TECHNIQUES
Part 4: Dealing with your anchor By Craig Stubbs
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HEN it comes to targeting bottomfish over structure, you have two choices. One is to fish “on the drift” (either wind or current, or a combination of both), or on anchor (commonly referred to as “on the pick”).This is a critical choice, with quite a few pros and cons on either side. Making the right choice can make a massive difference to your day’s fishing. We have already touched on fishing on the drift and how to position your boat, so in this article we will concentrate on fishing on anchor. You have pretty much only two choices here, and that is a rock anchor or a sand anchor. For most offshore bottomfishing, the rock anchor we make use of is called a reef anchor and is a style of a grapnel anchor. Many of these are pretty rudimentary in design, with some being homemade and others more professionally engineered. Essentially it’s a heavy shaft with welded and bent rebar for the prongs.They do a good job of hooking onto reef structure, or jamming into crevices, and if they are well stuck when attempting retrieval, the rebar prongs will often bend open, releasing the anchor. It can then be bent back into shape on the boat, using a piece of hollow steel pipe. Stay away from those grapnel anchors with folding prongs and a locking mechanism, or Danforth (fluke) style anchors, as these are definitely not suited for the purpose at hand. Rock anchors are suitable for 90% of reef fishing applications, but there are times when a sand anchor is a great tool to 40 • SKI-BOAT January/February 2022
have at your disposal.Again, sand anchors come in a huge variety, but undoubtedly the best is the Rocna which is a spade/plow type design. These anchors are expensive, so it’s a bitter pill to swallow if you find yourself in a situation where you cannot retrieve your anchor, but they are invaluable at times.These instances are mainly when you have a relatively small patch of reef surrounded by sand and you have to accurately position yourself. A rock anchor would slide over the sand and only hook up on the reef, meaning that you would be fishing past your mark, but a sand anchor buries itself in the sand, allowing you to drift back and position yourself directly over the reef. Choosing an anchor weight is totally dependent on your craft size. It is not necessary to carry a 14kg anchor on a 16ft boat, but a larger boat would need a correspondingly larger anchor. It is not necessary to go overboard with this though, as your entire anchor setup is what contributes to successful anchoring, and not just the anchor weight itself. Your anchor setup is made up of the anchor itself, a length of chain, and then your anchor rope.The length of chain and the size thereof is critically important. The chain stops wear on your rope while on anchor, but the real reason it is so important is that it — combined with the anchor — is actually what holds you securely in place, due to its weight and propensity to dig and grab onto the reef below. Don’t go for less than 8m in length, and chain of around 8mm is recommended. The chain should be well secured to your anchor with a high quality stainless steel D-shackle, and the other end of the
