I routinely run 3 boards on each side. On Winnebago, I’ve run 5 on one side and 4 on the other. I use the same tactic regardless of the number of boards I’m running. One thing to note, for this to work, YOU MUST HAVE THE CLICKER TURNED ON. When a fish hits any board other than the inside board, flip the reels to free spool on all lines inside of the one with the fish. The clicker will keep them from going to rats nest status. As the inner boards start to drop back, reel the one with the fish in. It will start to slide in toward the boat, but your other boards should be further back and you will slide in front of those boards. On a small fish, it will just track straight up the path it was tracking. Once the free spooling boards are far enough back to clear the fish, take them out of free spool.
There is some jockeying of rods that needs to be done as this goes along, but you get very good at it very fast when running big spreads. In a perfect world, your timing gets good enough that you are taking the reels out of free spool at the right time to allow them to just become the next board out in the spread. In an imperfect world, you catch a big pike that goes sideways and gives you a gift that keeps on giving. A mess of tangles that takes a while to dismantle.
When running two boards a side, it is a piece of cake. Free spool the inner board as long as you want and close it when clear. That rod is now your outside rod. Net your fish in front of that rod, then move the rod forward one holder and deploy the rod you just took the fish off as your inside rod.
On a really big fish on the outside board, this tactic doesn’t always work, depending on how fast it takes your board back. In that situation, it will pull the board far enough back to just slide in behind the other board. If you have someone else in the boat, reeling up the inner board a bit is a good idea to keep the fish from catching the inner line as it slides over.
