Ok so I just got a new (30 year old ) aluminum jon boat. I would like to rig a center bow anchor system so I could lift and lower the anchor from the back of the boat. I know they have everything from crank to power systems. My boat is only 12 feet so even a hand pull rig would be ok.

I am wondering how to rig the pulleys so the anchor line would run up the side, then to the center, so the anchor would be raised and lowered front and center. There is no bow deck so I am not sure how to rig the front pulley either. I will be using a small 8-12 pound mushroom anchor. Do you think that's enough? Do you figure it will miss the front boat handle.

I have a 17 foot bass boat with a 115 Yamaha, 2 - 12 foot canoes, now the Jon boat. I got the Jon boat for me, and the wife. We are getting older, and the canoes are getting to hard to fish in, and get in and out of. I figure I can put in removable seats, and run it with an old trolling motor I have. I figure to get a trailer down the road, but for now I will use it as a car topper.

With the abundance of small lakes in the National forest that our place adjoins, we want to use the Jon boat to go lake hopping. We have at times gone to 3-4 different lakes in a day.

Any of you folks into this? Do you have any tips, and tricks to rigging your boat, how about loading and unloading? Photos would be nice also.

I did this on a 12' aluminum semi-V that I had several years ago. I used a locking pulley device (from Cabelas I believe?). You could lower and raise the anchor, from the stern seating position, by tugging and pulling on the anchor line - supposedly! I could never get it work well and ended up removing it. I went back to manually dropping the anchor and pulling it back up myself. It became much more efficient for me to do so.

The pulley mechanism never seemed to work quite right and if the anchor got hung, I had to go forward to free it myself anyway. The anchor line, going thru the eyelettes that I installed along the gunnels, was always getting hung up! When you raise the anchor, it spins and creates kinks in the line - which interfered with the pulley and the eyelettes. Like I said, it just never worked well for me.

One suggestion. I used twisted nylon rope which I felt was better quality than the poly ropes. I would go one better and get a very small diameter, encased parachute type rope instead, if I were doing it again. And I'd try to rig some kind of swivel attachment to the anchor.