Bow fishing

[ahoy49]

Here is my 36 inch Gar I shot today. Bowfishing is a lot of fun.

Ahoy

 

[Huron Angler]

Re: Bow fishing

Nice gar, do you have any photos of your arrows?

I'm curious what kind of gear it takes to do this. I've seen boats around here with 20 halogen lights and a genset on board, going for carp.

 

[ahoy49]

Re: Bow fishing

Here are some pictures of my set up.

It's an old Bear Kodiac compound bow set at 55 pounds of pull.
I had the bow. You can buy the kit, spool, line, reel, and tips almost any where. Bass Pro, Cabelas, or any sporting goods store.


Ahoy

 

[RicMic]

Re: Bow fishing

Its really cheap, I've mostly done it in the day time and lots of times in the day, you don't even need a boat. A cheap bow, you may choose to use a $1000 bow and come back with it covered in mud, blood, slime and scales, but the most expensive bow I ever used for fishing was $20. A old solid glass or recurve bow is the way to go, since shots are almost always very close and very fast. You can buy a kit with a bow reel, line and arrows. The arrows are usually solid glass with a barbed head and some method of releasing the barbs. I shot mostly carp and an occasional oversize goldfish, gar or bowfin, but some of my buddies go to Chesapeak bay and shoot stingrays up to and over 100#.

 

[Huron Angler]

Re: Bow fishing

Thanks for the info fellas...I have a Fred Bear compound, a smaller Darton compound and a older glass/wood recurve that I love.

I think I might try it out and mix two of my favorite pastimes

Does the arrow go all the way thru outside the fish? I'm assuming it does.

 

[RicMic]

Re: Bow fishing

Usually the arrow does go all the way through, which makes it easy to reverse the barbs, its a lot harder if you bury the arrow lengthwise in a big carp. When I was doing it a lot, I started taking "lungshots", OK, carp only have gills, but its the same principle. In a tournament, I didn't want to waste a lot of time playing around with the fish and disturbing the water, so I'd shoot the fish through the gills, they'd go crazy for a few seconds and then die. It was a lot easier to bring them in and the arrow was easy to remove.
One tip, aim for the bottom edge of the fish, because of light refraction, the fish is actuall lower then it looks, if you aim for the bottom edge, it will generally hit near the middle. Another tip, in the daytime, wear a white or light blue shirt, I started out wearing camo and had a hard time getting close to fish, then I realized, that the fish were looking UP and I had to blend in with the sky and clouds.