Crankbaits for Crappie

Being relatively new to crankbaits & crappie, I've now had my taste wet for these effective lures. I'd like to ask to you folks, what color patterns you tend to favor? There are so many to choose from! Currently, the three colors I have are: pink/chart., chart/with orange stripe, and blue/chartreuse.

Figure on going slow with accumulating more until I become more familiar with their use and presentations. The three I do have now are Arkie 350's, which have been pretty productive for me the last couple of trips. Figure on adding another 3 soon!

Water here is stained and running around 75 degrees at the surface, if that's significant? We are side pulling these cranks over 16' - 24' of this water. Any other factors I should take into consideration?

Thanks muchly Folks! :)

Well....I like the Pico INT crankbaits....my favorite colors right now are... Bone Orange....Simply Awsum.....and Geezer Clown. I also spray them with Slab Sauce G sauce version.

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Crestliner, how are you side pulling at give or take 1.7 MPH?

Be sure and have a bright orange one, a bright/hot pink one, and a solid black one (silver metalflake optional).

Just keep them cranks slightly above the depth you're marking the suspended fish.
Don't be afraid to run them at 1.5 - 2.5mph (as long as your cranks are running true).
And don't be surprised at catching fish that aren't much longer than the crank itself. :Doh: :Rofl

Shad pattern is hard to beat if that's a food source where you fish.

Jim

I start out with a different color on every line and let the crappie tell me what they want. Keep in mind conditions will change and so will colors.

Yes,I too would like to know how are you pulling them sideways and your speed,

I see no advantage to trying to side pull cranks. I want the mobility to follow contours and to circle back reasonably quickly if I hit a concentration of crappie. With my Bay Pro and 14'-16' rods on each side I'm running a swath almost 40 feet wide every pass with 4 feet of separation between baits.

:dono ... but he may have said "side pulling" but simply meant pulling with rods off the "side" of the boat, rather than actually powering the boat thru the water "sideways". Then again .... he didn't say how fast he was going, either, so he may well be "side pulling" but not at the speeds normally associated with Pushing/Pulling.

I pull my poles off the sides of the boat in a forward direction though, but was confused also by the comment. Considering I think OP is the one who was posting about true side pulling a couple weeks ago and even had his TM mounted on the side, who knows. I prefer C55's Arkies, and Bandits, you can go to Wlure and get a lot of crank baits very cheap, free shipping if you can wait a few weeks and no sales tax. I got hundreds of them and they all run true out of the pack and catch fish, only problem is the hook guards they put on them are a pain.

Actually he is side pulling off his V hull boat. Remember he is in the north east and fish a lot smaller bodies of water than we are used to. And if I'm not mistaken the majority of his are blacks not whites. I bet them crappie don't care wheather it's pulling off the side or back of boat. As long as he can stay between 1.2 and 2.0 he is going to catch fish.
In those waters I would have 2 for sure a black and chrome and blue and chrome. What ever your bass and pike eat is what those crappie are feeding on so work from those color combos.

What Cray said

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Im new to the crancking scene too. This is what i picked up to start with. Been one time so far and was productive with many different colors. Arkies, johnsons, crappie magic and BnMs. Also some small creme rattle traps.Attachment 310295Attachment 310296

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First of all, thanks for all your comments and suggestions! Just what I was looking for. Yes, we are "side pulling". Here in MA, we are only allowed 2 rods per fisherman. Consequently we wanted to achieve a boat presentation whereby we could cover the widest area possible. Here is a picture of our TM motor mounted on the side of a 16' Tracker Panfish:

Attachment 310300

Walt usually runs the two of his rods with jig/plastic combos of various weights & color patterns. I use to to do the same. Now we're starting to experiment with cranks and I'm using one rod exclusively on cranks and one on either Road Runners or jig/plastic combo. I'd say I'm keeping the crank on that one rod (a 9' B n' M "Difference") about 80% of the time and directly off the stern (parallel to the boat).

Using a recently added hand-held GPS, we are running all four lines at about .9 to 1.3 mph with the TM set between 30% - 40% power. This gives us about 4 to 5 hours run time on a series 24 DC battery. Plenty for these old bones!

I don't ever recall saying that we run 1.7 mph or higher? If I did, that must have been a miss-type. If we were running all four lines on cranks, then yes, I would try to kick up the speed that much. But we do so well with the jig/plastic combos here (and yes, we are catching black crappie only), that going faster than the speed we are doing would be counter productive. Like I said, we are experimenting with cranks only at this time - not being fully committed on all four lines.

Here's a link to our latest post in "The New England States" forum:

https://www.crappie.com/crappie/the-new-england-states/377591-report-7-7-18-a/

I hope this added perspective helps explain what we are doing. And THANKS again for your comments!

Now that I see your set-up, you are probably utilizing your equipment best with your technique. You might seriously consider reading up on "pushing Cranks". By adding weight to the crank using your method, you can get it deeper without having to add speed. Best of luck.

Bill Norman purple back with glitter and chartreuse belly always had a place in my spread. Solid black, solid red, and sexy shad also among my standards. I have run as many as 12 rods but have cut back to 10. Gets busy sometimes. If I remember I will shoot a pic showing my box and colors.