Bowfishing becoming a popular pastime
A good summertime sport that challenges the norm is bowfishing.
While bowfishing isn’t on everyone’s list of things to do in these parts, there are sections of the country where it is a very popular family pastime.
I’m ready to give it a try once again.
I dug out my old bow reel last week, but I couldn’t find my old fiberglass fishing arrow, so I ordered a new one, plus a roller arrow rest.
I plan to use my recurve bow, which will work fine for all the farther I plan on shooting.
My buddies from the neighborhood and myself did a lot of bowfishing while growing up in the Mon Valley. Money was scarce at times, but we were innovative when it came to finding something to do in the summertime.
Early on, baseball was how we spent many leisurely hours. When the school-sponsored league ended for the season, we played pick-up games in the many sprawling backyards and fields around the neighborhood.
When that got old, we went to the local pool, where we all had a season passes, just to cool off at first and then to also check out the girls as we got older.
But, the most fun we had was in the outdoors, whether wading the local creeks looking for snakes and salamanders, hunting groundhogs and fishing in any number of farm ponds — some where we were welcome and others … well!
At one point we constructed an archery course, consisting of several targets, in one of the guy’s back yards. The whole gang pitched in to buy straw and targets.
As we became more proficient with our trusty recurve bows, we took on the local garden pests – mainly groundhogs and rabbits.
It was when we became old enough to drive that we branched out to bowfishing for giant carp, which were plentiful in nearby abandoned strip mines.
Many creeks had large populations of suckers and were shallow enough and clear enough for us to have some fun on hot afternoons.
A few years back I first wrote about how I was looking through a box of my “junk” looking for something when I stumbled on that old bowfishing reel. That brought back some memories.
The lazy, hot days of summer were all the excuse my buddies and I needed to go bowfishing.
The rush connected with getting a couple big suckers or carp with a bow was enough reason to go, but it was also a great way to cool off.
We would throw on a pair of shorts and old sneakers so we wouldn’t cut our feet on the rocks, old tin cans and broken glass, which, unfortunately, littered the bottom of Pigeon Creek in Washington County. The creek wound its way to the Monongahela River past Van Voorhis and Hazel Kirk.
Pigeon Creek offered a variety of panfish and “trash” fish with carp and suckers being legal to shoot with a bow.
While we did bow fish old coal strips near New Eagle and other sites around the county for carp in the morning and evening hours, most of our fishing was a twofold adventure designed for sport and cooling off.
We would wade in the waist-deep water, which was usually clear enough to make out the outline of a fish when the creek was not running red with mine runoff, which happened for a few months every other year or so.
Shots and kills were two different things.
The deeper the fish is, the more difficult the shot becomes because when shooting at fish under water, there is the problem of parallax, especially in deep water. Parallax affects depth perception. It is the change of the apparent angular position of a single object as seen in two different observations.
Nearby objects have a larger parallax than more distant objects when observed from different positions, so parallax makes something appear where it is not. In other words, when aiming at a fish in water, we had to aim low to compensate for the parallax, and the deeper the water, the lower we had to aim. Therefore, aiming at submerged fish was always a guessing game at best, but an enjoyable one.
At first most shots go high, but after a few tries, you get the knack. Shots at carp rolling on top also require practice for shooting a solid fiberglass arrow is like throwing a shot put – both begin to drop very rapidly when released.
A few years back the thought of bowfishing was thrust into my mind again one afternoon, as I was fishing in the area of Dunlap Creek Lake that is set aside for “kids only” for 45 days each spring.
A fellow in his 30s showed up and started to walk the far shoreline with bow in hand.
I knew the carp were active on that side of the pond by the color of the water and the repeated sounds of “boiling” water as they rolled around.
I was happy to see someone bowfishing, as I thought it was a lost sport in these parts.
As the bow fisherman worked his way around to where I was, he stopped to chat for a few minutes. I was impressed with the equipment he was using.
The stout fiberglass arrow was the same as I had in my youth, but he was using a compound bow, and the arrow retrieval system was very modern.
Now many archery companies make complete “bowfishing” outfits.
My old bow reel is just a disc taped to the bow with a nylon line wrapped around it. The back end was tied around the bow and the trailing end was secured to the arrow by a hole near the nock.
It usually fed out well, but it had to be retrieved by hand, which is tedious and time consuming.
The young fisherman’s bow had a line retrieval system that worked like a fishing reel, but instead of wrapping the line of a spool it fed it backwards into a plastic bottle that served as a receptacle.
There are other systems out there. Most appear to be modified closed-face spincast reels.
There are also many other great innovations in bowfishing gear.
Roller arrow rests allow heavy fishing arrows to release more quickly and smoothly, plus there is a full line of species-specific fishing points available. Line also comes in a host of colors to fit any situation.
Some companies have introduced lighter weight carbon and carbon composite fishing arrows.
Bowfishing began with the native Americans as a way to secure food and developed into a modern sport.
Over the years, the sport has grown in popularity. Formal associations have been formed, and there are magazines devoted to bowfishing. A bowfishing hall of fame has also been formed with one of the first nominees being someone familiar to anyone who has ever pickup up a bow — Fred Bear.
As a kid we all had recurve bows, but today’s bow fisherman has a whole new arsenal at his command with the advent of much more powerful compound bows. The increased speed of the compound bows and the revolution in newer, stronger, lighter-weight materials for arrows make bowfishing much easier today than it was in my youth.
If you’re thinking of giving bowfishing a try, a Pennsylvania fishing license is required for those old enough to need one, and legal species in the state are carp, suckers and catfish.
Now that the summer heat is unbearable at times, this just may be a good time to grab your bow and head for the creek.
Herald-Standard Outdoor Editor Rod Schoener can be reached online at rschoener@heraldstandard.com.