Thread: Tried planer boards on cypress this morning

I got on the water around 930, anxious to try pulling cranks with the OR38 planer boards that I just bought, the water temperature was 74 degrees and a slight constant breeze, I started out with 3 boards on each side and lost the first fish right at the boat, then I caught a really nice one that was 14.5 inches long, so i was getting excited, then all of a sudden. One of the crankbaits got hung on something, and I ended up having to stop and reel everything in, so I could go back and get my board and crankbait that was hung up, I almost said to hell with planer boards. But I tried again and caught some nice fish over a 4 hour period. Right at the end I got tired of pulling cranks, and went to a dock that's always produced a few fish, and caught 2 decent ones there. And left around 1:45. I'll definitely be using the planer boards again, but the ones I have don't seem to handle speed real well. The fastest I could run with them, was 1.5 mph without them wanting to come right up beside the boat, but I caught fish at speeds around 1.2 mph. Also I couldn't tell any certain patterns with them. I caught fish from 12 feet of water to 18 feet. But I don't have line counter reels, so I'm sure that would help a lot

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I often wondered about them too Chip. But I eventually decided against them. Most of the waters that we fish around here are what I would call small to medium lakes.
My concern would be turning. I make a lot of turns when I'm cranking. With that in mind, and I'm not having any trouble with the spread I run now still catching fish, I
figured it wasn't worth the trouble. They probably have their place in deep lakes with ultra clear water, but most of our lakes are what I would call stained. Nice catch!