Bowfishing for Carp during the last 50 yrs.

Bowfishing for Carp during the last 50 yrs.

Kathleen Kalina © May 2007

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Bowfishing is one of most exciting and rapid type of hunting that there is because the action can be wild and furious. Best of all, you are ridding the environment of the carp that destroys the ecosystem for the game fish.

Here I am at age five (1956) with the archery club that we belonged to. Notice the recurve bows in the back. I was already in target tournaments and bowfishing at that age. Kids can get started early. That was as high tech as we had back then.

I’ve bowfished by walking rivers in hip boots or barefoot, stood on shores or shot from boats since I was a young child. I was from a hunting family and enjoyed bowfishing with my father and grandfather and their friends. Your kids are never too young, even if they are very young and just watch. They can help on the boat. This is the type of combined hunting and fishing that you should bring your kids. I was shooting tournament target archery at five-years-old giving me a great way to hone accuracy. However, shooting at fish under the water takes the kind of practice like standing on your porch at home while shooting down at a small box as someone pulls it on a rope. If you can do that, then you are ready.

Today’s high tech hunting and fishing is great, but don’t stay home if you aren’t rich. You can go bowfishing the old-fashioned way, like I did as a kid. Very inexpensive bowfishing kits can be purchased at Walmart and attached to your bow. In the 1950-60’s I made do by taping a circular line holder onto a bow, that is all we had. You can use a recurve or compound bow. In fact, you might not want to bring your expensive bow into the water with you.

Equipment:

Bow.
Zebco 808 Reel or AMS retriever.
Fish arrows (buy the arrows complete with a nock, rubber feathervane and AMS line holder).
Special 40-100 pound braided line.
Thin gloves and your arm guard.
Polarized sunglasses, so that you see in the water.
Rope to string fish to shore or if in boat, you need a large barrel.
Tube for extra arrows.
Wear a knife on your hip in case you have to cut the line if it gets tangled around you.
Bring a small hand towel to keep your hands clean and dry.
Bring a small grappling hook with a rope on it to retrieve lost arrows.
If you are in boat, having a big net would be great. If your wading, you can’t carry one that big.
If you have a camcorder or camera, you will be so glad later to watch the excitement. I really enjoy reviewing the movies that I took from the 1980’s while bowfishing.

Here is a primer about how to find those elusive Carp.

Carp are bottom feeders most of the year, but when they spawn in late May through June (depending on the latitude and temperature) by entering shallows and conducting broadcast spawning. The female lays eggs all over the shallows with her dorsal fin riding high out of the water, while several males follow quickly behind spraying sperm over eggs during the three minute window that fresh eggs allow insemination. This process will create muddied and cloudy water wherever they roam leaving clues as to where the activity is going on. Carp that are rising out of the water in shallows are the easiest to shoot since the arrow doesn’t have deal with refraction and depth. Refraction is the term to explain that objects in water are not where they appear. Fish are deeper than they appear to be, so you must shoot under where you see them.

If you wade in shallow areas where Carp are spawning, you may spook them unless you walk in very slowly wearing camouflage clothes and stand still with your shadow going toward land. Even if you spook the first group, just stand for a while until the next group comes rolling in. They may not see you and in fact have swum right past my legs. Look at the colorful outfit I was wearing later in this article while wading off the Bay of Green Bay Wisconsin. Gar will often be in the area trying to eat the eggs of Carp, and they are excellent to shoot.

The deeper the fish are, the more difficult it is to make the arrow stick into their thick scaled body. As the arrow pierces the depths, it slows its velocity until it finally stops. However, the arrow that is shot horizontally can skip quite a distance along the top of the water. The type of arrow point used can make a difference as to whether it penetrates a carp successfully or not. The Muzzy corporation point has proved itself the top arrow tip over the years.

The string attached to the arrow must be able get past the arrow rest without hanging up. The string should always be attached to the front of the arrow using an AMS safety glide. The string should NEVER be attached to the back of an arrow or positioned behind the arrow rest or this could result in severe injury to the shooter because of "arrow snap-back.” Keep your line in front of your bow and in front of the rest at all times when bowfishing. This is crucial for your safety. The best arrow rest is a roller rest that allows a fish arrow to roll right off your bow.

The AMS bowfishing system is considered the top technology now. The line is inside the bottle and the arrow is attached to the line. It needs to be wet for the first time so that it works smoothly. When you reel the line in, it goes into the bottle without having to be lined up on a spool such as the Zebco reels required. This keeps tangling down to a minimum.

Photo compliments of AMS systems.

When you hit a Carp with the arrow, it will turn and run so fast that your line will peel out of the reel. This is when it takes self control to not grab the line. Don’t ever grab a running line or you will spend a couple of hours getting stitches in the ER. Use the drag on the reel or AMS rig. If you have circular spool with line wrapped around it, like we used in the old days, then you have to let the fish run out until he stops and then pull him in. You must wear gloves with an open spool. Reeling in a strong fish like a Carp can break a reel, so it’s better to let him run around and tire out first. (Many people still use the Zebco 808 bowfishing reel, that is big enough to accommodate the thick line needed. The reel fits into a fishing rod attachment that screws into the compound bow. It can be screwed onto a recurve bow by drilling holes in the reel seat). If you pull too hard before the fish is tired out, the thrashing can pull the arrow out and the fish will escape. I once let a 38-pound Carp pull my boat around a bay until he was good and tired, and then I reeled him in.
Carp fishing in rivers is a different story than lakes. In small rivers, they spawn along the edges, and then retreat into deeper water. When I was a child, we often bowfished while wading Rock River near Oconomowoc, Wisconsin. We would be walking in the river while shooting carp along the way, until my father got attacked by big snapping turtle that he shot with the arrow inside the wide-open mouth. The snapper did not stop, but continued coming at him with the arrow protruding ahead of him. My father grabbed the arrow and flung the turtle up on shore. After that we started to shoot from shore. River wading has other problems that can include falling into holes when the Carp muddy the water so you can’t see where you are stepping.

If you bowfish from a boat, you need some sort of platform or bench seat so you can look down into the water with polarized sunglasses. When I was a kid, I could balance myself on the front deck of our boat amidst slim and fish eggs. (Today that’s but a memory). If you are really pulling in the fish, make sure you have a large garbage can to throw them in, since you don’t want slimy eggs all over the floor.

Both of these boats have halogen lights for night bowfishing, which can be the most productive. Only a few states allow night bowfishing however. Minnesota is going to start to allow it in June of 07. Wisconsin allows night fishing in a few areas. In the southern states, night bowfishing has been legal in a lot more areas. Check your state department of natural resources for specific rules about night fishing.

Here are a couple nice photos of beautiful platform boats compliments of people posting them on Midwest Bowfishing websites.

Don’t worry you can still go bowfishing without building elaborate boats like you see in the photos. Much of my bowfishing as a child was on Lake Winnebago, Wisconsin while in a typical 1960’s, 14-foot fiberglass boat of the day. It had a very slippery deck. We used recurve bows with lines wrapped around a large circular metal holder taped to the bow. That system was very simple and we had to be careful to not get our hand caught in the arrow string when swinging around to shoot.


This is the photo that I took of my father holding some of our catch one day. You can see we didn’t have a sophisticated boat. The photo is shot after we put the boat in the boat lift.	Here I am holding a real nice carp that I shot when I was 14 years old. We had such a big boat load of carp that day that we had to return home for fear the boat would sink with the weight. In this photo you can see Lake Winnebago, Fond du Lac, Wisconsin in the background from my grandparents front lawn.

In my adult years, I fished the Bay of Green Bay and the canals. The Bay has the same early morning phenomena action as other lakes, but the canals seemed to have fish running all day as long as it was sunny out. If it cooled down, they would stop spawning. Weather plays a great part in the spawning process. Carp like other fish can only spawn when the temperature is exactly right. Unlike a lot of other spawning fish, the Carp prefer sunny days.


Here I am in 1991 shooting Carp from land in the Green Bay Wisconsin canals.	Here are a couple good size Carp that I shot just wading along the shallows near shore of Green bay in 1990. (Look at those lovely pink water shoes. The fish swam right up to me despite my colors). I was wading in water up to my shorts. That is a Darton compound bow with a Bear Archery bowfishing reel.

In a lake, a cloudy cool day will cause the spawning to stop and the fish will retreat to the depths. If you still want to hunt Carp, you must go after them in deeper water.

My experiences with the big St. Lawrence River, Bowfishing championship in Messina, NY was a real different type of fishing. People came from all over to enter that contest, the prize was $2000 with a $20 entrance fee in the 1980’s. Now it’s a worldwide contest with big prizes and big entrance fees. The fish taken are 30-50 pounds. The river has many islands and sloughs with canals. It is big water. The big Carp do not get into really shallow bays with their bodies out of the water, but spawn in large herds and sometimes too deep of water to penetrate an arrow into them. I saw some really huge Carp that were in 10-15ft deep of water. However, the islands and some canals held the easiest access. The Carp moved their spawning areas daily. This is very hard stalking since it’s such a large river with vast areas to cover. The local people nearly always have the winning advantage since they watch the fish for days ahead of the contest. It was a lot of fun and the sponsors are great people.


Carp shot during the 1988 St. Lawrence River Bowfishing Tournament in Messina NY. Notice that my boat has a small platform and I have a simple 12 foot boat.	This is my bowfishing partner in our two person team of 1987, 1988, 1989 St. Lawrence River in Messina, New York, Bowfishing Tournament, Carol Nepton (now living in NH). We did that tournament for three years. Notice her recurve bow with a Zebco 808 reel. Every entrant must be in two person teams.


Here you can see my fish is up on the board (not for long) at the tournament. I was shocked that a 49-pound carp won.	Make sure to bring a large barrel or garbage can to keep the carp in so the dripping slime isn’t all over the boat. You can slip and get hurt on that slime.

When the spawning stops, there are a few tricks to get the fish to come in closer. Try throwing corn in the water and wait very still. The Carp are laying on the bottom, waiting for the temperature to heat up, but they are still hungry. They will react when they see that corn and will come rushing in. Sometimes you will see bubbles indicating where they are laying. Tying a can of dog food next to a log will also bring them in to feed.

In heavily muddied waters where spawning has made visual location very difficult, look for dark shadows. The shadows look like a carp, but you just can’t see them clearly. As you see the shape of the Carp moving, shoot slightly below the shadow depending on how deep you think the water is.

If you are in two boats and move into a bay, try to squeeze the carp into a single shooting area. You can get them coming and going this way.

Remember to bring polarized sunglasses, a towel to wipe slime off your hands (your bow can slip right out of your hand). Be sure to bring plenty of arrows. If your arrow sticks into the mud under water, don’t jump in after it unless you can see where you are stepping. Use a weighted grappling hook on a rope to retrieve it. If you step on that arrow, you could get really hurt.

An electric trolling motor is the best way for sneaking into a bay. Using an oar to push the boat along the bottom has scared off more fish than its worth. If you aren’t close enough, use the trolling motor, not the noisy oar. Fish are accustomed to all motors since they are rhythmic. A lot of research has shown that oars spook fish far more than a motor.

More states are starting to allow night fishing which is when the Carp are really moving. You have to mount lights on your boat and must shoot as the fish come to straight out of the depths toward the light.

Some people like smoke carp and find them a delicacy. Be sure to locate these people if you don’t like the taste. Some carp have high levels of river bottom soil contaminants, so they are best buried in gardens for fertilizers rather than eating.


St. Lawrence River Bowfishing tournament 1987 This is same boat that we used for three years.	For many years, I used a Bear Archery bowfishing reel and a Zebco 808 and they worked fine. Today, I have two AMS systems.

Bowfishing is the best of both worlds where angling and hunting meet. There is something exciting about using the skill of archery to bring in a large fish. It’s a fast-moving animal and it does take accurate shooting to hit one. Once you have been positioned with your bow pulled back and you see a herd of carp rolling toward you, the shooting will be fast and exciting. It’s a type of hunting unlike anything else. Best of all, you are ridding the environment of the carp that destroys the ecosystem for the game fish.

The next part of the excitement is bringing the fish to shore or into the boat. All too often, people fight the fish and he breaks loose. The skill of wearing the fish down and then pulling him in is a thrill when you finally get him. It reminds me of the playing out a big Marlin. For many years, I thought walking into the rivers or lakes was more fun since you could get really close before you shot. The idea of shooting a fish far larger than you would typically be catching on your pole is also part of the excitement. I haven’t bowfished in areas where I could shoot an alligator or a sting ray, but I would love it. In the North we are pleasantly happy to get a big Carp or Gar.

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