Anchoring Your Yak – The Attwood Grapnel Anchor!

Product Review: The Attwood 5 lb. Folding Grapnel Anchor

5 lb Folding Grapnel Anchor by Attwood!

If you do any amount of fishing from your kayak, sooner or later you’re going to run into a situation where you need and anchor to best fish a particular spot. Most kayak fishing here in Florida is done in relatively shallow water and a light weight “Stake-Out Pole” will handle the job nicely. However,  I will save the stake pole discussion for a future post and we’ll concentrate on conventional anchors today.

If the water is more than about 3.5′-4′ deep you’re going to need an anchor of some kind to be able to hold your position. There are a number of situations where this would apply. You might be fan casting a broad flat or maybe soaking some baits on the bottom. If you’re fan casting, you want to methodically cover the entire area where you expect the fish might be holding. Lets say you are fishing for Flounder. You have to place a bait within a very small strike zone of a few inches for those guys. Flounder don’t chase bait like a Trout, snook, Jack, etc. You need to hold your yak in one position so you can best work this spot without re-casting to areas you have already worked.  To accomplish this you can envision a pie and each cast takes a small slice out of the pie until you cover the whole area. If you are fishing baits on the bottom you need a tight line so you can see when the fish picks up that bait. For this you also need an immobilized boat.

There are a number of ways to attach the anchor from a simple cleat tie off to a fancy trolley system that can reposition the anchor from one end of the boat to the other.

Attwood also manufacturers a “anchor pulley” with lock off that works pretty nicely. I have one mounted on the back of my boat and can hang the anchor off of it, deploy when needed then lift anchor, lock off and I’m ready to move. It works great but only allows for one anchor point.

The “anchor trolley” is probably the best all around anchor mounting option. Basically, you have a continuous looped rope that runs from bow to stern. there is a fixed ring that the anchor rope feeds through and you can run fore or aft to drop your anchor anywhere you need. This is a future project that I will be adding to my yak.

The last part of the equation is the business end of the system, the anchor itself. Currently I am using the Attwood Folding Gragnel when I need anchor up. Honestly, I do not use an anchor that much, just because most of my fishing doesn’t require one. However, when you need it, you need it.

Atwood makes a s,aller 3 lb model so look at both before you decide if this is the anchor for you. I use the 5 lb just to be safe.

The folding grapnel design stays folded and locked up until you are ready to deploy. The grapnel design when deployed holds well in a variety of bottom conditions.

This anchor has a heavy hot dipped galvanizing and I use mine in the saltwater more often than not. It still looks like the day I bought it.

See ya on the water,

Larry Stephens