Can someone point me in the right direction in learning how to troll cranks. I typically fish Taylorsville or Green.
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Can someone point me in the right direction in learning how to troll cranks. I typically fish Taylorsville or Green.
http://www.crappie.com/crappie/showt...ing-Cranks-101
147 pages of priceless reading, Have fun. Many of us learned from this.
I started pulling CB last summer, and pulled them at several lakes, Green River, KY Lake, Patoka Lake, Hardy Lake, ought River, and several watersheds in southern Indiana. Thing i learned through the school of hard knocks....
1. Try to go with someone that has been pulling CB to see if it is what you want to invest money into (it can be expensive) If your local to Louisville and want to pull CB with me sometime I would be happy to do so on Patoka or Rough.
2. Get a goos set of rod holders ( i use hi tek and a set of custom rod holders) it is to easy to loose a trolling rod because of a cheap rod holder
3. Get a good GPS system that shows boat speed, I spent a lot of time pulling to fast or slow, and above or below the fish due to inaccurate speeds
4. Several colors of CB (bright and dark colors) I have caught more on bright than dark for some reason
5. Print off the trolling speed and depth chart
6. Take you time and have fun, cause it can be discouraging at first, but when you hit fish its a blast!
PM me if you want to trade insight we both might learn something :)
I have also started trolling crankbaits and am learning on the fly.It has been fun so far but still learning.where can you print out the trolling speed and depth chart?I also had a post about favorite crank colors that was a big help..I just keep reading and talking to people and then go try.
Get okuma line counter reels very cheap and very valuable to use for precision trolling.....a cheap handheld gps and a bunch of bandit 300 cranks....rod holders and a good set of batteries.....maybe even 2 sets depending on how long you want to troll for.....
Heres the depth chart http://crappie.com/crappie/showthrea...pth-chart.html
Just did a tutorial on trolling CB's on the Indiana board, posted June 5th, '14. Check it out.
I really appreciate all the input. We went out this past weekend on Green and tried trolling with cranks for the first time. We were pulling Bandit 300s so we let out around 30-35 ft using planer boards on the outside lines. Although we only tried this method for about 2 hours, we were able to land 2 crappie (both keepers) and 1 22 inch muskie. The kid in my boat was realy excited about the musky. Spider rigging over brushpiles still seems to be best method currently in 14 ft of water.
If you only had 35 feet or so line out with a Bandit 300, you were only running the bait 10 feet deep. I was running 80-110 feet of line out Sunday (too rough on KY for boards) with 300s and catching most of my fish suspended in up to 25 feet of water.Quote:
Originally Posted by dboone
Hope you released that Muskie !! If you had 2oz of lead up the line from those cranks, and maintained a trolling speed of 1.8mph, out over 30fow, along channel edges, and among schools of Shad ... your 30-35ft of line out would likely have caught you more than 2 Crappie. :twocentsQuote:
Originally Posted by dboone
... cp :kewl
Oh yea, we let him go after some posing :). I haven't seen anything on the added weight for cranks. How does that impact the depth chart, or does it?Quote:
Originally Posted by CrappiePappy
It throws the depth chart out the window but it does give a person more ability to fish deeper without letting out bunches of line. That is a huge plus when fishing places with lots of bends or hang-ups. I always have 2 rods out that have 5 oz sinkers on them so they run directly under the boat. Sunday I caught almost as many on my "down" rods as the ones behind the boat.Quote:
Originally Posted by dboone
I'm not sure how accurate the depth chart is over deeper water. I can see now why some add weight. We were trying to get the cranks down to 20 ft this past week and the line distance on my depth chart was about 180 ft. We trolled through 18-19 ft of water to see if we were dragging the bottom and we weren't. After 3 days of no activity from Crappie I guess I finally relaized we just weren't deep enough. It was the white bass we were catching on the cranks that got me to wondering about the depth. Either that or my reel counters can't be trusted.
If you have too much line on the reel or to little it throws the counter off. The counter works by revolutions. I usually mark off 50ft. in the yard and check the reel before I cut the line from the spool. For instance if your reel says 50 and your 10ft from your mark add more line till it comes close. If your past your mark take some line off.