12/22/2023 0 Comments Water bugz planer board![]() Planer boards open up shallow water to spring crappie trollers. ![]() This way, the leader pops below the knot on the lighter line before the clip is released, allowing the board to be retrieved without stopping the show. That’s why Taylor ties a short leader of 4- to 6-pound mono with a barrel knot to his 8- to 10-pound mono leader. Two of Taylor’s favorite jig colors are chartreuse/black and yellow/white, but given the shallow cover involved, you’re bound to be sacrifice plenty of jigs. In depths of 3 to 4 feet - trolling about 1 mile per hour - Taylor advises running a 1/32- or 1/16-ounce jighead with a 2-inch curlytail grub 10 to 12 feet behind the planer board, often lengthening the distance between the board and jig on the deeper side. A lot of our spawning flats have a channel where the old creek bed went through, and you can run the boat through there and get the boards out into the shallow water.” Typically, the fish will be sitting off one of those drops. I like to fish them near cover and along breaks - places where the water will be 3 to 4 feet deep and drop off to 10 feet. “You want to make that board go down the bank as close as you can get it. “It’s a lot of work, because the guy on the shoreline side of the boat has to keep adjusting them to make them go around fallen trees or whatever is in the way,” he said. In addition to planers, Taylor often runs a traditional spread of four to six long lines off the transom from 20 to 40 feet behind his boat. Taylor said the tips of his rods should be raised slightly to lift more line out of the water so the planers cut into the water and fan out. This keeps boards and baits apart and cuts down on tangles when a fish is hooked. The rod whose bait is farthest from the boat is set in a rod holder closest to the stern, with the others staggered forward. The first runs about 20 feet out, the second 30 feet out and the third 40 feet out, each staggered slightly behind the other due to the length of line necessary to add the distance from the boat. ![]() Taylor’s long-line trolling spread consists of three planer boards off each side of the boat. You can get a bait up there in shallow water where you couldn’t get a boat without spooking the fish or places where you wouldn’t want to take the boat - like a submerged stump field.” “It’s not a lazy man’s game at all,” said Taylor, “but it’s a very good way to catch those spawning fish. Running three or four lines on planer boards close to the bank is a great way to catch spawning crappie, but make no mistake, it takes some work. Planer boards take boat noises out of the equation. The question is, how many split seconds can you give a fish to eye your bait before the hum of the trolling motor, hull slap or even the ping of a transducer give you away? Most anglers would agree that spring crappie fishing is an endeavor where every inch matters - corroborated by the 16-foot rods that sprout from the bow of a serious tight-liner’s boat. Welcome to the New and Used Classifieds from our Dealers.
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