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John's Journal... Entry 265, Day 3

REDFISH WITH A BOW

Equipment for Bow Fishing

Editor's Note: As an outdoorsman, I enjoy hunting and fishing. I like to participate in both sports all year. However, often the seasons conflict. However now, folks can hunt with a bow when deer season and turkey season end, although the game has neither fur nor feathers but rather scales. If you want to get a fight started in any fish camp along the Gulf Coast, just start talking about hunting redfish at night with a bow. Most folks won't jump your case if you talk about shooting sheepshead with a bow, because outdoorsmen generally don't consider sheepshead the sacred cow of the Upper Gulf Coast. But many sportsmen feel very strongly about bowhunting for redfish. I think I speak for outdoorsmen when I say that many of us, regardless of how we feel about how anglers take redfish, probably perceive anyone who takes redfish by a different method than us as using an immoral and unethical method. But I personally think that a redfish in the skillet is still a redfish in the skillet, whether you take it on hook and line or with a bow and arrow. Too, as long as bowhunters don't take over their legal limit of redfish, why do we have controversy? "Well, bow hunting for redfish just ain't sporting," a whiskered, leathery-faced fisherman told me recently. However, he also admitted he'd never hunted redfish at night with a bow, but the idea of that just didn't seem sporting to him. This past year, friends and I traveled to Louisiana and hunted redfish and sheepshead with bows and arrows with my friend Bo Hamilton.

"We carry several Mathews and McPherson bows on board with us," Ryan Plaisance of Lafitte, Louisiana, my bow-fishing guide, explains. "The bows we use for bow fishing can be quickly modified to adjust for a shooter's draw length and the amount of poundage he or she can pull. The people who bow-fish with us quickly and easily can learn how to shoot bows, since we can modify the bow to fit each one and the weight these bowhunters can pull comfortably and shoot accurately." Plaisance and his friend, Jeremy Russell, also provide Muzzy fish arrows, each outfitted with a fish broadhead, for their shooters. "We like the broadheads on the Muzzy fish arrows because we can shake the fish off the arrows quickly, re-nock the arrows and prepare to shoot again -- particularly when we get into an area with a large school of redfish or sheepshead," Plaisance emphasizes.

To learn more about Matthews bows, write 919 River Road PO Box 367, Sparta, WI 54656, call (608) 269-2728 or go to www.mathewsinc.com. for more information. For more information on McPherson bows, write McPherson, % Ben Pearson Archery at PO Box 327, 734 Industrial Park, Brewton, AL 36427, call (251) 867-8980 or visit www.benpearson.com. You can contact Muzzy broadheads at Muzzy Products Corporation, 110 Beasley Road Cartersville, GA 30120, or call (770) 387-9300, or visit http://www.badtothebone.com/index.cfm.

TOMORROW: THE ADVENTURE

 

 

Check back each day this week for more about REDFISH WITH A BOW...

Day 1 - Bow Fishing and Deer Hunting -- The Similarities
Day 2 - My First Nighttime Bow Fishing Experience
Day 3 - Equipment for Bow Fishing
Day 4 - The Adventure
Day 5 - Are Bow Fishermen Slaughtering Fish?


John's Journal