Cat Tip of the Day: Poor Mans Wind Sock

Have you ever setup on a wingdam or just positioned yourself on the perfect backwater cut current chute and the wind starts blowing upstream in your face and you cannot stay positioned on where you want to fish. Here is a little tip that could help you beat the wind and keep your boat right where you want it. This is a home made wind sock that you hang off the back of your boat in the current and it will help hold your boat in position. It is smaller than a standard store bought windsock and is easier to keep in the water and fish around than the larger nylon socks. I’ve used mine about 3 times and it worked perfectly.

You start by taking a standard 5 gallon bucket and drilling 5 holes in the bottom with a 1 1/2″ hole saw.

Then you drill out 4 evenly spaced 3/8″ holes on the top edge of the bucket and run 2 pieces of rope through the holes, each rope about 6′. Run the rope through a D ring swivel (costs about $3 at the local hardware store). Tie the ropes so that the knots are on the outside of the bucket.

Snap a D ring on the D ring swivel so you can quickly hook it to a piece of rope to tie off on your boat. Just toss the bucket off the back end of the boat, tie it off on a cleat, and it will fill up and keep your boat snug in the current and help fight the wind. It is easy to pull in and comes in handy for storing things in. I keep my spare anchor in the bucket when I am not using it.

I will make a few posts with pictures to help you visualize the bucket sock.

Here is how to drill the holes.

Here is where to tie the ropes.

Here is the D ring swivel with the D ring attached.

Nice Comanchero15…..

That is a very good idea Steve!! and cheap!

C15 comes up with the neatest ideas!

Maybe we should change his name to Macgyver?

Good idea comanchero15.

Have you ever tried it with a smaller pail, like a 2.5 gallon one. Space is always at a premium in my boat, but I love the idea.

I could have used it last night.

Hey Steve,
I like the idea on the holes at the bottom.
I use the pails, with out modifications. (holes and ropes)
I would guess you might gain stability and not have bucket flutter with the modifications. But then you loose a little bit of the the drag on the sock.
any thoughts to elaborate on.
thanks
Larry

Hey Larry – I could be wrong but I think you lose drag by not having holes in the bucket. Without the holes the bucket fills with water and just pushes the water coming in away too easily. Look at your standard nylon wind sock and you will see that it allows some water to flow through it also. You need some water to flow through to create drag – I think?

There has to be some engineering genius out there who can give us some kind of educated answer. All I know is this bucket setup works pretty good, it’s cheap, and I made mine in about 15 minutes. Try it and if it doesn’t work throw it away – you haven’t lost much of an investment.

I used the bucket sock last night because we had a south wind blowing right up the St Croix River and it helped hold my 17′ boat so the back was pointed right downstream. It didn’t help me catch any fish though – I still got skunked. As Winne the Pooh would say “Oh Bother!”

I got the idea a couple of years ago off another catfishing website of a guy that fishes one of the big southern rivers with a lot of current. The more current, the better it works – the current on the St Croix is slow right now so the bucket sock gets limited use. It would work good on the Mississippi especially Pool 2 which has a fair amount of current.

Steve
thanks for the feedback, After thinking about what your saying in your post. It makes sense that the holes would add a lot of stability. (I would get bucket flutter, were the pail drages back and fourth.)
thanks
Larry