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Planer Board Techniques for Walleyes
IN-LINE PLANERS. I have found as have about 90% of the P.W.T. and
N.A.W.A. professionals that the OFF SHORE brand is without a doubt the
easiest to use of all the models. OFF SHORE uses the press pad release
that was developed for down riggers. They snap on and off your line
so effortlessly that they are a joy to use. No thumbscrews to fight
with just snap on snap off. Very little line wear is experienced
with the pads so one does not have to worry about line fatigue and the
line breaking with a big fish.
In-line boards, as I said earlier, allow one to troll beside the boat instead
of behind it. This allows us to use multi-rod presentations without
tangling lines.This also, allows us to fish previously unfishable waters
that may be too shallow for our boats, too dangerous because of stumps,
rocks or obstructions. I can remember the days before boards, attempting
to make a turn with 4 lines out. In doing so, I also remember untangling
and/or cutting lures free from balls of line. Planers boards allow
us to make those turns, never tangling. What an advantage for those
of us that fish from a 14 foot deep V with three of our friends. What baits
can we fish off in-line boards ? What baits do you have?
I fish crankbaits, spinners, bottom bouncers, spoons even surface jerkbaits
and sometimes combinations of the above. You can fish the deepest
crankbaits like the Mann Stretch 25Õs over 70Õ of water or
the shallowest Manns Loudmouth Jerkbait over three feet of water.
Almost any lure you have in your box can be fished off of in-line planer
boards. A typical trolling situation might be as follows. Let us
say we are on a natural lake with a basin bottoming out at 27 feet in depth.
On our 
350A depth finder we see fish suspended just off the bottom at about 24
feet up to about 10 feet under the surface. You and I and two of
our friends are fishing from my 
Targa 2000, so we can run 4 rods. We don't know which of the fish
we see are active between 10 and 24 feet, so we run a variety of
different diving crankbaits. The first lure we put in will be a Stretch
20. We'll let 120 feet of line so we get maximum depth off the dive.
This lure will get down to about 24 feet on 15 lb test 
Hi Impact line. To the line we attach a Off Shore board and let the
board out about 75 feet off the side of the boat. On the other side
while we were doing our thing, our partners were letting out a WallyTrac
that dives about 15 feet at maximum depth. Likewise our partners
put on a board and ran it out about 75 feet the other side. On the
inside line on our side we'll put on a Stretch 10, that gets down to about
12 feet and attach a board and run it out about 35Õ off our side.
On the other inside board they will put on Stretch 15 that will get down
to about 18 feet and they will also put on a board and run it out 35 feet.
If we could see ourselves from above the boat we will have lines spread
covering a spread of about 180 feet wide.
If we could see through the water from the side we could see we are
covering all the depths where the fish are suspended.
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Greg Horoky
We have at this point the almost perfect spread. After we caught
our second fish on the same lure we would switch all of the lines to that
particular lure. What we have done is to identify where the active fish
in that water column are this day, then we have concentrated on those active
fish. We could have done the same thing with the snap weight
50-50 system using the in-line boards .
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