Anchoring strategies for more effective bottom fishing

Fishing Strategies: Anchoring © Sailfish Boats

Anchoring precisely over wrecks, reefs, and natural bottom structures can make or break your bottom fishing success. If you've ever set your anchor, only to find your boat drifting 200 feet off the mark, you're not alone. Expert fisherman John Brownlee offers his tips on how to anchor effectively and maximize your chances of landing that trophy fish.

Getting your boat anchored in just the right spot to fish a wreck or a piece of natural bottom can be frustrating. We've all done it. You think you've lined things up perfectly up-current from where you want to fish, then you toss the anchor overboard. But when the anchor rode comes tight, your plotter tells you the spot where you wanted to end up is actually 200 feet off to the side of the boat. Time to pull the anchor and try again.

You'll get the best results when you can get the boat anchored up-current from the spot, but not directly on top of it. This can be easier said than done because wind and tide seldom cooperate. Of course, if you're in shallow or super clear water and can see the wreck or reef spot, you have a major advantage. A visual reference always helps. But what if no such reference exists? In such a situation, which will likely be the majority of the time, use your plotter to get lined up correctly by creating your own visual reference points. You should have the desired waypoint marked on your plotter. Go directly to the spot to mark it on your sounder and confirm its precise location, then steer the boat into the wind and current slowly away from the wreck. If the wind comes from one direction and the current another, this can get tricky, but drop a new waypoint where you stop. Put the boat in neutral and try to stop all forward motion, which might require a bit of reverse thrust for a second. Then, watch the plotter closely as the boat drifts back in neutral.

If you get lucky and you drift straight back to the original waypoint mark, just power back to the second, temporary waypoint you created and drop the hook. If you miss the mark, make a note of which side of the fishing spot you ended up on. Then on your next attempt, compensate by dropping a new waypoint up-current, in the opposite direction of where you missed. The key is to create these temporary waypoints to give you visual reference points on the plotter as to where you should start your drift. You can simply delete them later but through some trial-and-error and a bit of dead reckoning, you'll end up anchored exactly where you want to be, and you'll catch more fish.