Last year my father and I found a calm Saturday in July and decided to run to Capers Reef and try the Spadefish. We arrived at the reef with our jellyballs to find several other folks on the structure. We maneuvered around them to a spot just off the reef, or so we thought, and decided to drop anchor and play the tide and wind to drift onto the structure. The second the anchor hit the bottom it hung and my father and I both knew we had messed up. Evidently the tide was running a little harder than we thought and the anchor landed in the structure. After playing out all the anchor line we had, the school of fish were just beyond our reach. We eased the boat up on the anchor and attempted to pull it free by hand, but had no luck. I knew our only hope was to pull the anchor using the boat motor; however, with other boats in close proximity we did not want to possibly jeopardize their fishing by scaring the fish. We spent the next 3-hours trying to tease the fish over to our boat, but had no luck. We then spend an embarrassing 45-minutes or better attempting to pull our anchor free from the structure. Finally we had to cut the anchor line, and headed for home and without a single fish in the box and short $100 worth of anchor, chain, and 1/2 line it made for a long ride.
Possibly the hardest part of this event to deal with was the simple fact that dad and I had talked multiple times about getting a welder to weld a grapple style anchor out of rebar for us and had just never made it by a welding shop to get it done. I have read about multiple ways to build rebar grapple anchor, and provided herein is a method that is by far the easiest, cheapest, and does not even require a welder.
Tools Required: Bench Top Vise
Hack Saw
Strong Arm
Materials Required:
(2) 4-foot pieces of #3 Rebar (3/8-inch diameter) $.95 each
(1) 6” piece of 1-inch diameter EMT electrical conduit (10-foot section only $4.00)
Note: All materials available at local home improvement store.
Time Required: About 1