Trolling Crankbaits — Stained Water

Guys and Gals,

My home lake is max depth about 25 feet deep in fishable areas. I am looking into expanding to trolling crank baits and I have a couple questions. These are the parameters I will be working with:

No more than two lines at a time and rods will be in rod holders.
Fishing depths from 5-20 feet
I have ability to go slow with trolling motor or maybe like 1.3-1.5 with gas motor
Water I fish is pretty stained it is a flowage basically.

I have some size 5 and 7 Flicker Shads.

Do I need reels with line counters?
What is best crank bait to use if I just stick with one type I would maybe get some jointed and regular flicker shads.

Any insight would be great. On my regular spinning gear I run braid with leader… will that work for me on this?

Your general target speed with cranks in a lake is 1.8-2.5, but there are exceptions.

A #5 will cover you for fish in the 5′-10′ range, a #7 will cover you in the 8′-15′ range. You might not easily hit bottom in 15′, but you can pull fish out of it.

I like flicker shads for stained water because they make some noise.

Linecounters are great for replicating, but not 100% necessary.

Just cast back and let line out until you hit bottom, and reel in a few times. Make a mental note of about how much line is out and even glance at your spool for reference (to replicate with a spinning reel).

Set up a leadcore rod to hit deeper depths with the same baits

You can also add a snap weight to get down a bit more. A number 7 flicker shad with a snap weight will get you plenty deep.

Or, buy a few husky jerks or DT’s and you’ll get down no problem.

For running depths what can be done is find say 10 feet of water taking your bait and spinning reel. Using the handle to back reel count the number of turns it takes to get to 10 feet this can be done at multiple depths speed and crankbaits, wright it all down as my memory is not the greatest.

Line counter is not necessary. Suffix does make a metered braid which is perfect for this application.

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