Opinions on Bow fishermen

Looking to see what everyone’s opinions are on bow fishing. I am an avid bowfisher. It’s one of my favorite things to do in the spring and early part of summer. That being said it seems like some people love us and some people absolutely hate us. I can understand the argument for people disposing of their fish in the wrong way or just dumping them. There’s no excuse for that. I can understand how that really can rub lakeshore owners the wrong way. It seems like you run into some people who are like “shoot them all” and then you run into others that cuss you out and shake their fist as you go by. When I run the shorelines sometimes, and I’m going by houses I can see how it would be annoying as my lights really light up the area and the generator is noisy. Do you think it is inconsiderate to run shore lines where there are houses/cabins? Should we only be shooting in places without dwellings? Some lakes the dwellings cover the entire shoreline almost. Interested in what people have to say about it.

I’ve been in boats where the lights are angled up to high and shine cabin windows, that i could see a problem for people. As long as your not sitting in one spot all night people should be able to get over the sound of a generator in my opinion. I wish more people bow fished in southern mn our lakes have tons of sheephead and carp!

Keep whacking em! To hell with the whiners !

Luckily that’s not a thing this far north but if I had a cabin on a lake where bow fishing was popular I’d be sure to have a light 10x brighter than theirs to shine right back at them.

isu22andy wrote:

Keep whacking em! To hell with the whiners ! [/quote

lol that’s the spirit.

Seriously though, I get both sides of it. Guess it just comes down to common sense and ethics in the end. Both of which are seemingly in short supply, sadly.

Ps: meant to quote “fins”, not Andy. But it works I guess.

My only concern with bow fisherman is killing native species.
Leave the Buffalo, Suckers, and Dogfish alone.
Kill every carp you can find.

As long as one has a proper way to dispose of them I have no issues with the sport, but there are some instances where I could see shoreline homeowners getting their backs up if you’re out after dark and crawling along in and out of docks.

As far as lights go if you’re doing this at night, keep them on the water. If you decide to take fins at his word you could see the end of being able to do so after dark. Stop and think about how you’d like it if someone decided to come by your home at 11PM and shine a bright light on your house….. think you’d maybe have something to say to them or maybe be dialing up the local badges?

The way our world is today with every other person having a gun and not knowing what sort of people you’re going to encounter after dark, I, personally, would keep my bow fishing activities focused on daylight. Tick off the wrong person by appearing to be snooping around his property at night and you might find your bow trumped by a rifle or shotgun.

Hammer them and have your fun while being courteous of others.

The last big flood on Pool 4 (a few years ago) we had some issues locally with young kids running all over in airboats in flooded fields and whatnot “shooting carp.” It wasn’t so much the shooting carp or noise, but there were instances of them flying over washed out gravel township roads, hitting fencelines, etc. If an airboat is going 25mph over fields in a flood that wreaks havoc on the topsoil and causes substantial damage. That was the only issue I’ve encountered in my life though, and it was 100% on the parents not knowing what their kids were doing with the $30k toy they bought them.

I don’t have much issue with it, looks fun. The only thing I’ve seen is some of them don’t know the difference between invasives and native fish. I’m sure as it gets more popular they will be regulated a little harder.

Keep at it.
If everyone is respectful life is a lot easier.

Dead carp everywhere sucks. There are piles of fish in many of the places I regularly go. Various stages of decomposition. They have been banned from one of the local Army Corps of Engineers recreation areas. I don’t mind the lights generally, but the generators are annoying. It’s not like there’s a ton of local traffic or city noise so you can hear one of those generators going all the way around a lake. Pair that with having caught kids on two different occasions shooting gamefish and it’s tough to have respect for the overall bowfishing community. I don’t think bowfishing is controlling the carp population at all so saying that is has a positive side other than being enjoyable for the participants isn’t really a good argument. But people have the right to enjoy themselves, I might yell out shut up you suck while they cruise by but it really only applies while they are making a bunch of noise, but it’s not personal.

Ive done it once its pretty fun. Only thing is have a place to dispose and have at it. Hate the guys that dump them at the launch to just rot.

We did it once on Prior Lake…it was a great time. Had some lake owners that treated us like heroes and others that were threatening violence.

Our guide had a quiet generator and kept the light down and made sure to follow all the regs. As long as you follow the regs, have at it.

See it all the time on Green lake where’s my folks are. Never had an issue and the bow fisherman are always respectful.

Our shoreline most of the cabins are 200′ off the water so it doesn’t bother us, but the East and West side the cabins are real close to the water, that would suck dealing with the light and noise. Hopefully they would have enough sense to go shoot elsewhere..

If rules are followed… nothing wrong with it. The same people who have a problem with dock fishing are probably the same ones who whine about this also. They are gonna whine no matter what, so have at it ! If you shoot 30 carp, no matter what anyone says, that’s 30 less in the lake ! Simple logic.

I have done it numerous times and its a blast. Its also a great way to remove rough fish.
I don’t mind the noise, but I have seen/heard airboats on smaller lakes and they are LOUD, especially on a still night. I could see where someone who hates everything would get their tailfeathers all ruffled.
I think the sport tries self policing… at least I know the Wisconsin Bow Fishing guys do with their tourneys. But the rebels or youngsters can wreck it for everyone else by not disposing of fish properly or making more noise than needed on a smaller lake giving the sport a bad name.

i havent bowfished in years…….but when i did always daylight and from shore….

i say go gett’em!!

I own a cabin on a lake with bow fisherman, doesn’t bother me a bit as long as they follow some basic rules imo (these seem like common/decency sense, not sure what the actual rules are?)

1) Don’t shoot game fish (I’ve had a few largemouth float up on my shore with arrow holes completely through them)
2) Don’t dispose of carcasses in the lake or at the launch
3) Don’t shine spotlights into cabin windows
4) Don’t repeatedly stay in the same spot on the lake (those generators are loud)
5) Please don’t be doing it at 3am when points 3 & 4 get compounded

Everytime the boats come in front of our place we make sure to watch because its pretty cool, Its kinda of strange that our lake gets Bow fisherman as we don’t have any Carp in the lake??? What else would they be shooting at? Bowfin?

It just takes 1 bad egg to unfortunately stain what people think…

I’m still waiting for the opportunity to shoot jumping silver carp with a shotgun.

suzuki wrote:

I’m still waiting for the opportunity to shoot jumping silver carp with a shotgun.

If your doing that at night please use a suppressor.

grubson wrote:

My only concern with bow fisherman is killing native species.
Leave the Buffalo, Suckers, and Dogfish alone.
Kill every carp you can find.

This. Leave the Buffalo, dogs, gar, and suckers alone. Otherwise yeah have at it. All for it.

suzuki wrote:

I’m still waiting for the opportunity to shoot jumping silver carp with a shotgun.

There’s a couple videos of people doing this that have probs been taken down by now. I’m sure it’s super illegal but man that looks fun.

I don’t want to use a shotgun on silver carp, but I could see strapping the pads on and grabbing a landing net and playing carp goalie. What do you think, Deertracker?

Steve Root wrote:

I don’t want to use a shotgun on silver carp, but I could see strapping the pads on and grabbing a landing net and playing carp goalie. What do you think, Deertracker?

There’s videos of that too…

Here is my take on bowfishing, but first my background. I was and avid bow fisherman from 2003-2015. Now I am an avid walleye guy. I still go bowfishing just not frequently. My 11 year son is up and coming and absolutely loves bowfishing. So it will probably start to me more again

Now on to my real life experiences with it and its effects.
IT LITERALLY HAS NO EFFECT ON THE POPULATIONS OF ROUGH FISH.
the lake I bow fished had so much of an insane population of fish we would go out every weekend and fill drums overflowing for years. This lake could hardly produce a walleye, crappie, catfish, bass, pike. Then the lake was netted for rough fish and not just a couple hundred. It was done for several years with a total of right around 500,000 lbs of rough fish removed. After that the population never quite came back bowfishing was tough we would maybe get 20-30 on a good night after the netting. But one thing that did change, I can now go out to the lake at any time of the year and feel pretty comfortable that i will get some nice GAME fish. 25″+ catfish are plentiful, eater walleye are getting plentiful. When you find the school of white bass get ready its like every cast and they taste great. the July sundown bite at cool water feeder creeks for pike can be pretty awesome. When we go out bowfishing now We see schools of walleye big old northerns that look like logs laying on the bottom waiting for sunlight to just feed again.

My believe is the game fish never truly got a chance to spawn well. Since in the spring the rough fish would be up in the shallows feeding right after ice out until their spawn mid june. With rough fish they would just destroy the spawning grounds. The shallows were always murky because they were stirring it up. Now with them gone the shallows are crystal clear this allows photosynthesis to thrive which means phytoplankton is now able to grow. phyplankton is what zooplankton feed on. With the increase in both of those it allows the gamefish spawn youth to feed in the shallows in safety from predators. Im excited for the future of this lake as my catch ratio of 10″ walleye last summer was 5-1 of eater fish, and i caught a good amount of eater walleye.

Steve Root wrote:

I don’t want to use a shotgun on silver carp, but I could see strapping the pads on and grabbing a landing net and playing carp goalie. What do you think, Deertracker?

I’m in!
DT

grubson wrote:

My only concern with bow fisherman is killing native species.
Leave the Buffalo, Suckers, and Dogfish alone.
Kill every carp you can find.

Buffalo is a big one. Lots of people think they are carp. I will say there are tons of them in pool 2 though, so don’t think there’s much population concern there. Lakes are a different story I’m sure.

Also not sure how I feel about gar being shot a bunch. Dogfish/bowfin are another that people like to hate and indiscriminately kill and toss. Yeah they’re mean and ugly but still a good native species.

For anyone who hasn’t done it, it is an ABSOLUTE blast. Ive been privileged enough to do it a few times locally as well as down in Louisiana in the Mississippi River delta. There is nothing like shooting 5+ foot gar or 30 lb cats from a boat with a bow.

Just like anything, there are a few bad apples who ruin the reputation of the group, but as long as people are only using their “upright” lights for navigation and keep the commotion respectful the have at it.

I didn’t copy all the rules, but whomever came up with the language knew what the problems were/are. 65 db is pretty darn quiet.

97C.376 BOW FISHING.

“Subd. 3.Nighttime restrictions on motors. (a) From sunset to sunrise, the noise limits for total noise while bow fishing must not exceed a noise level of 65 decibels on the A scale measured at a distance of 50 feet from the motorboat or equivalent noise levels at other distances as specified by the commissioner in a pass-by test.”

“Subd. 4.Nighttime shooting; restrictions. A person shall not discharge an arrow while bow fishing within 150 feet of an occupied structure or within 300 feet of a campsite from sunset to sunrise.”

MN Statutes Here

Please keep in mind that the above does not apply for WI residents in WI waters.