Ever heard of a board flipping in 'no wind' conditions?

[drichitt]

Well it happened to me yesterday while trolling just above BPL. The conditions were maybe a slight bump on the water and waves from other boats were the biggest contributors to anything larger.

My port planer board had just crested one of those boat wakes when one of the guys on my boat raised his voice claiming "that board isn't acting right, it almost flipped". I scoffed at him..."those are Skip's boards and they ain't gonna flip in pond-like conditions". It wasn't 5 minutes later when the same guy yells out that the board has flipped. To avoid a oncoming boat that could not make up its mind which way to go I made a hard turn to the right (away from port) to communicate my intention. Well that hard turn was felt by the port board which came off the crest of a small wake, pointed upward and rolled backwards onto its back.

Everyone jumped into action and I quickly unclipped the planer line and released the upside-down board before it destroyed everything. I kept scratching my head in utter bewilderment as as to what in the hell caused the board to flip. We quickly reeled in all of the port side planer rods and had a mess all over the deck. I tried to get most of them racked and put away while the others started reeling in the other rods. All the while the guy driving the boat kept his eye on the loose board and blocked other boats from running into the board.

Ok, so what caused that board to flip? And a little tip for others to keep this from happening to them:

As best as we could conclude, the planer line/clip out closest to the port board was literally right on the board. I use the larger type carabiners and I feel that the carabiner got over the brass clip that connects the planer line to the board and also got over onto the eye screw on the board. With the carabiner latched onto the eye screw, the board was absorbing any tugging and pulling from anything that was on the hooks back on the trailing lures. Evidently, we had something on that line that could not break the rubber band. We did find a snagged bait fish on one of the rigs on that line. I can only conclude that it was the perfect combination of the drag from a snagged bait fish, a board cresting a small wake and a sudden amount of pressure to go forward at a faster rate of speed that caused that board to flip. The eye screw on a board is located near the upper front of the board and that position made it fairly easy for the amount of drag we had to pull the front of the board out of the water and then roll back. It is also possible that we had a smaller fish hooked up on that line but that I will never know for sure.

I had noticed earlier in the day that I could not see that outermost clip, which I like to be able to see. The separation between that clip and the next one in was good so I allowed myself to get distracted and I never took care of my original concern about being sure that outermost clip wasn't "on the board"; pond like conditions who needs to worry so much. BIG MISTAKE!!

On a happy note we had caught our limit plus a few up to 41"