Trolling pioneer still has lessons to teach

[h2ofwlr]

By Dave Orrick
dorrick@pioneerpress.com
Posted: 06/26/2015 12:01:00 AM CDT | Updated: 3 days ago
Photos and video: http://www.twincities.com/outdoors/ci_2 ... sons-teach


ON YELLOW LAKE, Wis. -- We weren't quite in No Man's Land, but we were a few casts away.

We were puttering along around .3 mph in 25 feet of water perhaps 100 yards from any drop-off or noteworthy piece of structure.

And we were dragging five white buckets and six orange toy boats -- or so they might have appeared.

It was a high sun, late morning and only a gentle breeze.

"I like these conditions," beamed Gary Gehrman, on whose boat I was fishing and who insisted we would catch walleyes this way, trolling crankbaits in just about the middle of this 2,300-acre bowl in Burnett County in northwest Wisconsin.

The toy boats weren't toy boats, but trolling boards, also known as planing or planer boards.

Back in the 1970s, Gehrman of Stillwater helped pioneer this type of fishing for walleyes: trolling with planer boards and multiple lines well away from traditional walleye spots.

An avid angler, Gehrman and fellow fisherman Steve Halvorsen took to experimenting with ways to find walleyes during the daytime doldrums. Halvorsen wanted to see if he could apply planer boards, which have long been used on the Great Lakes and ocean fishing, to inland walleye fishing. Gehrman had seen signs of these fish -- so-called suspended, open-water walleyes -- on sonar graphs, and planer boards seemed like a way to put lures in front of them.

Planer boards are asymmetrical rectangles attached to a fishing line.
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When dragged through the water, they veer to port or starboard, depending on the design or orientation. The result is an array of lines much wider than the boat. Thus, an angler can cover more water and reduce the chances of tangling.

But traditional trolling boards did -- and still largely do -- need to be affixed to a second line. Halvorsen's contribution was the Rovers Trolling Board, U.S. patent No. 4524538

The wooden board is smaller than the Great Lakes versions, and it attaches only to the fishing line. The surprisingly sensitive thing changes behavior when a fish grabs the lure, and comes completely loose when an angler sets the hook. The board remains bobbing in the water, and the angler circles back and grabs it.

Not only did the gizmo work as designed, it helped Gehrman and Halvorsen prove that these walleyes existed and could be caught at high noon.

"We were pretty secretive at first," said Gehrman, now 65 and retired. "Would you tell anyone you were catching all these fish that no one knew about?"

The desire to boast -- and maybe make a buck -- eventually prevailed, and the pair began demonstrating their methods to journalists, including In-Fisherman magazine's Al Linder and Dave Csanda.

"After fishing with Gary and filming a segment for our In-Fisherman Television Specials, we knew he'd opened the door to fishing inland lakes for suspended fish," the magazine wrote in 1982.

The converted remain converted. In 2010, Csanda reminisced about the day "Gehrman rocked my trolling world." Writing for the FLW tournament circuit, Csanda described the tactic as now "a classic."

Yet, Halvorsen, who died some years ago, and Gehrman didn't strike it rich, and production of Rovers ceased some years ago. Planer boards are made by other companies and for sale in sporting goods stores, but they remain the exception for walleye fishing in the heart of walleye country.

"No, they never really took off," Gehrman acknowledged. "It's because people only talk about structure. They still do today. So what we were saying was way off base. And it still is today."

Indeed, I've heard about fishing for suspended fish for years. Tried it a few times. Rode around in the boat a lot, caught nothing.

But I'd never strung an array of six lures. (Three per person are allowed on many Wisconsin waters.)

Gehrman said it can take trial and error to understand where walleyes travel on any given lake. In the case of Yellow Lake, which he used to fish regularly, he said the fish tend to "drift off" structures as the morning progresses. They lollygag, not particularly hungry, but they tend to congregate on subtle rolls in the bottom. "This lake is kind of like a mini-Mille Lacs: There are these areas of these little one-foot humps that I do well on," he said.

So they might be relating to structure, but different structure -- and structure you'd never know about unless you were prospecting.

Because these are lollygagging walleyes, Gehrman said, lures need to be trolled much slower than most would think. Gehrman's 16-foot Crestliner rarely topped 1 mph. This putt-putt velocity was accomplished on his 60-horsepower Yamaha outboard only with the aid of five plastic buckets that Gehrman affixed to bungee chords and flung over the bow when the day began.

He said it's crucial to use lures that still maintain action at such speeds. His tackle box is filled with Whopper Stopper Hellcats, an out-of-production lure once sold by Heddon. "My boat's like a museum," he said. Up the line from the lure was a 1-ounce sinker to keep the lure just off the bottom, although one advantage of planer board fishing is that different lines can target different depths.

But does it work?

Yes, and not just for walleye. In our several sunny hours of watching toy boats, we had at least six strikes, including two bite-offs -- a bizarre occurrence since our lines were rigged with steel leaders. One of the bite-offs was on my line, and there's little doubt the fish was large, like a muskie.

No fish were actually boated, and Gehrman acknowledged that the slow-moving baits require a prompt and solid hookset not normally demanded when trolling.

But I saw enough to believe.

If you're thinking about buying some (modern) planer boards and trying this out, beware that Minnesota only allows one line per angler on inland waters, so at least three anglers on a boat would be needed to make it worthwhile.

On many Wisconsin waters, trolling is illegal. But that'll change July 1, when one lure per angler will be allowed to be trolled statewide. Waters like Yellow Lake that have allowed trolling with three lures per body won't change.

"These fish are out there," Gehrman said at one point. "But nobody is fishing for them."

Dave Orrick can be reached at 651-228-5512. Follow him at twitter.com/OutdoorsNow.

TROLLING RULES

Wisconsin: Start July 1, trolling will be legal throughout Wisconsin. The statewide inland limit is one line per person and two per boat. That's new. On the numerous waters where three lures per angler were previously allowed for trolling, there is no change.

Minnesota: Nothing changes. Trolling remains legal, with a statewide limit of one line per person, except on some border waters such as the Mississippi and St. Croix rivers, where two lines are allowed.