Jeff Tomlin was a fisherman first, then a fishing guide, and last but not least, a tackle manufacturer. The most recent chapter of his fishing story came about because of the first two.
Tomlin owns Water Bugz, a company that manufactures planer boards, which he has routinely used to catch big striped bass and hybrids on Lake Norman and Lake Hickory for decades. And in one of those moments when he felt like he needed a better board than he could find on shelves in the tackle shops around his home in Statesville, NC, he decided to start making his own.
That was more than 20 years ago.
The result was his bright yellow planer boards, a/k/a side planers, that help fishermen present baits in front of predator fish in a number of different ways, with a number of different advantages. In different situations, they can be deadly on striped bass, hybrids, spotted bass, white perch, catfish and even crappie. The boards, attached to your fishing line by a barrel swivel and a tiny, plastic release clip, offer sort of a rudder that will spread baits out on both sides of your boat, as far as 100 feet, and allow them to track along at a relatively slow speed, presenting your baits, live or otherwise.
When a fish hits a bait or lure, the line is jerked out of the clip and the board slides down to a barrel swivel several feet up the line from the fish, allowing fishermen to fight their quarry without interference from the planer – a frequent complaint from saltwater fishermen who use planer boards to get spoons down to Spanish and king mackerel, bonita and false albacore – to name a few.
“There are three main reasons to use planer boards,” said Tomlin (704-902-7246, www.waterbugz.com). “First, there’s no better weapon than a planer board if you’re trying to cover water. Even if you’re only fishing one board on both sides, you can cover 60 or 70 feet on either side of the boat.
“Second, you can catch unspooked fish, fish that are boat shy,” he said. “At a minimum, your bait is at least 20 feet from the boat, and even that close, you can still make turns. And one person can operate a boat with boards out on either side.”
You can also target specific pieces of cover, structure or contour with a planer board, by positioning it at exactly the right distance from the port or starboard gunwale to drag the bait or lure past the target.
Third, Tomlin said, fishing a planer board helps you separate your lines when you’ve got a fish hooked. Ask any crappie fisherman who spider-rigs with 8 or 10 lines out how much fun it is to try and guide a 1-pound fish back through the maze of monofilament.
“With planer boards, the lines are spread so far apart, there’s less chance of them getting tangled up while you’re fighting a fish,” he said.
Tomlin’s boards come in two sizes: a 4×10 Big Bugz board for trolling heavy lures or drifting big baits for big catfish, and a 3×7 Water Bugz board for most live-bait applications – and for trolling tiny crankbaits for crappie when fish are inhabiting deeper water.
Tomlin likes to troll tandem bucktail rigs and Alabama rigs on his bigger boards, easing along at between 1.3 and 1.5 mph when fish are lethargic and 2.0 to 2.5 mph when they’re aggressive. He fishes them on 7-foot-6, medium-heavy Drift King Striper Series rods, which Tomlin said have a soft tip, making them perfect for drifting and trolling. He’ll run 17-pound high-vis mono on the reel, with a 15-pound fluorocarbon leader.
“The catfish guys like big planer boards that won’t break free,” Tomlin said. “They don’t need to stop drifting when they hook a fish. They really need a controlled drift, and they don’t want to pull their baits out after each drift. And a lot of them have gotten more into trolling and drifting than anchoring.”
For stripers and hybrids, Tomlin likes a tandem bucktail rig or an Alabama rig behind the bigger boards. If he wants to fish very deep, he’ll thread a 2-ounce sinker on the line in front of the bait; he can get baits down 50 feet when he puts out 100 feet of line. He likes to run up to the five baits that North Carolina allows on an Alabama rig, and he wants the trailing bait to be “the oddball, different. That’s usually the one they want.”
When fishing live bait, Tomlin normally puts out a spread of as many as 6 baits, three on each side of the boat, at about 0.7 mph. He likes a Carolina rig with a 3- to 4-foot leader of 10-pound fluorocarbon for smaller fish, 15-pound for bigger fish. The running line will be a little stronger, 12- and 17-pound test; if he gets hung up, the line will usually break at the swivel, allowing him to lose only his hook and leader. He’ll go with a 1/0 or 2/0 circle hook to match the size bait he’s using.
His live-bait rods are 7-foot-6, medium-light Shakespeare Excursion rods. Either casting or spinning tackle works. “You don’t need rods of different lengths (like crappie fishermen spider-rigging) because the planer boards separate the baits,” he said.
In addition, Tomlin said his boards have become popular with crappie fishermen, who use the smaller boards to spread out the mini-crankbaits many anglers troll when fish are deeper. Using 6-pound test, they can also troll tandem-jig rigs.
Tomlin said flounder fishermen, especially around Murrells Inlet, SC, have discovered the smaller boards. Anchored up in good current – as there seems to almost always be at the coast as the tides run – fishermen can anchor and spread out mud minnows on both sides of the boat, with the planer boards pulling back and to the sides in the current.
Another segment of the saltwater fishing world is chiming in. Tomlin is developing a set of special planer boards for a live-bait, tournament king mackerel fisherman who wants a planer board that can stand up to a 2- or 3-pound bluefish bait.
Water Bugz:
Jeff Tomlin’s Water Bugz Planer Boards were built ouf of his own necessity, because he couldn’t find ones on local tackle shop shelves that were up to his standards.
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