planer boards and crank baits

[Large6er]

What are you guys running, Church's, Offshore, ect. I went cheap and bought the cabelas boards with the tattle flag and I am running bandit 300's off them. I have been fighting the boards for a few weeks now trying to make adjustments to keep the nose of the board down in the water. When there is just a small chop or wake from boats the boards surge and hop in the water. Any ideas on what I can do to make these crap boards run properly in the water. I can't imagine pulling a Reef Runner with these things.

Large6er

[PaulL]

I don't use them

[Stymie]

Same here, I use different length poles trying to maintain a 3-4 foot gap between poles. Right now, I'm using 5', 8', 12' and 16' poles.

[rnvinc]

Walleye guys are the "experts" in planer boards...

There's no reason why they wouldn't work for crappie...

Tips For Using Inline Planer Boards by Julia (Juls) Davis

I think it would be interesting to try mini Alabama rigs behind planer boars..

I have my own planer board design but I haven't experimented with them enough to put on the market yet...

Rickie

[Shellback]

Not familiar with the Cabelas boards. I use Offshore brand. They will also surge and hop. It's actually considered an advantage, as it adds action to the bait, acting like a wounded baitfish. The Offshore brand also runs nose high.

[bfish]

... Any ideas on what I can do to make these crap boards run properly in the water. ....

How much line are you running between the board and lure? Also I believe some people add a ring to the front clip (1" giant split ring/key ring). Been along time since I ran inlines.

Rather than inline boards, I run a mast a dual planer boards with up to 3 lines per side. I have both riveria brand and superski brand boards. Similar to this (ignore the lures, I just use cranks):

[Large6er]

When I use soft baits I have a couple 14', 12', and 10' rods for soft bait slow trolling or I think some of you call it, pushing. I like the crank bait trolling during the hot summer months because I can cover a lot of water running about 2.5 to 2.8 mph and I can change to the soft baits if I want to after I find them. The other advantage for of crankbaits is that you can trigger strikes by saugeyes/walleyes and in my humble opinion the two best eating fish are crappie and walleye.

i do like the the mast system for trolling, a lot of guys use that up on Lake Erie for walleye but it's not a cheap route to go. BFish are you just using spring clips or the rubberbands and spring clips.

[bfish]

clips on shower curtain rings

[bfish]

Also... the problem I had with inline is setting multiple lines out. They wanted to cross when resetting. If you are only using one line on a board, you should have enough room to set it out of the bow, especially if your other rods are towards the stern.

You don't have to use a mast, you can also tie off directly to a forward cleat (and even use your existing boards).

[Large6er]

What a good idea Bfish, I never thought about just using the cleat, I can make that work.