Bow Fishing

[Kmumps]

Anyone ever do any bow fishing?  I really want to try this out.  Just wanted to see if anyone here has tried this before.

[Snakehead Whisperer]

If you're going for snakeheads (or other invasive species,) then have at it. One thing that I find really disappointing is the shooting of common carp and especially gar by bowfishermen. It would be one thing if they harvested the carp or gar, but they are usual thrown on the bank. I think it is wasteful and disrespectful to the animals. 

 

While I'm sure bowfishing is fun, it never seems like a very sporting way to catch fish. The way that fish react when the bright lights hit them is to freeze and play dead, leaving you with a non-moving target at about 10 feet from the boat. Good archers should be able to hit a something the size of a carp from 30 meters or more. 

 

Maybe there's something that I'm missing. I am not personally attracted to bowfishing, but then again I am too addicted to rod/reel fishing with artificials to think of doing anything else.

 

To each their own. It's legal in MD, so get out there and try it if you want to.

[clayton86]

I want to get into it in fact my buddy called me and left a message to pick up a kit for his extra bow today on the way home from work and he will pay me back. I'm still hesitant for the same reasons as stated its why I don't turkey hunt I have no desire to do anything with the carp or a turkey. I brought it up to my buddy about what are we gonna do with them after we smoke the carp. He said his migrant workers want them or we are gonna burry them as fertilizer and make some coyote bait Popsicles with them for the fall so I'm all in now.

[Kmumps]

Snakeheads would be my main target.  Anything I killed would be eaten so I would not be shooting any carp unless I knew someone who wanted some for food.  Personally I have no desire to eat a carp so I would be letting them swim away.  I am also addicted to fishing with rod and reel but have had zero success catching a snakehead yet.  Will be spending a lot more time on the water this year.  Bought a boat last year and then got sick and spent over a year battling my illness.  F**K Cancer.  I am becoming obsessed with snakeheads and I think a big part of it is that they have be able to elude me thus far. 

[Bluebasser86]

If you're going for snakeheads (or other invasive species,) then have at it. One thing that I find really disappointing is the shooting of common carp and especially gar by bowfishermen. It would be one thing if they harvested the carp or gar, but they are usual thrown on the bank. I think it is wasteful and disrespectful to the animals. 

 

While I'm sure bowfishing is fun, it never seems like a very sporting way to catch fish. The way that fish react when the bright lights hit them is to freeze and play dead, leaving you with a non-moving target at about 10 feet from the boat. Good archers should be able to hit a something the size of a carp from 30 meters or more. 

 

Maybe there's something that I'm missing. I am not personally attracted to bowfishing, but then again I am too addicted to rod/reel fishing with artificials to think of doing anything else.

 

To each their own. It's legal in MD, so get out there and try it if you want to.

You've obviously never been bowfishing. Not being argumentative, but it sounds like you have a bit of a skewed view of what it's like from watching some yahoos you've seen on the water. Very rarely when I've been do the fish freeze when the light hits them. Trying to hit a 2lb, or even 20lb carp at 10', under water, is really a challenge. The light refraction, along with having to try to judge how deep the fish is, adds a couple more dimensions of difficulty to it. Add in some dirty water that makes the fish hard to see, waves, and a moving fish/boat or both and some nights it's almost impossible to hit a fish.

The lakes around here are packed with carp that tear up the shoreline vegetation, causing erosion of our already shallow lakes, and destroy bass nest and habitat when our bass populations already aren't very good in a lot of lakes. I completely agree that tossing carp or gar on the bank to rot is in bad taste though. I don't eat them personally but you can almost always find someone fishing on the bank that is more than willing to eat them. Carp also make great cut bait for catfish, something that I also use them for a lot. If you can shoot them in big enough numbers there's fish markets downtown here that will buy them from you. I've heard of people using them for fertilizer in their gardens also. Lots of uses for them so no reason to just let them go to waste.

As to the OP, I'd certainly give it a try. I don't think you have any of the silver or bighead Asian carp in your area but those are a blast to shoot and obviously high on the list of dangerous invading species, just like the snakeheads are. I've never shot, or even seen for that matter, a snakehead but I've heard they live in shallow water for the most part so you should be able to get a shot at some. We do aerial shooting with the silver carp, run the gas motor and they jump out of the water and try to hit them out of the air, it's really a blast and helps your instinctive shooting for fast shots during bow season.

Big buffalo are also popular fish to shoot in lots of places, they pull extremely hard, and are never hard to find someone who wants to eat them.

Big gar are one of my favorites. If you can find them where they're surfacing to gulp air it's pretty similar to shooting jumping carp because you have to just draw and shoot. They're also surprising popular food fish here. I had someone explaining to me how to fillet one once but when he got to the part about putting it on a bandsaw he kind of lost me

[clayton86]

My nephew has been going a lot he showed me one yesterday on the scale at the shop afterwards weighed in at 49-7 state record is 50-8 I think he said. I woulda rather caught it on hook and some corn personally at that size that close to record.

[Bluebasser86]

My nephew has been going a lot he showed me one yesterday on the scale at the shop afterwards weighed in at 49-7 state record is 50-8 I think he said. I woulda rather caught it on hook and some corn personally at that size that close to record.

Fish taken with bowfishing gear count as state records in KS, he might want to check if they do there also. Some states have bowfishing records as well. If that was a common carp that was a monster! 

[clayton86]

They do get monsterous where we fish he said he looked it up and didn't see anything saying bow fished carp not counting. We can only shoot common carp in NY there are a ton of gar but can only shoot carp.