trolling question

[Shellkat]

Gonna try some trolling this year,I have a 18 foot grizzly tracker john boat.It has the continueous track down both sides to mount rod holders. Which works best ,mount holders on the side or make something to go side to side to hold them and have them spread across the back.Planning on doing some striper trolling and maybe river or catfish

[Duayne]

I am thinking of adding something like this:

http://www.rivieratrolling.com/swivel_towers.html

More of the guides are moving to tree type configurations for planer boards. This can be added to some (most?) of the track systems. You'd still want to add some down rod holders.

[linedrager]

Both, you will need to b versatile, will you be using planner boards? Sometime rods out the back and off the side will work well just depends on how you adapt, good luck.

[Moveon]

I tried using the planer boards that take your baits out to the side of the boat. They are a job to use. ended up just using one rod of the back starboard side of the boat. I fish by myself so it was harder to control two or more rods. I caught enough fish using only the one rod straight off the back of the boat. I was fishing for crappie and was catching bass too. I let out over 100 yards of 10 # test mono line and then used crank baits with a jig tied on the back hook as a trailer. Used lighter weight line for the jig in case it got snagged. That way I only lost the jig not the more expensive crank baits. Bandit 300's will go down to 16 to 18 if you let out enough line behind the boat.

The only problem with my system in that the lake I fished was small and had to many other boats including stupid people on kayaks that were in my line of direction too often. Over 10 people in kayaks on a less than 200 acre lake combined with 10 to 15 other bass boats that were actually fishing. Boats were going everywhere and getting in my way and it was nearly impossible to follow a contour line without having to avoid another boat. But this system would work well on a less crowded body of water where you could maintain a straight line for a long distance along a break line on the bottom.

Not sure if this works with stripers. But I found that if the fish are deep enough that they don't care if your boat runs over the top of them. They still will bit. Now if the fish are in shallower water or suspended up on the surface then a side planer board would get the baits away from the boat so as not to spook the fish that are shallow. But if the fish are in deep water and down deep the need for a planer board is not real IMHO. Again this applies to crappie and large mouth bass, blue gills and such types of fish. Maybe the Stripers are more easily spooked by the boat passing over head. I don't know about that. All I know is that trying to use two rods was a pain.

[rooster]

Instead of letting out so much line, long line trolling, have a 4 foot leader from crank bait to a swivel on main line then have a 1 foot leader from main swivel to a 3 oz. weight and fish almost straight down. You can run lines on each side of the boat and make sharp turns on contour lines and not worry about boats crossing your lines.

[Rob1678]

I usually run 2 down rods off each side. 3 planer boards off each side and a balloon /float off the back. It is a constant job just checking bait and resetting lines. A fish can jinx the whole system. Lol. I call it flying the "V"! I use egg sinkers to get baits to the zone quicker. The crankbaits as downriggers work but can usually only handle 3-4. I will tell ya that I am trolling from a 24' pontoon but the pros do it from 18' deep vee boats. I really like the slide diver concept as well but have not tried them yet. Turning my boat takes about a football field to gut r done.