IMO boards are fine to use, when used with a little common sense.

Super heavy boat traffic in-tight, then leave them in the boat. Sparse to moderate traffic, go ahead use them a reasonable distance from the boat and with adequate lighting.

In general, when using boards be more defensive to avoid potential run-ins, and if possible stay just outside the pack edge (has a added benefit ).

A bigger problem than pulling boards at night is when everyone is trolling in different directions vs. an orderly set of trolling lines.