Anchor Question

[ROLAND]

I guess the power poles have not migrated up that far yet. They are showing up all over around here but I am not sure I have seen one on a pontoon yet. I just use the original "manual" pole.

Could you explain what a power pole is? Where we toon there is also many water and wake boarders. I'd say the avg. depth is 200ft, so you have to get in pretty close to find shallow water. For wherever reason "some" wake boarders seem to need to come in close when they have 72 miles of shore to boat in, so you need to have an anchor that can hold when some moron comes by and throws a huge wake

Chillin.. never seen a power pole on a pontoon, but there's a guy that launches his high $ bass rig at our launch and he has dual power poles on his boat... hydraulic poles that go straight down into the mud and anchor the boat. From what I've seen of his boat, they work pretty well.. He came in to load last weekend, pulled up to the dock, lowered his pole ( that dosn't sound right does it ? ) then just walked up to the parking lot to get his truck and trailer.. boat never moved.

[bes2767]

I just purchased and installed two manual poles for a total cost around $450 on my 18' Lowe fishing boat, on bow and stern. 8' long, love em. The one I bought is branded as a wang anchor(http://www.wanganchor.com/), only problem is that they are only available in 8' lengths. There is another pole company out there that has 10 and 12' available. I purchased the wang brand because they have a removable front anchor point that allows me to still use my custom cover without modification and the tip of the 3/4" fiberglass rod is metal. Works great in heavy current and on the beach with lots of boat waves hitting the shore.
The other brand that I was looking at in longer lengths is at http://dig-in-anchors.com/, but they are a little more expensive.
I will attach a photo...

[bes2767]

OK, here you can see the photos...

[chill'nthemost]

Speaking of anchors........today for the first time neither one of our Diggers would trip. My wife and I had a really nice day anchored in a cove all day swimming and relaxing. Perfect day until the damn anchors wouldn't trip and we spent over an hour fighting them. After 8 season I found another item to keep on board, gloves. Tore up my hands on the nylon rope Ended up tying a fender to one anchor rope so we could deal with one at a time, then taking the toon over the anchor in every direction trying to break it free. In theory, once over the top of the Digger you should be able to pull straight up and trip the latch so the anchor will be able to pull straight up. Finally got pissed and just pulled with the motor and that one broke free. Went and got the other one tried to to the same and no matter what it wouldn't trip either. No issues in 8 years and now both go on strike. We just pulled it with the motor except this time it broke the spring loaded arm, split the square shaft and pulled the spring loaded guts out. At least everything stayed together. Gonna see if Digger will sell me the the arm assembly separately. Can't wait til they see the pic

Received this email from Digger, I had sent them the picture asking if I could buy the new arm. Sounds like they're will to just send one to me.

Hi Brain; would be happy to send you a new handle, just need to know what size anchor you have.



Donnie Lahr, President

DIGGER ANCHOR COMPANY

40154 South Highway 71

Sauk Centre, MN 56378

1-800-653-1499

www.diggeranchor.com

[LSVLance]

For wherever reason "some" wake boarders seem to need to come in close when they have 72 miles of shore to boat in, so you need to have an anchor that can hold when some moron comes by and throws a huge wake

As a former wakeboarder, I can explain to you what they are probably doing.

Wakeboarders like smooth water. Chop can really mess them up when they are charging the wake for a jump or landing a jump. If the wind is blowing creating chop out in the lake, they'll hug the shoreline where the water is the smoothest.

Not saying its right or wrong...just letting you know what they are doing. We always tried to get along with others on our lake while wakeboarding and as a whole, wakeboarders and skiers are some of the safest boaters out there, but I'm sure as the sport grows and grows more and more bad apples show their inconsiderateness.

If you want to pay them back some time...find out where they are riding and head out there pulling a tube and go do circles in the middle of their smooth water.

[chill'nthemost]

That makes sense, but it's still irritating when your chill'n and all of a sudden all hell breaks loose including your anchor. It's always tempting to do paybacks, but usually not worth the effort. PWC's are pretty good at pegging the moron meter too sometimes. It's all part of sharing the water with all kinds of folks. Now if everyone was intelligent enough to only own toons......

[cbavier]

I use a 12Lb Navy Anchor on the front corner with four feet of chain and a 12Lb Dansford anchor on the rear with four feet of anchor chain. I anchor in about 20-30 ft of water and use about 50 ft of anchor rope both front and back. That holds my 24ft pontoon pretty good unless I have high winds. Then I just go back to shore because the top just acts like a sail tossing me about and that isn't any good for fishing. I do occasionally head for a cove if I really want to fish still.

[chill'nthemost]

Speaking of anchors........today for the first time neither one of our Diggers would trip. My wife and I had a really nice day anchored in a cove all day swimming and relaxing. Perfect day until the damn anchors wouldn't trip and we spent over an hour fighting them. After 8 season I found another item to keep on board, gloves. Tore up my hands on the nylon rope Ended up tying a fender to one anchor rope so we could deal with one at a time, then taking the toon over the anchor in every direction trying to break it free. In theory, once over the top of the Digger you should be able to pull straight up and trip the latch so the anchor will be able to pull straight up. Finally got pissed and just pulled with the motor and that one broke free. Went and got the other one tried to to the same and no matter what it wouldn't trip either. No issues in 8 years and now both go on strike. We just pulled it with the motor except this time it broke the spring loaded arm, split the square shaft and pulled the spring loaded guts out. At least everything stayed together. Gonna see if Digger will sell me the the arm assembly separately. Can't wait til they see the pic

Received this email from Digger, I had sent them the picture asking if I could buy the new arm. Sounds like they're will to just send one to me.

Hi Brain; would be happy to send you a new handle, just need to know what size anchor you have.



Donnie Lahr, President

DIGGER ANCHOR COMPANY

40154 South Highway 71

Sauk Centre, MN 56378

1-800-653-1499

http://www.diggeranchor.com

Received an email from Donnie, said he'd send me out one for free and take care of the UPS too. I've owned thses for 8 years. All he asked was to tell my friends about their customer service, so I did :biggrin

[jeffybear]

If you boat one one of those shear wall lakes with no shallow water these are not much good but around here we are 3 miles wide and a foot deep.

http://www.power-pole.com/pages/about.htm

Seen these power poles for the first time this past week. We were fishing on the Gulf with guide and his boat had one of these, it worked really well, but then again at around 10:00am the water was only about 3' deep in the intercoastal. Wouldn't do us much good in most places we fish here in Ohio.

[GregF]

Power Poles were invented for flats fishermen who spend most of their time an knee deep water. Originally they poled around these flats anyway so they wouldn't scare the fish and when they stopped they stuck the pointy end of the pole in the bottom through a loop in a line on a cleat.
This is just what happens when they go high tech. They have trolling motors and power poles.

[chill'nthemost]

Anyway..... in this world of what seems to be a total lack of customer service, I was impressed that Digger was sending me a new stem no charge and paying freight after 8 seasons of use.

[The_Hellbilly]

Here's a poor quality pic of a toon with a Power Pole. Red arrow indicates the power pole.

IMG01624-20110730-1012.jpg (87.29 KiB) Viewed 5343 times

[jlbutl]

Yeah, but power poles are so dang expensive. Thats why I like the anchor pin. $60 if all you want is the 8' pole and not there fancy, smancy bow line with a loop in it...

[chill'nthemost]

Anyway..... in this world of what seems to be a total lack of customer service, I was impressed that Digger was sending me a new stem no charge and paying freight after 8 seasons of use.

Received the the anchor arm from UPS yesterday. Digger Donnie sent the part for my 8 year old anchor, no charge and paid the freight.

[jlbutl]

Are diggers the ones that you yank on the line and it folds back making retrieval easier?