I am heading up for a vacation this year where I’ll have 4 people in the boat fishing. Usually I only have 2 or 3 and am running out 5 colors to get deep little runner, Reef Runners down to 30-32 feet.
With extra bodies in the boat I’m thinking of running 2 lines off the sides and 2 boards.
So, how do you guys set up your rods with core to run with boards?
I’m thinking segmented (how many colors?) so I can get enough line out plus reserve to let more out after the board.
I have ran boards clipped directly to leadcore without any problems. have the inside rod pointed back a little and the board rod tipped up high so the line between the rod tip and the board doesnt touch the water. The other option instead of running boards is having different length rods. Either a 5′ on the inside and 8-9′ outside or 8-9 inside and 12′ outside.
Francis,
There was a post a couple weeks ago that had lots of good information on this topic. Here it is.
I use a couple different size rods to run more than 2 lines, but planer boards will work. I’ve used the Church boards before and just clipped it directly to the leadcore. We ran them about 15 feet off of the side of the boat just far enough to prevent tangles.
I picked up a pair of the Church TX44 board for this exact scenario.
Not only can you run leadcore with ease, you can attach it right to the board with no problems at all. We attached up to 12oz on a snap weight on these boards as well and they worked just fine.
You can attach your leadcore line right to the board (I like using the OR-18 adjustable release). I suggest that you don’t double wrap it because it will kink and possibly fray. Keep in mind that you’re somewhat limited to how far you can place that board away from your boat due to the weight of the leadcore line from your board to your rod tip. You don’t want the waves pulling on your leadcore line thus causing a pull/pause effect on your board which may affect the swimming action of your crankbait. If you’re using Church boards, you can also move the adjustable keel weight towards the front of the board (+1 or +2) and this will help balance your board a little better due to the weight of the leadcore that’s under water pulling back on your board.
Church Boards pull harder and wider to the side when compared to the OffShore Boards that don’t pull as hard and will lag slightly behind the Church Boards. When stacking planer boards on one side, some guys put the Church boards on the outside and Offshore boards on the inside. This will help prevent tangles due to the degree of angle. I would also place your deeper setup on the inside board and your shallow one on the outside board – again it will help prevent tangles when reeling in fish.
Another trick is to splice in a 3 foot section of Mono inbetween your colors (for example your 3rd and 4th color). This will allow you to attach your board on the mono inbetween the two colors. When you want to go deeper simply let out your 4th color and reattach the board on your mono backing. This will allow you to always attach the mono to the board versus leadcore.
Here’s another tip… let’s say you have a segmented leadcore setup with 3 colors and now you want to go a little deeper. You can by simply letting out more of your mono backing after your 3rd color. Based on my personal experience, you can achieve about 2 feet per 30 feet of backing.
So it would be something like this:
crankbait – 50 foot mono leader – 3 colors of leadcore (90 feet) – 30 feet of mono (getting you 2 more feet of depth) – planer board – mono backing to rod tip. 
There are many options as you can see and it comes down to how many rods and reels can you afford and how much space you have in your boat.
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