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Mastering certain animation techniques requires a certain amount of practice. Although it's sometimes important to vary your animations, it's quite possible to catch many fish with very simple animations that are within everyone's reach.
Reel animation
The term "crancking" simply means "reeling". In fact, crancking consists in animating your lure by retrieving its streamer in a linear fashion using the crank of your reel. Simple... and effective!
A technique that works with all fish
Crancking is a fishing technique that can catch all, or almost all, species of fish. Whether you're fishing freshwater or sea, trout or bluefin tuna, moving your lure in a straight line is often enough to get your target to attack. As always, the key is to be in the right place at the right time.
The right height
Even if some species can be fished close to the surface and others close to the bottom, crancking is still possible. All you need to do is vary (and adapt) the lure's height of attack. To do this, you need to act on 3 factors: the lure's descent time, the retrieve speed and the weight of the sinker.
Adapting to fish activity
The depth and speed of your lure also depend on fish activity. It's important to remember that when it comes to fishing, it's always the fish that decides... All we do is adapt!
So the more active the fish, the more likely they are to move up the water column and attack animated lures quickly.
A natural look
The strength of crancking is that it imitates perfectly natural fish behaviour... Linear movement. In fact, no matter how effective pulling, jerking and fly fishing are, they can't be said to be a perfect imitation of their prey's most common behaviour.
Don't overdo it
While there are a few parameters you can play with to vary your animation, such as speed changes and pauses, I don't think you should overdo it... This could have the opposite effect to that intended, and make the fish wary!
Soft and hard lures
Crancking is a simple, effective technique that's within everyone's reach. In fact, it's the best way to start fishing for beginners. But it also has the advantage of being practicable with almost any lure, soft or hard.
