Thread: Pulling Cranks 101

Originally Posted by majflyboy

Read your thread, great mess of fish. Still not sure how you are pulling out of a kayak tho.

The type of yak he has is pedal powered, has fins or flippers on the bottom of the yak with a mirage drive (think thats the name) and he does not have to paddle to move the yak, he pedals and the fins/flippers propel the yak along so he can maintain a consistent speed.

I run 300's more than 90% of the time but will throw a 200 behind a planer board on my outboard rod closest to the shore to put one in front of a fish in shalloer water. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes boards are too big of a pain to mange by yourself and just go with the 300s in a spread. Just depends on the day.

Got another question for you fellers about pulling cranks. I noticed when I did it for the first time, I was running over balls of shad fairly often. Sometimes so thick they would make the depth finder give a false depth reading. Most of these balls of shad would be from about 2 or 3 feet deep with the school going down maybe to 10 feet deep. Now, I wasn't always marking fish under these bait balls, but, occasionally I would, and I also chalked the absence of any big fish returns up to the thickness of the bait ball itself, blocking the sonar from getting a return from any fish under them. I was catching the crappie at 12-15 feet deep in about 20 FOW, so, I wasn't trolling any shallow baits at say, 5 to 8 feet deep. When you all see these bait balls on your depth finders, do you adjust your rods to troll a crank or two in your spread through the bait ball, since crappie feed upward? Or do you even find that there are ever crappie under those bait balls?

I run 6 poles alot, where legal or if I have someone with me as many as 8. 99% of the time I dont have any 2 rods at the same length out, one side maybe 40, 50, 60 and 70 with the other side 45,55, 65, and 75 for example. Now I may have a 200 on a longer line to keep it from running as deep or something. I pulled alot of hours last year and had very few days that they were super line out specific as long as you werent running em too deep, if I shorten up my long line I adjust em all accordingly on that side. If there is bait at 5 feet of water good chance there is a white perch trying to snack on him.

Don't let the longer lengths scare you off either. A lot of fish come with more than 100 feet of line out of the reel with bandit 300's. so long as it isn't ticking the bottom I try to keep one long (deep) rod out at all times to put it in front of those hard to mark fish that hug the bottom.

So am I the only one who checks the Bandit website daily looking for the little devils to go on sale? Just checking so I know whether I need to seek therapy.

Originally Posted by WT101

So am I the only one who checks the Bandit website daily looking for the little devils to go on sale? Just checking so I know whether I need to seek therapy.

I check it once in a while. I have so many now that I don't know where I would put another one.

Originally Posted by majflyboy

I check it once in a while. I have so many now that I don't know where I would put another one.

I aspire to have that problem one day.