Guides Brad Taylor and Mike Glover agree that covering a wide swath of water enhances your odds of success when fishing live bait for stripers. The way they accomplish that is with planer boards.
Both use the same brand of planer board, the Water Bugz planer, and use them in similar fashions. Glover has a system worked out to properly deploy his planer boards.
“I’ll pull Water Bugz planer boards off each side of the boat to cover as much as a 50-yard wide swath of water,” Glover said. “Water Bugz are a small, easy to use and highly effective planer for these stripers. I’ll use two or even three on each side, depending on the situation and my target to fish. I’ll space the interval between them to keep them tangle free as I make turns with the boat. This gets the bait away from the boat, a good thing because in clear water that can make a difference.
“I fish humps and flats that attract stripers, and I utilize planer boards to pull bait across the target but keep the boat well away and not spook the fish. It is one of my favorite tools for taking finicky stripers.”
Taylor said planer boards are a great tool for Lake Murray stripers, but anglers must have a plan to be successful.
“Use of planer boards is not a random type of fishing,” Taylor said. “By controlling the amount of line I let out and the speed I move the boat, I can pinpoint my bait presentation to a specific target such as a hump or ledge from a long distance away. While it does get more bait out for stripers to bite, the best use for these devices is to catch those stripers that otherwise may be difficult to target in clear water and bright light.”
Using weight on the planer board rigs is an option, and Glover said he’ll experiment and go with what’s working.
“I put split-shots on some free-line rigs and planer-board rigs, but I put it above the swivel,” he said. “If I see fish on my graph at depths above my down rods are set, that’s another signal to use a little weight on the planer-board rigs. Our water is usually pretty clear, and stripers will move up to take live baits.”
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