I�m looking to buy some new trolling rods and reels and wanted to know y�all�s preferences, pros cons etc.
will be using them for down riggers and trolling crank baits. Thanks

7 foot ugly sticks are pretty good. The longer the rod the easier the hook up.

I put together a short and sweet slide show/video on youtube a while back on what equipment I use to troll with including rod, reels, and all other necessary tackle that you may find helpful. Bottom line, I LOVE my eagle claw featherlight 7' 6" medium light action rods coupled with an Abu Garcia Ambassadeur Line Counter Baitcast Reel 6500 LC reel. It's flexible and can easily "load" up with a nice bow in the rod and pick up slack fast when a fish gets on. And the rod has enough backbone to catch some solid fish! I have caught several big hybrids (two at a time) on these rods and it can handle the abuse as well as be finesse enough to downrigg for whitebass. Plus the rods are super cheap! I plan to do some on the water footage this summer demonstrating my set up. The reels are essential! You push one bottom and that allows the bait to descend with the cannon ball into the water and makes it fast and easy plus alarms when line is out when a fish is pulling drag!

If you're going to do alot of downrigger trolling, Shimano has their TDR series which are really good for this. But, as noted above, Ugly Stik rods will work quite well too.