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PLANER BOARDS

Planer boards are used when you want to spread your lines away from the boat, they attach to your line by a simple pinch pad fitting and they can be added to or removed from your line in seconds. They are ideal for trolling in an area where you want to fish lures at different depths, one example would be the pass of Brander on loch Awe by using planer boards you can send a shallow diving lure out from the boat and have it fishing hard against the shore 2 to 3ft out you can then run another planer board further from the shore with a deeper diving lure. Meanwhile your boat is in deep water where you can fish with a downrigger and or Dipsy divers this way you can have 5 lines fishing a swath of water 50 to 60 ft plus wide with lures running from 3ft to 50 ft deep or whatever depth you want to send a downrigger down to.

Another situation where planer boards have an advantage is trolling rocky shores that have an erratic bottom contour, with planers you can send lures out to run along reefs and through rock piles or any other obstruction that could either damage your boat or propeller while you stay out in the deeper water, they are also ideal for trolling a lure along the face of weed beds if you are targeting pike.

Recently I have been using my planers to troll with lead core line, I usually run the lure 80 to 100 yds back and then clip on the board and send it out, this way I have a lure running around 15 ft deep but far away from the back of the boat and 20 to 30 yards out so the lure is running in undisturbed water.

Planer boards are available from various manufacturers with the leading brands being Offshore tackle,Tru-Trac, Church Tackle and Big Jon the board I use is the Offshore Tackle one, it has the advantage of being able to be used in a wide variety of ways, to stay on your line or slide down the line when a fish hits, or the add on "tattle flag" conversion that has a flag on the board that folds back when you have a fish on, this will save you from dragging a small fish for miles that might not show on the board it will also alert you when your lure has picked up weed as the flag will fold back.

Offshore planer board w/tattleflag.

However if you hook a big fish on a board you will be in no doubt as the board is either dragged back in the water or is completely pulled under by the fish!!.

The Offshore boards I have I bought from the USA via their web site, they took approx 4 weeks to arrive, but you can get them from Cabelas or Bass Pro as well.

I have just recently found a web page that gives detailed plans on making your own inline planer boards, if you are handy with woodworking tools they should be quite easy to knock up a few, click here for the link. I don't like "lifting" ideas from other peoples site  but this one seemed too good to pass by, if anyone makes the planers could they let me know how