A lot of the fish I'm catching here are currently suspended about 20' off of windblown points.  Instead of trolling in I've been letting the wind blow me in with sounders, and trolling motor off.  I fish what I can hit from there, lift the anchor off the bottom drift a little ways and drop it again.  For whatever reason I am catching good fish doing this.  My trolling motor makes a lot of noise and requires constant attention on windy days. I don't have spot lock so I am constantly on the trolling motor if I don't drop the anchor. I've been hanging my anchor over the side out deep with about 30' of rode, I let the boat blow in until the anchor catches, fishing all the way. Funny thing about it I was complaining about the wind in another post this spring, and someone posted a photo of an anchor and I thought they were being sarcastic, ended up being good advice.  I know I can catch fish as well with the trolling motor, but this seems to be working really well.  Anyone else tried this?

I use to anchor quite a bit when I had my little aluminum boat. Wind pushed it around so much that even with a 70lb trolling motor on a 16' boat, it got too much to fight at times. It's a little bit of a hassle and you have to be careful to anchor up right or risk taking on water, but it works really well if done correctly and makes fishing in heavy wind much easier. 

I probably use an anchor more than anybody on this site. Got not problems getting blown around in my Jon boat.

Letting the wind blow the boat around is how I like to fish grassy flats.  All I need to do is make sure that I have the boat positioned correctly so it doesn't swing around, and then I drop anchor.  The only time I have problems with the anchor dragging is when the wind is up around 20 mph or so.

My cousin and I anchored on the same   windy point for two days a and won a 500 boat buddy tournament . Tom Mann was the guest emcee .

http://www.overtons.com/modperl/product/details.cgi?i=38806

 

The baby version of this goes on sale SEVERAL times a yr with free shipping.

It can be folded into a bag when not in use.....I use them all the time 

9 hours ago, Bucky205 said:

A lot of the fish I'm catching here are currently suspended about 20' off of windblown points.  Instead of trolling in I've been letting the wind blow me in with sounders, and trolling motor off.  I fish what I can hit from there, lift the anchor off the bottom drift a little ways and drop it again.  For whatever reason I am catching good fish doing this.  My trolling motor makes a lot of noise and requires constant attention on windy days. I don't have spot lock so I am constantly on the trolling motor if I don't drop the anchor. I've been hanging my anchor over the side out deep with about 30' of rode, I let the boat blow in until the anchor catches, fishing all the way. Funny thing about it I was complaining about the wind in another post this spring, and someone posted a photo of an anchor and I thought they were being sarcastic, ended up being good advice.  I know I can catch fish as well with the trolling motor, but this seems to be working really well.  Anyone else tried this?

 

Yes.

Spot lock features on trolling motors are a God send. This really became apparent to me last month during a trip to Canada whenever I fished between two different boats, one of which had a spot locking trolling motor. Our best producing days were on the super windy days out at the end of points. The boat with the spot lock greatly out fished the other boat every day that was windy. If you can eventually upgrade you'll trolling motor, you will love it. 

 

Fishing out of a small boat, or a yak, means an anchor is as necessary as fishing tackle. Might as well stay home without it. 

i use my anchor a ton in my jon boat i don't really have a choice, though i have recently added a shallow water anchor like @Catt suggested be used

5 hours ago, Catt said:

I probably use an anchor more than anybody on this site.

 

Yeah,...ahhh,....no.

I anchored a lot with my 14' aluminum boat, rarely during the day time with my glass bass boats. At night if it's windy a take a 20lb navy anchor with 75' to 100' or 3/4" rope to anchor my glass bass boat, very difficult to stay on small areas in the wind when it's dark.

Tom

PS, I keep my anchor and rope in a heavy duty plastic milk create, make it easy to store the rope and anchor.

You are a lucky man.  On windy days my front and rear anchors just get dragged along by the waves and wind.  The heavier of the two is 20 lbs and the smaller is 10 lbs.  I primarily fish shallow water with a muddy bottom though so there's nothing to catch the anchors.  Definitely an effective way to fish though.

5' length of logging chain helps to keep the anchor flutes dug in along with long rope scope.

Tom

I don't anchor as much as I used to.  I used to do a fair amount of walleye fishing and we'd anchor on a reef or point with the wind blowing and waves rolling with slip bobbers...which was very effective.  I'm sure it would be effective bass fishing too, I just haven't done it.

10 hours ago, .ghoti. said:

Fishing out of a small boat, or a yak, means an anchor is as necessary as fishing tackle. Might as well stay home without it. 

This. If it's a shallow pond, I can get away with just bringing my stakeout pole. But once the winds get up around 15mph I don't even bother going out unless I bring an anchor. You just can't effectively fish at that point. 

All the time on my 17 ft tin boat. 

 

If I get out on a decent sized lake and try to stay on a point out from cove it gets used quite a bit.

 

I also have a drift anchor that's a little oversized that helps take advantage of a wind from a useful azimuth.

I put my little bass raider on the water thinking I'd just use the trolling motor to fight the little bit of wind... well I left ready to sell the boat  I told the wife I wasn't taking it out again until I got a couple anchors, it's just to much hassle fighting the wind!

All the time. Double anchoring on wind blown points is a go-to technique for us in these parts.  I love draggin' worms and jigs up hill on points stacked bait and gamefish. Slow rolling a spinner bait can be deadly too...

I have, but I find typically if there is that much wind on a point, the fish will be more active and spread out so it is not an issue if I am moving around a little bit on the trolling motor throwing a moving bait.

On 6/28/2017 at 10:46 AM, reason said:

 

Yeah,...ahhh,....no.

We lived aboard and cruised for 8 years on a 42' Island Packet.  I loved It.  Wife was ready for a house or I would still be doing it.  Looking at that photo I would guess you were on a mooring ball at a marina.  I'm jealous I really miss it.

I use my two anchors all the time while fishing

On June 29, 2017 at 6:10 PM, RB 77 said:

All the time. Double anchoring on wind blown points is a go-to technique for us in these parts.  I love draggin' worms and jigs up hill on points stacked bait and gamefish. Slow rolling a spinner bait can be deadly too...

Double anchoring is a technique ultilized by live bait specialist and I haven't run across a boat double anchored in several years on SoCal lakes unless it was a a angler buttoned down soaking bugs.

Tom

On 7/3/2017 at 10:20 PM, WRB said:

Double anchoring is a technique ultilized by live bait specialist and I haven't run across a boat double anchored in several years on SoCal lakes unless it was a a angler buttoned down soaking bugs.

Tom

 

Yeah, its essentially where we drew our inspiration from, except we are using jigs instead of dads.  It's been a minute since we've been up up DVL and double anchored on those huge wind blown points, so I perhaps shouldn't say all the time, but its definitely a technique we have used to present worms and jigs in the wind. Once the wind gets blowing enough to deter other people, we just drop both anchors and get to draggin'...

If I'm on the yak, all the time.  The little anchor trollies are a god send for the yak.  On the Skeeter, rarely.  Oddly, I never thought too much about anchoring until I really "needed" to.  And I've noticed so many people try to anchor by picking their spot and dropping anchor, lol.  Inevitably they end up way off from where they wanted, go figure...