Bowfishing: Part Two (with pics)

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shadowwalker590

Joined
Nov 19, 2008
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I went out this morning despite the rain and late start. They have started spawning. A DNR employee saw me and pointed me in a direction where he had seen some. They were there. With the rain and muddy water I only managed to get one, however this is also the first fish I actually hit, so I was more than happy.

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I ended him with the BK2, The Hargis I won was in my inside wader pocket, but it wasn't long enough.
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Nice shot!!!!

I hope it tastes half as good as it felt to make that sweet head shot!
 
Nice shot !
But how could you waste the nice carp for compost :eek: :confused:
We are more than happy if we catch a carp here.;)
They make a great meal :thumbup:
 
Actually I have heard if prepared right small ones aren't bad. But our water in this area isn't very clean, and there are certain parts where you aren't supposed to eat them from, so I just don't in general.
 
Nice shot. Goes against my own ethics to kill an animal intentionally solely for sport, but every person is different.

Edited to add: I'm not trying to pass judgment. Just pointing out a different take on hunting/fishing. If I catch it and/or kill it, I do my dead level best to consume it. That said, I have killed fish inadvertently (with a swallowed hook, for example) and because of size limits, had to let the fish go to the turtles. The other reasons I've killed an animal are because it was a pest or because it posed a threat. If the carp are considered an invasive species in your area, then killing them might involve a different motivation entirely.
 
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Guyon said:
Nice shot. Goes against my own ethics to kill an animal intentionally solely for sport, but every person is different.

Edited to add: I'm not trying to pass judgment. Just pointing out a different take on hunting/fishing. If I catch it and/or kill it, I do my dead level best to consume it. That said, I have killed fish inadvertently (with a swallowed hook, for example) and because of size limits, had to let the fish go to the turtles. The other reasons I've killed an animal are because it was a pest or because it posed a threat. If the carp are considered an invasive species in your area, then killing them might involve a different motivation entirely.
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I do not take offense to your post. I also do not condone killing purely for sport. I do try and get use out of them somehow (composting or giving them to others to eat).


Carp are invasive to all of North America (escaped from flooded catfish farms who imported them to eat algae and such). The can lay upwards of 600,000 eggs each, in a single spawn. There have also been several studies that show Carp greatly reduce the quality of the water and damage our native fishes habitats. Carp also have no natural predators here in the United States, so once they are big enough, nothing comes after them. This is why I choose to bowfish. Carp will never be gone, they are too prolific for that to happen. I don't think people understand how destructive they truly are though.

Gar and a couple other rough fish species do get eaten though.:thumbup:
 
Carp are invasive to all of North America (escaped from flooded catfish farms who imported them to eat algae and such). The can lay upwards of 600,000 eggs each, in a single spawn. There have also been several studies that show Carp greatly reduce the quality of the water and damage our native fishes habitats. Carp also have no natural predators here in the United States, so once they are big enough, nothing comes after them. This is why I choose to bowfish. Carp will never be gone, they are too prolific for that to happen. I don't think people understand how destructive they truly are though.
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I agree, millions of dollars a year are spent trying to keep invasive species in check. Congrats. on your first trophy carp. Looks like you had a great time.

Paul
 
shadowwalker590 said:
I do not take offense to your post. I also do not condone killing purely for sport. I do try and get use out of them somehow (composting or giving them to others to eat).


Carp are invasive to all of North America (escaped from flooded catfish farms who imported them to eat algae and such). The can lay upwards of 600,000 eggs each, in a single spawn. There have also been several studies that show Carp greatly reduce the quality of the water and damage our native fishes habitats. Carp also have no natural predators here in the United States, so once they are big enough, nothing comes after them. This is why I choose to bowfish. Carp will never be gone, they are too prolific for that to happen. I don't think people understand how destructive they truly are though.

Gar and a couple other rough fish species do get eaten though.:thumbup:
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Aside from the flying versions, I truly didn't know they were as big a problem as that. I grew up with carp always in the rivers around me. Some folks ate them. Others didn't. I never really fished for them much at all and never gave them that much thought. When I was in England, I was amused to see they are a big sport fish there. Perhaps if they became a bigger target for sportsmen here (and I have seen some indications in that direction), numbers would decline.

Sounds like you are whittling down the numbers (slowly :p), and at least the fish are providing some fertilizer.
 
I Speared on last year, and it didn't taste great, but it also wasn't awful. I tried bowfishing, but I couldn't hit of the the things on the first couple of days, and I saw catfish, so I went back to normal fishing or if I want carp I will be patient with a spear.

Looks like you had fun with that though! Awesome shot!
 
shadowwalker590 said:
Carp are invasive to all of North America (escaped from flooded catfish farms who imported them to eat algae and such).
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That's true of the asian carp, which is a recently introduced species, but not of the common carp you're fishing for. The common carp was deliberately stocked in the 19th century as a food fish.

It's no longer an invasive species; it's naturalized. Common carp are found just about everywhere they're capable of living; they haven't threatened native fishes for about 100 years. Communities reach a kind of equilibrium. As a naturalized species, common carp are no different from, for example, brown trout, or rainbow trout anywhere east of the Mississippi, or brook trout in the mountain west, etc., except that we perceive them as less desirable.

The asian carp, on the other hand, is a new invader and as such it's a real menace.

That's not to pass judgment on bowfishing for carp -- they do reproduce rapidly, and their populations in North America are at no risk of overfishing -- but just to set the record straight on the carp itself.

It's ironic that a fish introduced as a food fish is now spurned as such -- in answer to ZombaiO, while Europeans are happy to eat carp, in North America most people regard them as trash fish. I like fly fishing for them -- they're a lot of fun in shallow water.
 
great stuff man...:thumbup: bowfishing is a lot of f un, i haven't done it in a long time... i wish there was more spots around here...
 
Zaner01 said:
That's true of the asian carp, which is a recently introduced species, but not of the common carp you're fishing for. The common carp was deliberately stocked in the 19th century as a food fish.

It's no longer an invasive species; it's naturalized. Common carp are found just about everywhere they're capable of living; they haven't threatened native fishes for about 100 years. Communities reach a kind of equilibrium. As a naturalized species, common carp are no different from, for example, brown trout, or rainbow trout anywhere east of the Mississippi, or brook trout in the mountain west, etc., except that we perceive them as less desirable.
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According to the USGS
The common carp is regarded as a pest fish because of its widespread abundance and because of its tendency to destroy vegetation and increase water turbidity by dislodging plants and rooting around in the substrate, causing a deterioration of habitat for species requiring vegetation and clean water
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It goes on from there. Either way, Common Carp are still on most, if not all, state's invasive species list.

USGS Fact Sheet
 
The fact is that the common carp was introduced as a food fish, not for weed control (see your own link), and that it is now naturalized in North America, having had breeding populations across most of the continent for approximately a century. Efforts to control it have proven costly and ineffective. In most places, they coexist with thriving populations of both warmwater and coldwater native fish.

Almost any species interacts negatively with other species in some way, but this doesn't imply that the result is some kind of piscine apocalypse. Unlike the asian carps, common carp aren't really much of a threat to fisheries -- especially when compared to the loss of groundwater, eutrophication from farm runoff, dams, and so on. So although they are thought of as a pest species, control of common carp is not a priority.

Anyway, I have no problem with bowfishing carp and using them as fertilizer -- they're not under any pressure, and spreading pressure from sportfish onto coarse fish is beneficial anyway. I've never tried bowfishing myself, but it must take some serious practice, accounting for refraction. Good shot.

Writing about fish and fisheries, incidentally, is one of the ways I've put food on the table for over ten years now.
 
Thanks for the information.

Its cool because the Bowfishing Association of Illinois that I am a member of has teamed up with the Department Of Natural Resources and are doing a lot of projects to help fishing in general, not just bowfishing. We had a state park that had a set of docks washed away in a storm, and we are doing a tournament with 100% of the entry fee's going towards new docks for the park. We are also paying for signs educating people about illegal dumping of fish, and putting them up at launches and popular fishing spots, to show people that our organization does not condone it, whether bowfishing or not.
 
I grew up Illinois and carp are prolific. They plenty of food in the river systems. The bigger rivers more so. The grain elevators loose grain into the river as they fill barges. Lots of food and then plenty of back water areas to spawn. There are not enough bow fisherman to effect numbers.
 
AWESOME - Me and my buddies have been talking about bow fishing for quite some time, but I have no use for carp at all. It looks like a blast and FUN.

Thanks for sharing.
 
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