my advise is to not invest a pile of money on special equipment until you figure out if you like this type of fishing. Plenty of videos on You Tube of doing this. From what I have read and found out, cranking really works better if your lakes has white crappie. I have not figured out the reasoning for this just yet. Im new to cranking this summer & have had very little success. But we have mostly Black crappie in our lakes in south Alabama.