Pullin the boards on Chickamauga

MRDUX and I had a great couple of days learning to pull boards with "tenncrappie" and "sailfish" on Lake Chickamauga TN...great conversations, beautiful scenery, fine home cooking...absolute wonderful 2 days...

Thanks Chris and Tim for some great fishing and info sharing...(hey judge...hope that gobbler makes your day opening morning!!!...)

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Rickie

Sounds/looks like a good time

Glad you had a good trip. Tenncrappie is a good guy for sure. :highfive

glad you had a good time, your welcome back any time

Great time with my east-TN friends. I don't think we mentioned UT-UK rivalry one time? Even got to see one of Peyton Manning's homes. Shame the poor guy has to live in such a bad neighborhood with such a poor view.

I left with a wealth of knowledge and plan on putting it to work in the next couple of days. Rickie and I talked the entire 4 1/2 hour drive back home about all the huge expanses of water on KY and Barkley that are pretty much untouched that would be ideal for the planer boards. Watch out crappie!!

Nice catch guys. I see Rickie had his coffee bottle close by.

Had a great time as well. Hope you guys come back when the crackers are biting.

Nice pics guys. Those boards look much smaller than I thought they would be. How slow can you pull those?

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Originally Posted by wilbur

Nice catch guys. I see Rickie had his coffee bottle close by.

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:HandsClapping

Rickie

That "coffee cup"' goes everywhere Rickie goes.

Chris, we pulled them from .6-1.0. Most of the same gear and tactics we use longlining will work with the boards. My wife was happy to hear that I won't be sneaking around and buying a new set of rods to use.

We had really bad winds Thursday and had to fish some of the calmer areas. Even with the wave action, the boards worked great. I can see their limitations but those are far outweighed by their potential here. They should be deadly on the blacks along the banks. Most of the fish we caught Friday were in 5 feet of water or less, many much less.

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Originally Posted by tenncrappie

Had a great time as well. Hope you guys come back when the crackers are biting.

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Save us a seat.

I got a question. If you wanted your 1/8 oz jig to fish at 4 ft. at .8 or .9 mph, how far would you put it behind the board?

Sounds like I'll be buying some more gear..... rotfl

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Originally Posted by wilbur

I got a question. If you wanted your 1/8 oz jig to fish at 4 ft. at .8 or .9 mph, how far would you put it behind the board?

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Wilbur, I would prefer Chris answer that because I have an idea where I would start but he has so much more experience with it. I would probably be 6 feet below the board.

Thanks Doug.

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Originally Posted by wilbur

I got a question. If you wanted your 1/8 oz jig to fish at 4 ft. at .8 or .9 mph, how far would you put it behind the board?

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I didn't see any 1/8 oz jigs used...

Everything was 1/16 oz or 1/20 oz in single or double jig rigs...

Rickie

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Originally Posted by rnvinc

I didn't see any 1/8 oz jigs used...

Everything was 1/16 oz or 1/20 oz in single or double jig rigs...

Rickie

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so for a 1/16 oz. how far back from board to reach 4 ft.?

I know we caught some fish yesterday in 3 feet on Chickamauga with double 1/16 with hot grubs 3 feet or so back from the boards.

Once I get my boards set up, I'm just going to have to experiment and lose some jigs to figure the depths out. It was nice to see my go-to KY Lake colors work down there also. I just not telling what they were.

The 1/16 for 4 ft is usually put 6-7ft behind board. Trolling speed will make it vary of course. Most of the time we try and stay .8 to 1.0 and kick it up or down until we start getting a consistent bite. Double rigs will of course run a little deeper.

Thanks tenn

What kind of boards do you guys pull?

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Originally Posted by Quackrstackr

What kind of boards do you guys pull?

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They are a custom wood board that is no longer made by a local friend of theirs.

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Originally Posted by Quackrstackr

What kind of boards do you guys pull?

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Doug will be experimenting with a few different "off the shelf" board brands and I will be experimenting with my own design I built last year and haven't tested much yet...

I'm pretty sure I could also make a board similar to the custom boards tenncrappie is using ...but I would have get an OK from tenncrappie's supplier before I would be comfortable copying his design...

Rickie

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Originally Posted by rnvinc

Doug will be experimenting with a few different "off the shelf" board brands and I will be experimenting with my own design I built last year and haven't tested much yet...

I'm pretty sure I could also make a board similar to the custom boards tenncrappie is using ...but I would have get an OK from tenncrappie's supplier before I would be comfortable copying his design...

Rickie

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Shouldn't be a problem copying his design for personal use. Now if you're looking to profit from it, there lies the problem.

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Originally Posted by tenncrappie

The 1/16 for 4 ft is usually put 6-7ft behind board. Trolling speed will make it vary of course. Most of the time we try and stay .8 to 1.0 and kick it up or down until we start getting a consistent bite. Double rigs will of course run a little deeper.

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I just got some offshore mini planner boards i havent tired them out yet i was surprised your putting jigs a few feet behind boards i was thinking i would have to put x amount of feet out to get to a certain depth then put planner board on am i missing something

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Originally Posted by smokercraft

I just got some offshore mini planner boards i havent tired them out yet i was surprised your putting jigs a few feet behind boards i was thinking i would have to put x amount of feet out to get to a certain depth then put planner board on am i missing something

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The custom boards tenncrappie uses do not have the release clip as seen in most of the brand boards...

Their custom boards are affixed to the line stationary above the jig (the board does not "release" and slide back toward the bait...the board stays on the line at the attachment point above the jig)...

The advantage to this seems to be not having to measure the line between the jig and board and re-attach the board to the line every time a fish is caught...

Rickie

plus in deeper water you can run your lures at different depths to start with to find what depth the crappie are holding at and when dialed in , reset all to the same as you are getting the most bites. in the shallower water it gets the bait away from the boat and doesnt spook the fish ,or if you go over the fish ,the boat pushes the fish out to your baits. today we were catching fish in 3 ft or less running between 12 to 20 inches behind the boards. thanks guys for the deepth finder class, i really appreciated it

I ran a pair of Offshore OR34s and a pair of Church's minis today. Fish were in 4 -8 feet of water. We ran the jigs 5-8 feet behind the boards at 1.0mph. Had 20 NICE keepers. Pretty happy for the 1st time out on KY. Had several boats get close to us to see what we were doing.

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Originally Posted by sailfish1

plus in deeper water you can run your lures at different depths to start with to find what depth the crappie are holding at and when dialed in , reset all to the same as you are getting the most bites. in the shallower water it gets the bait away from the boat and doesnt spook the fish ,or if you go over the fish ,the boat pushes the fish out to your baits. today we were catching fish in 3 ft or less running between 12 to 20 inches behind the boards. thanks guys for the deepth finder class, i really appreciated it

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Fishing that close to the board you would think the board would spook the fish, but I recon not.

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Originally Posted by wilbur

Fishing that close to the board you would think the board would spook the fish, but I recon not.

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I doubt the board will spook them nearly as much as an 18 foot boat would in shallow water. Yesterday we ran 4 planer rods, 2 off each side up front, and 4 rods (my longline rod set-up) off the back with the exact same jigs under small bobbers to control the depth. The board rods probably caught 2/3 of the fish. Same jigs, same depth, same area.

We did the same situation as Sailfish1 mentioned when rnvinc and I were at Chickamauga, running boards in 3 feet of water with 2 feet of line out, and were amazed that it worked as well as it did in 12 feet of water. I'm sure it spooks some fish but obviously not all of them.

I have some questions,#1 how far away from the boat are the planer boards, #2 I take it your running one bait or line per planer board, #3 Can we expect another video Doug? My minds eye is having trouble wrapping my imagination around this but I'm anxious to try this. #4 Is there a release or do you take the main line off when the fish is reeled in? If this is too much to try to answer, message me and I'll give you my number.

A lot of the answers depend on the boards that are being fished. The wood boards that we fished with on Chickamaugua are fixed to the line at the desired depth. When a fish is reeled in the board can be taken off the line but we didn't have to on our trip because of the depth we were fishing. The distance away from the boat is dictated by the angle of the board and how much line you are willing to run out to the board. I ran 2 boards per side Tuesday and one was probably 10 yards out, the other 20 yards out but that was at a 45 degree angle to the front of the boat. I would say the back board was pretty close to 90 degrees off the transom.

The mini boards from Church or Off Shore are made to slide down the line when the fish releases the line from the clip release. In one of the pics in the KY Lake planer thread you can see the barrel swivel and bead that is used to keep the board from sliding all the way down to the hook. Of all the keepers I caught Tuesday, just a few pulled the line out of the release so I just reeled the board in, still on the line where it was clipped, and we netted the fish.

I seriously doubt there is another video in the future. The last one ended up costing me a great fishing area so I'll be much less forthcoming with info on specific areas of the lakes.

YouTube is covered up with videos of the OffShore OR34s and the Church's mini boards in action. This is all new to me also but I got some great coaching from tenncrappie on our trip. I would say a guy could call Chris or PM him to book a planer board trip with him on Chickamaugua. He definitely knows his stuff!