A crankbait is a hard-bodied lure with a lip that makes it dive and wobble when it is reeled. The lip is the whole design: its size and angle set how deep the bait runs, its shape sets how the bait wobbles and what it bounces off, and the body behind it sets the profile and the sound. Jerkbaits belong in the same family, a slender lipped minnow fished with twitches and pauses rather than a steady retrieve, and so do lipless crankbaits, which have no lip at all and sink. Sorted by running depth below, with the rod and line that treble-hook lures need, and the two histories that every crankbait article gets wrong: the 1936 Rapala and the early-1970s Rat-L-Trap. Crankbaits were designed around bass and are written up for bass here; the same baits, sized up or down, are trolled for walleye and cast for pike, stripers and redfish, and the species pages carry those differences.
Lauri Rapala carved the first floating minnow from cork in 1936. Every lipped bait since is a descendant.
Start here
- Fishing lures — the section hub.
- Bass fishing — the seasons: crankbaits in pre-spawn and summer, jerkbaits in winter.
- Fishing rods — why a crankbait wants a moderate-action rod.
- Fishing line — why monofilament or fluorocarbon, not braid, on treble hooks.
The depth classes
| Class | Lip | Runs | Wobble | Reference baits |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Squarebill | Short, square | 0–5 ft (0–1.5 m) | Tight; deflects off wood and rock | Strike King KVD 1.5, Bill Lewis SB-57 (3–6 ft, 0.9–1.8 m) |
| Medium diver | Round, medium | 6–12 ft (1.8–3.7 m) | Wider, slower | Strike King Series 4 Pro (6–10 ft, 1.8–3 m), Rapala Shad Rap (about 7 ft, 2.1 m) |
| Deep diver | Long, round | 12–20 ft (3.7–6.1 m) | Wide | Strike King 6XD (19 ft, 5.8 m), Rapala DT16 (16 ft, 4.9 m), Norman DD22 (18 ft, 5.5 m) |
| Extra-deep | Very long | 20–25 ft (6.1–7.6 m) | Wide | Strike King 8XD and 10XD, Rapala DT20 |
| Lipless | None; line tie on the back | Any; it sinks | Tight shimmy with rattles | Bill Lewis Rat-L-Trap in 1/4, 1/2, 3/4 and 1 oz (7, 14, 21 and 28 g) |
| Flat-sided | Small | Shallow to mid | Very tight | Balsa and circuit-board baits for cold water |
| Jerkbait | Small, slender body | 3–8 ft (0.9–2.4 m), suspends | Darts on the twitch | Megabass Vision 110, Rapala Husky Jerk |
The depth printed on the package is the maximum on the line the maker recommends; thinner line lets the bait dive deeper, thicker line holds it up. The rule for choosing is depth first: a squarebill around cover in less than five feet, a medium diver from five to ten, a deep diver beyond that.
Lipless crankbaits and the Rat-L-Trap
Bill Lewis, a Second World War bomber pilot, built the first lipless crankbait in the late 1960s and early 1970s in Boyce, Louisiana, and sold it from the boot of his car at the Toledo Bend marinas; when it caught on he moved to Alexandria, Louisiana, where the lures are still assembled by hand. The rattle chamber inside was the innovation, and it spread from there into topwaters, jigs and spinnerbaits. The lipless bait fishes three ways: reeled steadily over grass so it ticks the tops and is ripped free; “yo-yoed”, letting it fall to the bottom and pulling it up a foot or two so it flutters back down like a dying shad; and jigged vertically in winter with 12 to 36 inch strokes.
Jerkbaits in cold water
A suspending jerkbait hangs motionless in the water when the retrieve stops, and that pause is what catches fish when the water is cold. The cadence guides put the productive range at 38 to 55 °F, the sweet spot at 40 to 52, and the pause at ten seconds or longer when the water is in the high 30s and low 40s. The Rapala Husky Jerk is the affordable neutrally buoyant standard; the Megabass Vision 110, with its weight-transfer ball for casting, is the bait the tournament anglers hoard.
Rod and line
Crankbaits carry treble hooks, and trebles pull out of a fish’s mouth when the rod has no give. So the crankbait rod is a moderate action, often fiberglass or a graphite-glass composite, 6 ft 8 in to 7 ft 2 in for most baits and 7 ft 6 in or longer for deep divers that need casting distance; the line is 10–14 lb monofilament or 12 lb fluorocarbon, whose stretch cushions the hookset. Jerkbaits want the same moderate rod, shorter for the cadence, and 10–12 lb fluorocarbon or 20 lb braid to a 10 lb mono leader.
Where it all started
Lauri Rapala carved the first floating minnow in Finland in 1936 from cork, with foil from chocolate wrappers and melted photographic film as the coating. A local cooperative sold the lures from 1938, exports began in the mid-1950s, and a Life magazine feature in the August 1962 issue that also covered Marilyn Monroe’s death, the magazine’s best-selling issue, paid for Rapala’s first factory. The Shad Rap arrived in 1982 and the company now sells in 140 countries. The Rapala page under this hub walks the model ladder from the Original Floater to the DT series.
Where to go next
The topwater hub covers the surface baits that take over when crankbaits stop working in warm shallow water; the soft plastics and jigs hubs cover the bottom. For the electronics that find the ledges a deep diver is built for, see fish finders.