Anyone had this problem?

[Golden Trout]

While fishing big twin during a fairly tough wind ( I've been out in much worse) I tried reanchoring about 7 times with no success. Each time a gust would come along and blow me out of the fish bucket. I am using two anchors of 15 pounds each. I have been out in much worse with only one anchor that has held. Could it be that there was nothing on the bottom for the anchors to hold up on? Your thoughts, please.

 

[Peyton00]

The anchor weight mentioned would be enough to hold a man in a simple boat. Either the lake bed is solid rock and it skipped along or you didn't have enough line out after dropping anchor and it 'bobbed' along with ya. It does seem weird with 2 anchors down that a single man in a boat would drift without any big consistent winds.

 

[Plecoptera]

When I was there recently, the wind was pulling out my 20 lb pyramid anchor even with another 10 lb anchor up front. The surprising part was that usually when I went to pull the anchor I had to really use some muscle to initially get it out of the mud and weeds. That lake definitely has a soft bottom. Says something about the power of wind.

It helps to feed some line once the anchor drops so its pulling from more of an angle rather than straight up. If you do this with the front anchor too it will hold pretty well. Eventually though it gets to a point where it's just to windy to fish comfortably.

 

[jeff bandy]

I agree with the last. Scope(anchor line/depth) should be 4/1. Also mushroom anchors work much better in the soft mud then pyramids. I had my highside drift boat out this year. used two 10 lb. mushrooms. It was only able to drag them a few feet in whitecap winds with the boat broadside to the wind.

 

[zen leecher aka bill w]

I was pushed off Beda 10 years ago in a big wind. Had to retrieve my boat from the far end of the lake with one of Jim Wheeler's pram dollies. I had two anchors down and they were full of weeds for extra resistance.

 

[Drifter]

These are custom made by my nephew (about 20 pounds each). we both run drifters and have anchored in stillwaters for steelhead and salmon for years. sometimes anchoring in water as deep as 40' what we like to do in say 15' of water is let the front anchor (spiked) out first and let out at least 40 to 50 feet of rope, drop the back anchor and pull back and set the anchors where the boat is in the middle of the ropes.

What this also does is allow you to get a rod under the anchor ropes when a fish goes under them (both anchor ropes at a 45% tilt) many times with an anchor rope straight down if a fish goes around or under the boat to the other side you have to take 9' of rod and try and stick it straight down to go around the rope to play the fish without getting the line broke from the rope. With your ropes at a 45% angle it is much easier on the line and "rods" also in the wind the anchors will slide a little while digging in so after 15 minutes or so you pull the slack up to tighten the boat again.

I use a regular drift-boat anchor in rear and the spiked one up front and always have the spare spike anchor on board. encase a heavy wind comes up I can change the back anchor to a spiked one if need be. also on long trips I have a cylinder - spiked anchor that weighs at least 60 pounds I take when I'm going on week long lake trips so no wind can ruin my day short of a tornado!

As far as weeds we found that if you drag the anchor it will load up with weeds and now will not "STICK" to the bottom, the weeds wrap around the anchor making it a lot larger and taking away sharp edges and making the spikes worthless. we found that not dragging the anchor and setting it right where you drop it (with rope at angle) works much better. The stronger the wind the more angle of the rope.