It's Time to Crank It Up and Blow Out the Locker Door: Presenting Our 2009 Crankbait Rod Wars Lineup!
 

Shallow Crankers: As we did in our Swimbait Rod Wars last year, we've broken out our collection of rods into three separate categories. Rods on either end of the following matrices could easily fall into the next adjoining table, but we had to draw the line somewhere. The shallow cranking sticks are pretty easy to discern once you have them in hand and a side benefit we are finding, at least for the graphite rods in this category, is they all double as pretty decent finesse plastics rods too - especially when fishing shakey heads.

Medium Crankers: The rods falling into the following table will be of interest to those looking for an all purpose type cranker. Most will handle all types of cranks from shallow to deep, but the real sweet spot for these sticks are baits that run anywhere from six to twelve feet deep along with lipless cranks, spinnerbaits, and jerkbaits. The test for rods in this category is how well they hold up for all-purpose moving bait presentations.

Enthusiasts need not feel left out of this year's battle. Despite the unfavorable exchange rate, we've managed to purchase a few exotics to include in the crankbait rod wars

Deep Cranking: These are obviously the heavy hitters of our crankbait rod wars. Typical baits for these sticks include Norman Lures' DD22, the prototypical deep diving crankbait, but don't rule out some of the lighter hard bodied big baits on these sticks either. Products like the seven inch 22nd Century Triple Trout or Mattlure's hard bodied bluegill baits are all perfectly at home fished on these rods as well.