Thread: Advice for Trolling Cranks

Vary the amount of line you have out on your cranks. I may run 50 feet on one rod and the one beside it have 120 feet out. Lots of times if you get in a situation where you are forced to make a reasonably tight turn, speed up your motor till you complete the turn. I run my Terrova on "rabbit" lots of times if it looks like the lines are going to get together in a turn.

It is also advisable to reel in a couple of your baits every few minutes to check for tangles. Lots of times it is very hard to detect your cranks being tangled up. You are fishing dead water if the baits aren't separate and running true.

Originally Posted by jimp

Might be a dumb ?, but what is your starting point for determining how much line is out, the rod tip, where line enters water, or ??

Should always be the point where it enters the water. I keep my side rods low and my back rods at a 30% or so angle up.

I think a HUGE mistake many crankbait fishermen make is always trying to get the bait to run deeper and deeper. You are passing up a lot of fish if you are not paying attention to your electronics and where the schools of bait are.



I run a "dropper" rod off each side of my boat normally. I use a 4-5 oz weight in front of a leader and shallow runner bait. This photo shows my weights being tracked on 2D sonar. I can then adjust my depth when I see the suspended fish or bait.

Originally Posted by mrdux

Vary the amount of line you have out on your cranks. I may run 50 feet on one rod and the one beside it have 120 feet out. Lots of times if you get in a situation where you are forced to make a reasonably tight turn, speed up your motor till you complete the turn. I run my Terrova on "rabbit" lots of times if it looks like the lines are going to get together in a turn.

It is also advisable to reel in a couple of your baits every few minutes to check for tangles. Lots of times it is very hard to detect your cranks being tangled up. You are fishing dead water if the baits aren't separate and running true.

Dont play with the rabbit button on a 112 terrova while turning... it will bout throw you out of the boat....i know!

Obviously wrong photo link above. Here is the 2D screen shot.

Originally Posted by MrGoodtime

Dont play with the rabbit button on a 112 terrova while turning... it will bout throw you out of the boat....i know!

Yes, I wasn't referring to a tight turn, just not a sweeping turn. My 80 will do the same.

Originally Posted by rsimms

I've had a lot of trouble with lines fouling. I assume because some cranks aren't pulling true. When I run them beside the boat, they look to run true, but 100 feet back, when two lines get together I don't even realize it until I pull them up and have a spaghetti mess... and had obviously been wasting a lot of water. What can I do to help that situation?

Like some others have said, you can try varying the amount of line you have out. I know you said you didn't want to use planar boards, but they do help keep your lines apart. And wide turns help too, along with watching your lines when you turn. It seems like I still get tangled up a time or two each trip anyway. I use a #10 swivel to help when that happens - just unclip your lure from one line and it is usually much easier to untangle everything. I don't know what your rod holder set up is like - a description of that might help some of us give better advice.

Another tip, if and when you hook up raise the pole up high while reeling in to get em to the top of the water and out of the other lines quickly