This! I fish the Big 4 in Mississippi and can't keep anything under 12, but when I fish other places I enjoy eating the 10-12 inchers a little more. They just fillet and fry up better. But make no mistake, I've never had a bad crappie.
The 50 lb anchor is priceless when needed. So glad, well so long my ghost doesn't hiccup or die, I don't need it anymore. I will hang on to it just in case though. I would be SOL right now, surgery on my right elbow on February 8 and I could not even begin to use that anchor.
My cousin went to one of those lake a few years ago, he said those giant crappie ate as good as any other crappie.
I prefer the no-roll kind and I even let a cargo ship use it one time when he lost his anchor.
Y'all can poke fun all you want, ( the dumbbell doesn't work well, tried it and it is hard to store without being a pain, but there have been many days, more than I can count, that anchor made the difference between sitting on a spot and catching fish on most every cast, bass, crappie, and hybrids and trying to stay on a trolling motor and never being able to hit the same spot or being out of reach by the time you landed a fish or worse, wind blowing the boat into the bank, into the shallow area the fish were holding, etc.
facts
I used a "giant" rope with mine, life 5/8" or 3/4" diameter, I can't remember, but it was as large diameter rope I could get and still fit 40' or so of rope in it. I rarely anchored deeper than 23' or so though. But I used most every single time I went to the lake.
