Bowfishing Then and Now

Bowfishing Then and Now

Lately bowfishing has become THE hot sport for going after silver carp, gar, and other species of trash fish that a fisherman would not typically include on their list of desirable species.  It’s a hell of a lot of fun and can be done by anyone with the right equipment. In a boat or on the shore, doesn’t really matter. And it has again got me thinking back to the 1950’s and my experiences as perhaps one of the early developers of this “bowfishing technique”. Let me explain….

When I was a kid we played “Cowboys and Indians”. The cowboys had toy pistols and, on occasion, a toy rifle or two. The Indians were relegated to bows and arrows. In reality this was as much a game of hide and seek as it was a battle between two historic opponents.

Our group of kids would draw straws to see who was a cowboy and who an Indian. I can’t remember if there was much of a preference on my part, but I suspect it was to be a cowboy. The cowboy’s toy guns fired caps, the Indians bows actually had no arrows. Only the homemade tree branch bow and a bow string which were drawn as an imaginary arrow was fired.

Living on a farm surrounded by fence rows and woods this game occupied untold hours of mine and my friends’ time and, as my Dad saw it, “kept us out of trouble”. But it also peaked my interest in having a “real” bow and arrow.

Dad was a big believer in teaching his children the fine points of any sport, especially those points that involved safety and the proper use of the equipment. So when I finally succeeded in talking Mom and Dad into letting me get a “starter” bow and arrow set the first thing Dad did was to make sure I respected the potential injury I could cause to anything I aimed the bow at, including myself or any friends in the immediate area.

I can still remember that bow and arrow set. The bow as a forest green fiberglass bow with a paraffined bow string that required bending the bow down to get the string on it. Once installed the string was very tight and it took some muscle to draw it so the arrow would shoot out of the rest. The arrows were wooden shafts with real feather vanes and an aluminum tip that resembled that on a 30-06 round.

It wasn’t too long that several of my friends also acquired similar bows and arrows and advanced to the point that their parents let them use them without “direct” supervision. This was also the time that the real fun began!

In the beginning my buddies and I would meet up at one or the other’s farm and shoot at big round canvas multicolored targets stuffed with straw mounted on the side of a hay wagon or such. We would keep score to see who came the closest to the bullseye. The winner would get a free Coke courtesy of the remaining shooters’ contributions of pennies to the soft drink pool. A Coke was a nickel back then as I recall.

Kids being kids we began to innovate and in no time hit upon the idea of shooting fish in the farm ponds with our bows. Now keep a few things in mind here: The arrows had no barbs. There was no place to tie a string so the arrows could be retrieved. There were no reels to mount on the bow and really no way to bring a fish to shore unless the arrow passed completely through the fish. But we gave it a shot anyway.

Just like todays bowfishing, carp were our primary target. All of our Dads considered them trash fish that took food away from the bass, catfish, bluegill, and the like that also inhabited the numerous farm ponds on the surrounding family farms. And they were about the only sizeable fish that you could see from the shore and shoot at.

Innovation was the by word here. We grabbed about 100 yards of monofilament line from my one of my spinning reels, drilled a hole in the arrow just below the nock, and then tied the other end of the line to a rock. Then we went down to the pond and took some shots at the carp.

Did we score any hits? You bettcha’! And on a few occasions we even managed to bring the fish to shore. Not that it was easy, but kids don’t know that much about “can’t” at this age and when I look back I think we did pretty good considering what we had to work with. And we were lucky. Lucky that the line didn’t hang up and the arrow shot back at one of us. Lucky that any of our Moms or Dads didn’t see us doing this. And lucky that none of the arrows we lost were discovered later floating in one of the ponds.

Today we have great purposed-designed bowfishing gear. Bows like PSE or others are made specifically for going after fish. The arrows are specific being longer with harpoon tips and no vanes. There are reels that fit on the bows and slides that go in the arrow shaft so they don’t come back at us. Even high quality polarized sunglasses so we can see our prey better. But back in the 1950’s we did it the hard way. And we had so much fun!

I don’t know if you’ve ever tried bowfishing, but if my experiences at bowfishing when I was a kid are any sort of barometer for fun, you just may be missing out if you haven’t.

This week we have some great new products we want to share with you, especially the new luggage from G. Loomis!

Thanks to all of our great friends and customers who have supported us and passed our name on to their friends. We know we are only here by making sure your needs are our first and only priority. Please let me know if we ever fail to meet and exceed your expectations.

Tight Lines,

Tom Ashby