What Is A Crankbait?
by Chuck Bailey
In recent decades, ingenuity and competitive innovation have produced exciting growth in the manufacturing and distribution of crankbaits. But as inventors push the design boundaries and utilize new materials, they inadvertently frustrate modern anglers in their attempt to define “a crankbait”.
Obviously a crankbait is a “lure”. A lure is anything utilized by an angler that is not a natural bait (such as night crawlers, leeches, grasshoppers, crickets, live or dead minnows, etc…) It’s usually a manufactured object designed to imitate the natural food fish eat. But to simply define crankbaits as “manufactured lures” leaves us having to explain why spinnerbaits, jigs, and soft plastic worms, etc… are not crankbaits. More clarification is required.
MATERIALS?
How about the specific materials utilized in the production of crankbaits – does that fine tune our definition any? Yes, …and no. Great Grandpa used the term “plug”, referring to a hunk of wood carefully crafted into either 1) a topwater bait, or 2) into a submerged minnow bait, (usually after a lip or bill was carved into the head, or a metal lip was added). Wood was inexpensive and readily available, and anyone with a whittling knife could make a “plug”. While a variety of woods are still popular and successfully utilized today in mass production, plastics and a host of other space-age materials are also being used to create crankbaits. Defining a crankbait simply by the material it is constructed of ...is an exercise in futility.
HARDNESS?
Many fishing catalogs insist on dividing modern lures into two categories; soft or hard baits. Usually soft baits, which include pliable plastic worms, grubs, crawfish, tubes, etc…, are packaged and purchased in quantities with the understanding that these soft baits are consumable. On a productive day on the water, an angler may use and dispose of dozens of soft plastic baits due to wear and tear. Crankbaits, (more durable and longer lasting), have traditionally fallen into the hard bait category.
But even this “hardness” distinction is being blurred as experimentation has lead to soft plastics being used in conjunction with, or in place of, time-honored hard baits. Take a look at the “Dancing Eel” from Yum Baits. It is a hard shelled, treble hooked, plastic lipped body to which a long soft-plastic tail is attached. Is it still a crankbait? We might venture to say “Yes”, basing our decision on the fact that the majority of the bait is still of hard material. But that begs the question: what percentage of the lure has to remain hard plastic or wood to retain the term “crankbait”? 50%? 25%? 10%?
There is a certain amount of frustration experienced in attempting to define crankbaits by the hardness of the materials utilized, and a clear example is the “swimbait”. In the hunt for lunker bass, Californians began carving oversized wooden crankbaits to imitate full-sized trout, perch, or bluegills that only a monster bass could consume. It wasn’t long before hard plastic versions were produced; and clearly those lures could still be called crankbaits as they were still hard bodies.
But it wasn’t long before someone with hand-poured, soft-plastic capabilities decided to make larger bait molds and pour swimbaits completely out of soft plastic. Placed next to one another, both the hard and soft swimbaits look alike in terms of shape and size. They carry the same arrangement of treble hooks, and require similar equipment and techniques to fish them. Do we include the “all-soft” swimbaits in the category of crankbaits?
Now if you were leaning towards a “yes”, hold your answer until you contemplate what happens when we make a smaller version of the all soft-plastic swimbait. Is it still a swimbait if it is smaller? Should be! Well, what if we decide to swap out the trebles on the smaller swimbait with a large single worm hook. Now it looks resembles the familiar weedless “Super Fluke” by Strike King - which is not a crankbait. Somewhere between the wooden swimbait and the Super Fluke, we crossed the line that defined a crankbait, but where?
HOOKS?
Since we mentioned hooks, let’s explore the fact that the vast majority of crankbaits are manufactured using treble hooks. Does that define a crankbait? Not according to many bass experts who suggest that there are times when replacing trebles with double or single hooks may give an advantage to those anglers hoping to reduce hang-ups in thick cover. Before my fishing mentor passed away, (a prostaffer for Rapala), he was experimenting with replacing trebles with single hooks when trolling crankbaits through the “sunken forest” on our home waters, Lake Washington near Seattle. His success surprised us both. And it makes it clear that a crankbait cannot simply be defined as a lure having treble hooks. Roostertails, a popular in-line spinner, uses trebles – but that does not make them crankbaits.
BILLS? (LIPS?)
The addition of a bill or lip, (whether it is metal or plastic, large or small, built in or added as hardware), has been tremendously effective in helping crankbaits attain different depths and actions. But if a lip or bill defines a crankbait, then what do we do with the countless Rat-L-Trap type baits? Are these lipless lures still crankbaits? Absolutely. Crankbaits may or may not incorporate bills or lips. Once again, our definition of a crankbait is struggling for absolutes.
RETRIEVE/TECHNIQUE?
Could a crankbait be defined by the retrieve or technique of the angler? Perhaps a crankbait is any lure steadily “cranked” across or through the water. But then, wouldn’t we have to include buzzbaits and spinnerbaits in this category, since their retrieve is often similar to that used with some crankbaits? Can’t do that! And after all, many of the lures in the crankbait family are not simply “cranked” back to the boat.
Fact is, jerkbaits are “jerked”, and poppers are “popped”. Sometimes a floating minnow bait is cast and just left sitting on the surface. (Despite the built-in bill, the angler often chooses not to crank and submerge the minnow bait but merely twitches it occasionally on top of the water – leaving the bait in the strike zone for longer periods of time.) Some crankbaits are ripped through the grass, while others are designed to bounce off structure, the deflection causing a reaction bite. Whereas most crankbaits are cast and retrieved, many are trolled in open water. Obviously it’s not one retrieve, speed, cadence, or technique, that defines a crankbait.
Well, we could go on, discussing…
* sound (some crankbaits rattle, some do not),
* design/shape (short, long, skinny, fat, round, banana curve… awe heck, what shape DON’T crankbaits come in?)
* hardware (they may or may not have spinners, feathered trebles, multiple eyelets, wobble plates, split rings, wire leaders, etc…
* buoyancy (some float, others sink, while some suspend)
* size (crappie crankbaits are unbelievably tiny, muskie cranks often require two men and a boy to carry)
So where does that leave us? …Wandering in the gray arena of generalities, far from a clean-cut black-and-white definition. Any attempt to create a distinct description that clearly and exactly explains what a crankbait is, will be met with controversy and debate. Still, fools rush in - with myself among the contenders. So for the purpose of future discussions…
A “CRANKBAIT” is a broad classification of manufactured lures designed to imitate the natural foods fish eat. Generally a crankbait has many or all of the following characteristics;
* a wood or plastic hard body
* one or more treble hooks distributed along the body
* a head section/front - that includes 1) an eyelet for tying on the line, 2) possibly a lip/bill that determines depth or wobble, or 3) hardware that imparts action, vibration, flash, or sound) and
* a tail section (where usually one of the smaller treble hooks is attached).
* painted/imprinted features that resemble the eyes, gills and other body parts and contours of the targeted fish’s natural prey.Crankbaits come in a wide assortment of sizes, weights, shapes and colors. They may be a) cast and recovered using a variety of retrieves employed by the angler, or b) trolled behind a moving boat. The design or body style of some crankbaits may be responsible for creating a particular action, vibration or sound when retrieved steadily, whereas other models depend upon the practiced skills of the angler to impart the artificial allurement that comes from imitating the natural movements of a fish’s favorite prey. Crankbaits are generally designed to attract fish in a specific depth range (topwater, shallow, medium, and deep divers), therefore a basic assortment of crankbaits should be acquired if an angler is to successfully cover all levels of the water column.
For every general statement in the definition above, there is an exception to the rule. Like I initially stated, lure designers are pushing beyond the traditional boundaries of “plugs” and utilizing new materials and technologies. So it is inevitable that their innovations have blurred the definition of modern crankbaits. But then, Great Grandpa (with his couple of “plugs”) never had the exceptional quality and variety of choices now available to the modern angler.
Hey, the modern fisherman may struggle to find the perfect definition for these awesome angling tools, but that shouldn’t stop them from recognizing one when they see one! And as tournament fisherman and master anglers are demonstrating across the country – crankbaits (no matter how you define them) are excellent additions to the tackle box.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Would you like to be notified when a new "Feature Article" is added?
It's as simple as filling out your name and email...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*************************************************************** ***************************************************************
(Note: Article Reprint Permission info is found on CONTACT US page.)