fishtracker: Trolling with Planerboards

Line Release to be replaced

Different Planerboards

Most of my fishing for pike and zander is done from boat. A very effective method is trolling with live baits, and with great success I have been doing this for years. Over the years I have refined my tactics and tuned the tackle for this exact purpose. A great help when fishing from a boat, and when you like me often fish alone are planerboards or sideplaners. I have used a number of different versions, and always tuned them to fit my fishing. Most planerboards are made for trolling with crankbaits and swimbaits, so you sometime have to be a little creative. For a long time I have been using planers form Church Tackle, with a slight conversion. I have mounted some EVA-foam with superglue and tape. I do this is to get a better up-drift, so that the planers won't tilt when turning at really slow speeds. Normally when trolling with livebait you do speeds of 0,6 - 1,0 km/h, which can be challenging for some boards. Not long ago I bought some new planers from Savage Gear. They looked great and had some good reviews. So the first time I took them trolling I found you that the clips (line releases) were a big problem when fishing with braided line. The braid would cut into the rubber, that was supposed to secure the line in the clip. The result being that either the clip didn't release or it released to lightly. That day I had 15 pike in the boat, with 10 on the Savage Gear planerboards, only one time the clip was released. Some thought about this, not being satisfied, was either throwing the boards out or converting them. So when i got back from fishing, I went on the web to find some new clips that could be used instead. I selected some nice clips from Scotty, which had a nice track record. The first pull-tests with braid showed much better performance, maybe the clips that I have bought are to large, but tests next time I'm on the water will show how they perform. The conversion is illustrated below.

In action

But why do I use planerboards? It's simple really, to get a better spread in the baits, covering more water when trolling. But there are several bonuses using them. I have experienced that on days when the fishing is really hard and finicky, it's often the baits fished on the boards that are hit. My thoughts about this are that the fish are not that "scared" hitting baits when they are further away from the boat. These baits are not disturbed by the silhouette of the boat, the beam from the echosounder, the oscillations/vibration from the electrical trollingmotor and the clumsy fisherman hammering in the boat. This effect has been even more visual in my fishing log, when fishing in clear lakes and in shallow lakes.
Another bonus is the control you have in combination with a trollingmotor with autopilot. These gadgets in combination makes the handling many rods an easy task, when you are fishing alone in the boat. I have no problem fishing 6 rods, and could do more. The way i do this is combining 2 different planerboard setups, and aggressive cutting version, and a medium cutting version. This way you can easily fish up to 6 rods, and the variations are many. One could be 2 rods in different lengths on bottom bouncers. 2 rods on Church Tackle planerboards (medium aggressive) and then 2 with the Savage Gear planers (aggressive). Normally I use floats, for better indication and fish the floats approx. 5 meters behind the planers. But you could also leave the floats and use the planers as floats.