I am a bank fisherman. While I do have a boat, it is a very small, very underpowered boat that is a bit of a struggle on the lake. So I stick to fishing the bank (or piers). When fishing from the bank you find the best spot you can and rely on your bait to draw the fish in. Sometimes it works great. Other times… Well, it's called fishing for a reason.
Last weekend, however, a friend invited me to come troll for catfish in his boat. We left Allison Creek Boat Landing in the morning and spent the whole day in the Big Allison area. My friend Koby has been doing this for awhile and has perfected a bait for it. We used some cut bait, of course, but the real winner was this hibachi smelling pork chop Koby specially made the night before. It made me want to lick my fingers but I was advised that this would be a bad idea considering some of the gnarlier ingredients.
With Koby’s special bait and some planer boards (also made by Koby) we set the trolling motor to work dragging our baits behind us. We also dropped a couple worms for fresh bait and I tossed out a big lure for the heck of it. With the planer boards pulling our baits out to the side we were able to have baits covering a roughly 70 foot path through the lake.
The weather getting colder has pushed the catfish out of their summer hunting grounds and we were trolling areas roughly 30-35 ft deep. Immediately after starting we had two rods go down. One we missed and the other hooked up! We had ourselves a nice eater size blue! We trolled for 5 or 6 hours and ended up with 10 or so catfish between us (several eater sized fish and a couple fun sizers!). I managed to catch a catfish trolling a large swimbait and we caught a nice live well full of white perch!
Planer boards are a relatively new concept to me. I have seen them in videos and I remember using some in the Chesapeake Bay trolling for striped bass many years ago but I have never helped operate them. The devices are so simple to use anyone can do it after having been shown how once. They are great because they also work at low trolling speeds.
Every year when it gets cold I struggle to get fish in hand. My favorite fishing spot is way too shallow for a winter bite and, while I hope to have better luck this winter at some new spots, I doubt winter time is ever going to be super exciting from the bank. I can’t wait to try trolling planer boards again though! Sitting on the bank is so luck driven, especially in the winter. Trolling planer boards, however, covers an amount of water that makes it statistically unlikely you won’t run across at least a couple fish!
Now, I am interested in other uses for these amazing devices! For example, I bet trolling umbrella rigs in the spring time would be a great method for both bass and crappie! If your willing to cheat on good old Wylie I bet you could also put a hurting on some hybrids in Norman or Stripers in Murray! I also have this strange idea about planer boards from the bank in the river!
All in all, if you haven’t tried the planer board method yet, I highly recommend you do! If you want to watch a video of the fish we caught you can do that here!
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