Walleye S E of Kelly's

[badboards]

Caught 3 nice keepers all males biggest was 25" thought for sure it was a female big old belly on it but no eggs. First time I've ever fished with big boards still have a lot to learn. Speed was 2.5 mph. Trolling East with the wind to my back. I believe I would have caught more than three but for some reason my rubber bands didn't break size 16 not sure what that was about. Could have been dragging those fish for a couple hours. couldn't quite figure out why I wasn't catching anything there were lots of marks a commercial boat out there was tossing some pretty nice size walleye into their live well. Not sure if there was too much slack in my main line that the rubber bands were attached to. shouldn't that line be firm and tight. Hope to have it figured out by spring. Last day tomorrow hope to get some jumbo perch I'll let you know how that goes planning on fishing over by Marblehead lighthouse or somewhere around lakeside. If anybody does have any tips about how to make that main line tighter that would be great.

[itsbob]

We tried trolling with big boards for a few years and had many issues with them. Including not having the rubber band break and dragging undetected fish. Had problems with the boards not running far enough to the side of boat and the board line interfering with the rods when we made turns. Took a long time to set out and bring in boards and gear too. We finally gave up and went back to my inline boards and have not looked back. We didn't have a problem with the board line having too much slack though. That slack would most likely be the board not pulling hard enough. One solution would be to add weight to bottom of board to have it run deeper and pull harder. Good luck perchin.

[TROPHYTIME]

Need your boards to weigh more to pull harder on main line or add weight to bottom of them. I went to wooden boards and that took care of the problem. You can go online and get prints on how to make your own. That should help you.

[badboards]

Makes sense. These boards are older the brand name is Rivera. The have hinges to open and close. They are plastic with foam core. I'm wondering if I had them backwards. I had the Pointed edge going forward but the white foam faced out and yellow plastic faced in. That to me seemed weird.

[cooleyfarms]

possibly upside down?

[Capt Juls]

Makes sense. These boards are older the brand name is Rivera. The have hinges to open and close. They are plastic with foam core. I'm wondering if I had them backwards. I had the Pointed edge going forward but the white foam faced out and yellow plastic faced in. That to me seemed weird.

That would be the correct position. The "pointy end" would be beveled, to make the board go out away from the boat....just like the little inline boards.

Sounds like they were just too light for the job. The mainline should be relatively tight, so the fish can be detected by watching the rod tips. Most charters I've been on, that run big boards, didn't have rubber bands breaking most of the time, either.

[ReelAction II]

Makes sense. These boards are older the brand name is Rivera. The have hinges to open and close. They are plastic with foam core. I'm wondering if I had them backwards. I had the Pointed edge going forward but the white foam faced out and yellow plastic faced in. That to me seemed weird.

replace the foam core with wood

[badboards]

There is a thought. I might give that a try. Probably can glue them in. Have you done this before. What kind of wood. Probably treated cedar would be good.

[penalty box]

make your big boards out of Azek

[itsbob]

Sorry but I couldn't help myself. Another way for board to pull harder than modifying with added weight, is the position or location the line is attached to the board.
How many lines max do you intend to run off those boards on each side? The charters use big boards because they use 4 to 6 lines off each board. If you are using 3 or less lines off each side, you would be best to use inline boards.
The absolute best setup to run cranks is with mono off inline boards.Most all agree to that.Good luck.