Re: Planer board mast
Re: Planer board mast
where do your boards run, in relation to your boat? towards the front ,middle or back. mine run towards the back , i think they are supposed to run more toward the middle of the boat.
They will run back
some dependant on your speed and if you are turning port or starboard. Mine run a little back, but fairly much off to the sides of the boat. They also will be further back the more distance off the side of the boat you run. Too slow a speed and they founder and lag back, but at faster speeds they may porpoise a little but will run more parallel; I think that action can help sometimes.
how does planer board work? I see them on fishing show all the times and wonder how do you guys get them to stay at a specific distance from the boat all the time? I watched a show where this guy was running 2 boards, one close to the bank just a little beyond the tip of the laydowns and the other half way between the bank and the boat. Those boards stayed in the same position as he drifted down stream. Does it get tangle up or causes trouble when fighting a fish?
There are two styles of boards- those small ones that clip onto your fishing line, and those that are boat-tethered boards. Both work. I prefer the boat boards, but I can see the advantage of the little clip-on Off-shore Tackle boards which my fishing buddy has.
Boat planer boards are run out on 80# to 120# line from a planer board "mast" which has reels for retrieving and storing the line. The boards are kept at constant tension by the line which is attached to the board and the moving boat. The storage reels are locked once the board is out the desired distance and the board is held at that distance. The boat must be moving in relation to the water not just drifting in order to run planer boards. The movement is what makes them "ski" out to the sides.
I use 80# florescent orange line and Offshore releases. I have extra releases on the shower-curtain style runners- I keep the boards out and when I get a release instead of retrieving and resetting the boards, I merely run out another release. The releases stay on the planer mast line at the board end, and I collect them when done fishing (or if it is a good day
) when I run out of releases and have to retrieve them to keep fishing.
This is a good explanation and visual of boat-tethered planer board use.
The yellow
Off-Shore Tackle boards with the tattle flag have proved useful while trolling for salmon and walleye for us. They take up a little room on the boat (keep them in your tackle box!) and are easily deployed. I don't care for taking the few seconds to unclip them after hooking a fish, but I like them well enough that I might own my own pair with "tattle flags" by the end of the summer.
They don't get tangled up if you run your lines staggered both for depth and set back in such a way that the lines don't cross when a fish releases the line from the board. You are moving, and the fish tails to the rear of the boat - you fight it, reel it in, and net it. Simple!
