the changes in the bottom features I mark with ink pen, as they change with time. The older paper maps can still be found sometimes in the smaller out of the way baits shops if you run across one now and then.

Finding bait in the waters I typically fish is pretty easy. There is lots of it. Finding active fish around the bait is harder. I think a lot of our fish find a spot with some structure and just wait for the bait to come by them most of the year. I'm starting to think I will just have to pick a stretch that looks productive and give it a go whether I see fish or not. I think I go past fish often because I didn't go by them in the right direction to get a good image.


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