Glass or composite cranking rods?

Personally, I have never found the need for glass or composite cranking rods. Supposedly the slower actions and deeper flex enable to keep fish buttoned up thus have fewer throw your lure. I have never found this be either true or false and boat plenty on crankbaits using the same rod I use for spinnerbaits, worms, and jigs. My preference is to use fast action rods and select rod based on weights of lures.

If you are worried about a rod being "too fast", spool up some mono for crankbaits.

Kistler rods used to great but the blanks have changed so I don't know anymore. Have heard many people complain that Trey does not honor warranties but I do not know if this is true or not. Might want to look into the Dobyns line if warranty matter to you.

I have both, and with glass being a little heavier it makes throwing lighter crank baits a little harder. A good, lightweight, medium action graphite rod works better for those small light crankbaits in my experience. I find the better glass application for me is buzz baits.

I've used a Shimano expride 610M that's a glass Composite for the past several years and love it. It's excellent for small crankbaits and is an awesome chatterbait mini max rod.

I do not like it for squarebills however. The tip is where the glass is located and it is very soft and slow so squarebills are not as erratic when defelcting off cover.

I bought a new shimano zodias last year to see how I liked them to throw small squarebills. After throwing it a bit, I liked using my older daiwa tatula xt crankbait rod instead. Its a graphite rod with a softer tip. It casts the smaller cranks better and can feel more with it. Both are 7' M rods. I do like using the zodias for bigger sqaurebills like the 1.5s. I also bought a 7'3 MH glass zodias to try for chatterbaits and I love it. It casts the 3/8 jackhammer really well and I can feel more thump than the graphite rod I was using before it.

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20lb braid to mono leader

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Some videos showing the suction effect of bass on prey has made me stop using braid for most moving baits. I was having a lot of problems with chatterbaits.

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Got any links? I'd be interested to see that.

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One was on the Hook n Look tv show. I will try to find a source.

I like falcon hd medium action for cranks. They work great on spinnerbaits and topwater too.

Not much point in spending big money on a crankbait rod. Save that money and drop extra on your bottom contact setups.

I have yet to build on them, but I'd look into a custom rod built on either an nfc all-purpose fast glass blank or one of their delta hybrid zentron blanks. The APFG 742 or Delta Hybrid CB 704 specifically I'd look at.

ETA: I have a CB 705 on order to replace my aforementioned expride. Allegedly, the delta hybrid nfc blanks are the blanks used on the original kistler feel n reel rods that are so beloved.