Your fishing a very high pressure system after 2 weeks of,rain and storms moving thru. Fish slow as yesterday my crappies hit on a speed of 1.5 to 1.6 and anything faster they would miss the bait as I would see the rod tips with light hits on them but missed setting hooks on cranks and even lost 3 fish as they were barely hooked. Stagger your rod sizes When fishing by myself I use 2 12' fters one on each side of the front and either a 8' or 10' on one side angled alittle back to have some room from the 12'. You can do 7' 6' 5' even med action to med lite works fine. Batteries-- I run 2 series 31 Deep cycle on trolling motor and get 8 plus hrs of trolling and mine are going on 2 yrs old now. Got them at Rural King for 120.OO each. Just make sure you have room for them as all series 31 deep cycle are mostly 13.5 inches long compared to series 29 or series 27. Any rod starting out will work for trolling cranks. You can get Wally marshal 12' or 14' for about 30 bucks each and jigging poles work for trolling cranks as I have caught cats on mine up to 20lbs and stripers up to 15 lbs and lg. Mouth bass at 6' and yet to break one but it takes time to land an unusual large fish. That is the craziness when trolling cranks. You can catch about anything feeding on a crankbait. Good luck and set your rig up to suit you.