Contain Your Anchor

Before I started fishing from the kayak (very fun!) if I wanted to go fishing, it was always in my family’s 12 foot fold-a-boat. I LOVE fishing from a boat because you can get to fishing holes that you just can’t reach casting from shore. Plus, you can troll, cast away from the boat or bottom fish, and it’s less buggy ON the water than near it.

But, one of my pet peeves about fishing from the boat was that my gear always got wet, even though the boat doesn’t leak! You know how it is: you reach for a sweatshirt and it’s wet. Or you put the ice chest on your lap to get a snack and the bottom was soaking — and now your pants are too!

And don’t even get me started on what happens when my the-fish-aren’t-biting book gets wet!

Finally ESP Boss realized that when we would bring up the anchor, the anchor rope was creating pooled water on the floor of the boat. Not to mention the addition of lake scum and mud that was getting caked on the boat floor.

Then, ESP Boss had a great idea: buy a bucket (with a handle) just big enough to hold the anchor and the anchor rope. We use mushroom shaped anchors that are covered in a vinyl coating.

When you bring up the anchor, put all the rope and the anchor into the bucket. Viola! No more water in the bottom of the boat! Plus, should the need ever arise; there’s a bucket on board for bailing out the boat.

Here’s a second anchor tip:

Tie a quick link to the end of the anchor rope. Then you can attach the whole rope to the boat. Trust me, if at all possible (or practical) you want to attach your gear to the boat!

Quick links aren’t always the easiest thing to use, so you could also try a swivel eye snap hook or a trigger snap hook. Both are easy to attach to your anchor rope in a way that the rope won’t come off your hardware. For that reason, I don’t really recommend a carabiner; it’s too easy for the rope to come off the carabiner. If the rope isn’t attached to the hardware and the boat, then it defeats the purpose!

Shopping Links:

• Mushroom anchor
• Quick link
• Swivel eye snap
• Trigger snap hook

Readers Weigh In:

• What are your anchor tips?
• Have you ever lost an anchor (or other piece of gear) off the boat? What did you do?

PS: If you don’t believe me about attaching your gear to something, then check out my video about Extreme Geocaching. I managed to lose a $40 piece of equipment!

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