Anchoring on wrecks.

[Aqua-andy]

Please be careful anchoring on wreck, as trying to set the anchor or just the anchor dropping on the wreck can cause more damage to an already fragile piece of history. This is what I do, not that it is only way, or right way, or best method but it is what I feel is safest for the wreck. I find the wreck using the provided numbers by our one and only Diver111. I will hold a finger spool with a 3 pound led diving weight attached and when a few to ten feet off the numbers I will drop the weight and when it hits bottom I attach my dive flag to the drop line. Now what I do is motor about a hundred and fifty feet or so up wind of the wreck and drop the anchor and set it into the lake bed. After I back roll off the boat I get situated and then hook a large clip from my wreck reel to the anchor line then proceed to swim to the flag. The clip will allow the wreck reel lint to slide down the anchor line as you descend the flag/drop line. Once near the bottom I will wrap the wreck reel line around the flag/drop line and do a sweep to find the wreck which should be only a few feet away if you don't already see it. Now for the last part, follow the line back to the anchor line and then the anchor line back to the anchor and make sure it is set good and if not set it . This method also allows you an easy way back to the anchor line so you can surface at the boat and not the small flag the boaters tend to ignore anyway. This sounds like a lot of work but once you do it a couple of times it only takes a couple of minutes out of you dive and is still fairly easy to do by yourself. When on these wrecks please practice proper buoyancy control as all it would take is an errant fin kick to do severe damage to an already very fragile wreck. The worst case would be someone tearing off the side of a wreck trying to set an anchor. If anyone has a better method please share, I've only been doing this for a few years so my method may be flawed or not ideal. One last thing, please be safe and have FUN diving these wrecks.

[Diver1111]

You make excellent points; I too am careful although some may conclude from my videos that the line you see in or near a wreck is anchor line but it's not.

I use a system of lines from the target to the flag that I un-spool from a reel I bought at HD. I use 25 foot lengths (clips on both ends of all of them), with stainless rings every 5 feet along the lines to take up slack to account for varying depths-this way I don't have 50 feet of line in 25 feet of water with the flag way off the target.

The fat line you see in many video clips on or near a target is actually a heavy section of line I simply use as an extension-sure looks like anchor line though. If I am in say 60 feet of water and I use (2) 25-foot flag lines I'm still 10 feet short so I just pull out the extension and clip it on the weight. The weight itself is 10 pounds. But the last section does look like anchor line. Once in a while I do land the weight in or on the target. In low viz water-and I dive alot of low viz water-moving too far away from the target creates problems. Dark water, currents, wreck reels....you know the drill.