Anchoring alternatives

In addition to performing the Last of the secret fish dance's yesterday for bsteves, I also used an alternative method of holding my position. My deep water anchor system is in Florida (where the water is usually 3' deep )

Essentially, I parked in a convenient eddy in the "middle" of the river. Actually it was just left of the channel and the hole that I was looking for. Although I did not have my FF, I knew there was a hole there from past experience, Brian's FF, and the sled parked over it. Brian graciously lent me an anchor system, but I'm not comfortable retrieving the anchor without my Hobie's pedal power to free my hands (I was paddling a Malibu Extreme).

The water was moving pretty briskly and Brian was having some challenges anchoring in the big flow. I noticed this good sized boil just to the inside of the hole, turned the boat upstream and parked. Easy peasy. I had time to bait my hook, set it out, and put it in the rod holder before I needed to paddle a couple of strokes to get back to where I'd started (while Brian got swept downriver )

 The eddy did get bumpy in the wakes of passing boats as though they were hitting shoals. But Brian said it was 75' deep there (up from 90' in the hole "next" to it). We did not catch anything, but we were not there very long either. 

My limited knowledge of hydrology has me thinking that eddies are formed where flow changes direction. Right? Normally, I fish Sturgeon from the "front edge" (up current side of the hole). So was I over the hole? Past the hole? Above the hole?* Anybody got any reasons not to park in an eddy?







*(note: Wali almost never has trouble finding the hole )

Parking in an eddy is pretty standard river fishing technique. In fact, that their was an article about it in Kayak Anlger magazine a couple issues ago.   The article was called "Take it to the River" by Rob Lyon.

http://www.rapidmedia.com/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=1183  Page 20 or so.

Brian

Parking in an eddy is pretty standard river fishing technique.

That's exactly what i was doing on Sunday Stealhead fishing, the river was really fast for bouncing eggs so we found an eddy that held us in one spot pretty much  and plunked our gear.

I don't know hydrology but i hope someone got the fish dance on tape.. you know for posterior....