Well I got tired of drifting around when I was on a good fishing spot, and the anchor is hard to place yourself exactly. So I decided to try an anchor pole and see if that would work. Pricing around it looked like I would have to pay at least $40 for a 5 foot pole.

This is my first attempt to build one, and inspired by a few YouTube videos this is what I have. I bought an 8' length of 3/4 PVC pipe schedule 40, a tee, and 2 48" popular dowels. Altogether I spent just under $10.

The dowels almost fit tight, but slide a little. My solution was to dab some pipe cement on the bottom dowel and slide it in. This seems pretty tight, but I soaked the end in water for about 3 days to swell the wood and hopefully have it jammed tight. So far so good.

I tested it out on my last trip running it through one of the scuppers. It fits the Jackson Cuda fine, but won't go into the Native Manta Ray. The pole does have some flex even with the dowels inside, but seems to work fine.

Of course it won't work in rock hard bottom, and in over 6' of water it gets iffy. A lot of the places I fish crappie holding in 6-7' of water will be fine, and it was nice to be stationary. The pole slides up and I can hold it with my leg while I paddle forward. Some of the time I just trailed it behind while tied off at my side. For the long paddle home it stayed where the paddle is stored. The hold idea reminds me of spud barge which is a work barge with poles that are dropped in the mud to hold it's position.