Does anyone use the church stern planers for a deep set such as a 10 color? Curious how well they work or any tips for them!
Great Lakes Fishing
Stern planers
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I experimented a little bit with them last year out of my kayak trolling Lake Michigan. For my purposes, I found they worked best with crankbaits... only because if I slowed down to fight a fish a little bit, that line sinks if you have a weight with a spoon, or leadcore. I lost a lot of rainbows running a crank off it because I'd have it like 200 ft behind my kayak - that's a long time to fight a rainbow that's jumping everywhere. Lastly, I found that when I tried it with a sinking line offshore to try and get 3 lines down into "king" territory when the thermocline was 70ft down+, my big kings were running right into it when they were peeling off 300-600 ft of line and there was almost no way for me to clear that line. My two biggest kings during SAR got tangled in that line, and I was extremely lucky I didn't lose them. I then junked that idea and focused on getting two lines in the zone or running a deeper leadcore that I could clear quickly as I'm fighting the fish (a reel that clears 45" per crank helps a lot to clear up to 10 colors of 832 advanced leadcore).
My take home is (at least for a kayak), they'd work best in a shallow water situation fishing something like a crankbait for fish that might scatter when you go over them (planer boards would probably be better). I still might use them in certain situations, such as maybe a shallow bite after a turnover event... but for my purposes, they were more trouble than it was worth. It'd probably be much easier to run them in a boat where you don't accidentally slow way down as you're fighting a fish.
If you run a chute rod, it helps get the line farther back before it starts sinking in the water. Without it, your line will sink right behind the boat. With it, your line will sink after the planer which can be a long was behind the boat. It helps open up the back of the boat when running a chute rod.
Displaying 1 to 8 of 8 posts
