Best Crankbaits of 2026

Trolling is where the Flicker Shad earns its keep. The 5/16-ounce body is rated to run 11 to 13 feet, deep enough to work the first break on most reservoirs and shallow enough that you aren't plowing bottom through every turn. The weight-transfer design shows up on the water: for a bait this light it loads a rod and travels a long way when you let line out behind the boat.

It's the best trolling crankbait in this group, and the profile is why. At 2 3/4 inches it's built to look like a shad — slender, with a tight swim rather than a wide roll — and that's a shape predatory fish see a great deal of. The size 6 Fusion19 trebles are sticky sharp and matched to the body, so a fish that swipes short still finds hook.

It is not a shallow-cover bait. Cast or trolled over flats and open water it's in its element; throw it at a laydown and you'll spend the afternoon retying. The KVD and the Bandit handle that work, and this one handles the water past the boat ramp.

One thing to check before you order: the style field on this listing says Shallow, and it isn't. The 5/16-ounce Flicker Shad is the 11-to-13-foot version, and the same family comes in a genuinely shallow model that fishes completely different water. Read the depth rating rather than the name on the pack.

Take the lip off a crankbait and you get a different tool. The Red Eyed Shad is a half-ounce chunk of plastic with no bill and no fixed diving depth: it sinks on the pause, and you decide how deep it fishes by counting it down before you start the retrieve. That makes it the bait for open water, rock piles and suspended fish, a job none of the billed baits here do well.

It's also the loudest bait in this group. Free-floating rattles knock around inside the body, and in stained water or a stiff chop that's exactly what you want — fish find it by sound before they ever see it. The retrieve that makes it work is a rip and a fall: snap it up, let it flutter down on a semi-tight line, and stay ready, because the strike tends to come on the drop rather than the lift.

Against the other lipless options, this is the one we keep in the boat bag. It covers water fast when you're hunting fish rather than working them, it comes through rock without hanging the way a billed bait will, and the Sexy Shad pattern is a convincing baitfish match in most water colors. Weeds are the exception — trebles dangling under a sinking body find every strand. Over rock and shell it's the first bait out; over a weedy flat, leave it in the box.

Late fall and early spring are when a crankbait earns its reputation, and that's when the Shad Rap 07 comes out of the box. Balsa is the reason. The body is light and buoyant enough that the bait keeps wobbling at a crawl, so you can fish it slower than a plastic bait without the action going dead.

That's what makes it our cold-water pick. The tight wobble is subtle next to the wide hunting action of the squarebills here — you feel it more in the rod tip than in the hand — and subtle is what a pressured bass wants when the water is in the forties. It's the bait we tie on when nothing else is drawing a reaction.

The numbers sit it in a working range rather than one depth: 2 3/4 inches, 5/16 ounce, rated 5 to 11 feet on the retrieve. Balsa is also the catch. It dents and chips where a plastic bait would shrug off a rock, and a real crack changes how the bait floats, so fish it along cover rather than into it. In exchange you get the buoyancy that makes the whole thing work.

Fish it with the rod tip low and a slow, steady reel. This is one of the few baits here where speeding up is the wrong answer — if the wobble stops, you've picked up a weed, not a fish.

The Bandit BDT is the bait we throw when the fish are past the bank but off the bottom — twelve feet down over a point, a ledge or the outside edge of a flat. It gets there on a cast rather than a troll, and that's the difference between fishing a crankbait and dragging one behind the boat.

The body is butyrate with lead weights molded inside, and those weights do something a hollow plastic bait can't: they knock out a dull thud on the retrieve. It's lower and less metallic than the rattling baits here, closer to a baitfish bumping structure than a dinner bell, and on fish that have heard plenty of rattles the difference is worth having. The lip is molded in rather than glued on, so the bait tracks straight from the first cast.

Depth is rated at 12 feet on 10-pound line, and the line spec is half the claim. Run heavier fluorocarbon and the bait rides higher and lands shorter; run 10 and it digs to the number. That's true of every crankbait here, but it matters more with this one, because a specific depth band is its entire job.

Two things to know before you buy. It isn't a grass bait — the lip loads up in weeds, and the lipless Red Eyed Shad handles that water far better. And at 2 inches it's the smallest billed crankbait in this group, an advantage when the shad are young-of-the-year and a limitation when you're trying to show big fish a big meal.

Six feet doesn't sound like much until you've spent a morning watching fish sit at exactly that depth and refuse everything running above them. The Dives-To 06 is built for that morning: a 2-inch balsa bait rated to run six feet, and the name is the pitch — it goes where it says and stays there.

Three-eighths of an ounce gets it down quickly on a cast, and the two size 5 hooks sit where a short-striking fish finds them. The body is shaped like a bluegill rather than a shad, a different silhouette from most of this group and one worth having when bluegill are on the menu.

We treat it as a precision bait rather than a search bait. When you've found fish on a break, or you're casting to a specific rock line, the DT06 puts the lure in that band and keeps it there cast after cast without you thinking about it. The trade is that six feet is all you get — the Shad Rap's 5-to-11 range covers more water when you're still looking.

Where it beats a generic shad bait is the finish. The Bluegill pattern is convincing in the water, and in lakes with a real bluegill population that's a better argument than another chrome bait in the box.

The math is the appeal: three lipless crankbaits in one box, in three colors, at a per-bait cost below anything else in this group. At 2.4 inches and 0.35 ounce they're small — small enough for a spinning rod and for crappie and perch, and still big enough for a bass to eat.

They sink, and that's worth saying plainly. These are slow sinkers, so in shallow water they stay in the top couple of feet unless you add a split shot, and the retrieve that gets them working is a steady drag with the rod tip down. Count one down for a second or two before you start reeling and it behaves like any other lipless bait; expect it to rise and you'll spend the morning confused.

What they do well is vibrate. A lipless bait has to be felt before it's seen, and these buzz hard for their size — the tail keeps moving at speeds where a small billed bait would go slack. The finishes are the sleeper feature: the fluorescent patterns show up at dawn, dusk and after dark, which is exactly when a natural color disappears.

Where we temper the enthusiasm is the hardware. The joints and the light trebles are the parts that can give, and a snapped joint or a straightened hook ends that bait's day. Fill a box with them, hand them to a kid, keep them in the kayak for water you don't want to feed good baits to. Just don't tie one on for the fish of the season.