Whenever I get a chance to fish with an experienced cat fisherman I always come away with another trick or tip that helps me catch fish. I love cat fishing the Mississippi River and the last few years I’ve been fishing with Joe Busch, a Pool 2 River Rat. Joe primarily fishes Pool 2 and each summer I have to convince him that it is time to quit chasing trophy walleyes and start chasing cats. He lives just a couple of blocks from the boat launch at Lion’s Levee Park so he is always ready to go. The thing about Joe is that he thinks outside the box and always has a trick or two up his sleeve to help put fish in the boat.
Last summer we had a lot of high water and many a day the current was ripping and add a little wind to the mix and boat control and anchor control was sometimes difficult. One day we anchored up on a good spot but the back of the boat was swinging and Joe just didn’t like how the boat was sitting on the hole. He dug around in one of his boat’s storage bins and pulls out this homemade grapple hook. He grins at me and says “Watch this!” He has about a 20+ foot piece of thin rope tied to the grapple hook and he tosses it up on a brush tangle on the shore and that little grapple hook locks right up. Joe pulls the back of the boat tight up in the shore side current and Bingo – no boat swing.
When it came time to recover the grapple hook I was expecting it to be a pain in the butt but Joe would just release the other anchor and pull the boat in close to the shore and give the grapple hook a couple of left and right jerks and it would come free. The tines on the grapple hook were made out of a bendable wire and they might bend a little but Joe would just bend them back and we were in business again.
Now Joe is a practical kind of guy. He didn’t google “grapple hook” to find what he was looking for. He dug around in the garage, found a small piece of scrap pipe, some bendable wire, and some lead to melt down for weight. He drilled a couple of holes in the end of the pipe and inserted the wire, stuck the end of the pipe in the sand and melted some lead into the pipe to give it some weight to throw it. He bent the wires so they would catch on the shore or rip rap bank and attached a light rope to the grapple for throwing and he was ready to go.
I loved that grapple hook and told Joe he had a million dollar idea. At the end of the season we were heading out for the sturgeon contest and Joe shows up at the Battleship for the contest and he hands me my very own grapple hook – he even painted it up. Thank you,Joe. I will put that anchor to good use but I also thought I should share your idea. I hereby present the Busch Anchor.
You don’t need blueprints – just look at the picture and make one. I love mine!
Here is a picture of Joe with a nice Pool 2 flathead.
