They typically move farther to spawn and to find optimal seasonal habitats. River smallmouths push against current and develop muscles seldom used by their lake-dwelling cousins.

The best of today's cranks are streamlined for dynamics and efficiency and not just for looks, because it's always better to be good than to look good. The crankbaits of today are sleek and stylish, and some may call it window dressing, but that's true only in some cases. We have too many cranks to choose from to accept such limitations.

To proclaim, 'The Golly Whomper was good enough for Granddad, so it's good enough for me,' is just caveman logic. The difference, in this analogy, is that the old-school Neanderthal crankbaits continue to hang around and catch bass. Bulbous, opaque, rattling ancestors have gradually given way to more slender, graceful, and realistic versions.

It whispers, while the river crank screams to be heard through rushing water.Ī photographic history of crankbaits looks like the evolutionary chart of man, from shambling ape to the upright, quasi-civilized, comparatively hairless versions of today. The lake crank is less aggressive, too - meaning less thump, less flash, and less noise. The perfect 'lake crank' is smaller and duller, more realistic, and more translucent than a river crank. At least, a fairly stark delineation often exists, though the two styles morph into one when rivers drop and clear, or at the other end of the spectrum when wind, waves, and rain draw the curtains in lakes. Smallmouth crankbaits that work best in rivers are not the same as the cranks that work best in lakes.

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