Preach on Sgrem!

It's too effective, and not sporting. Bowfishermen kill hundreds of fish a night, thousands upon thousands of pounds of native species such as Gar, Buffalo, Bowfin, various species of Sucker, etc. Some of these species are very rare, and almost all are only found here in America. To give you an illustration, the world record bowfishing tournament took 278,871 pounds of fish out of the ecosystem.

Maybe not as rare as you think if their still allowed be harvested in a manner you don't agree with.

The Blue Sucker is one, populations are listed as State Threatened in Texas.

The blue sucker is indeed on the decline. This is due to damming up rivers, water management and use within their habitat, and pollution according to TPWD studies. I didn't see bowfishing listed in the study though....

I have access to a private lake where we have been doing bow fishing tournaments (5 to 10 boats) for over 30 years. We have brought out hundreds and some times over a thousand pounds of fish per night and we have not put a dent in the size or number of fish. We don't have alligator gar but do have other species. It is almost like shooting hogs, it seems like we shoot 10 and 20 show up to take their place. If I had not lost my contact of people to take them I would still be bow fishing.

So if you couldn't put a dent in the population on, what I'm assuming, is a small body of water, would it be your opinion that bowfishing on large bodies of water is probably not an effective means of population control?



Thank you for not wasting your kill.

So i get a ton of customers that couldnt catch a fish to save their life. I am way too effective at setting them up to absolutely rip heads and loading the boat with their limits. Day after day twice a day every day.....

Is it unethical when they hire guides that are too effective for complete unskilled people trying to get fish?

That would be my opinion. The total number of Crappie boats that take limits every day with 1 to 3 people on Lake O The Pines doesn't appear to hurt the population. If you figure 25 fish per person and with several hundred boats with 2 to 3 people (or more) December 1st thru the end of February that would be around 10,000 to 15,000 crappie if they all got a limit in one day. That could be up to 1,350,000 in 90 days as you have to keep ALL of you fish in those three months. That doesn't take into account the other 9 months of the year. I know they all don't get a limit every time they go out, but I have had bow fishing trips where we got several hundred pounds and others that we had less than 50 pounds. I don't think we have 10% the numbers of folks bow fishing as we do Crappie or Catfish.
Now on the Alligator Gar that is a whole different ball game and something I never went after. Just not something I was ever interested in.

There are limits on those species, preventing individuals from legally harvesting more than a certain number of fish. Generally speaking, rough fish have no limits. My above post mentioned the world record bowfishing tournament which killed 278,871 pounds of fish in two days.

If you want to calculate that out, that would be roughly 51 million pounds of fish in a year. Using data from a Carp fishery in England I found there to be about 339 pounds of carp per acre. Let's take a lake in our area such as Lake Fork, for example. 27,264 acres with 339lbs per acre would mean there's roughly 9,250,000lbs of carp present. So if bowfishermen were to harvest fish at the same pace as that tournament it would only take 66 days to completely eliminate the amazing Carp fishery we have at Lake Fork. These are fish that draw anglers from across the globe and can potentially be caught numerous times. There have even been many high profile Carp tournaments on that lake in particular. This is not a resource we're using wisely if we allow this to continue.

I think if your worry is that all the carp, buffs, and gar are going to be taken from the area lakes you can rest easy. There are plenty to go around for everybody, even the EVIL bowfishermen!!!!

We are good, but not that good...

The most hardcore tournament guys i know....for any kind of fishing.... wouldnt do it every day....

....come awn now. None of what you describe is any realistic threath of happening anywhere. Ever.

Using the one time all time world record as your basis eliminates any credibility to the discussion. Come awn now. Use a little logical reasoning.

Or like i said... outdoorsman need to stand together or we will lose it all separately. (Mostly due to illogical reasoning...and bad science.)

Considering this is a once a year tournament that has been going on for 35 years I don't think they have really done that much damage if they are still getting over 100,000 pounds of fish out of the same lake on a two day tournament. They state their goal is to rid the bay of tons of unwanted, destructive �trash� fish. Link below. Also don't see many 500 boat bow fishing tournaments in Texas. Also Saginaw Bay is 1,143 square miles where Lake Fork is 43 square miles. Not comparing apples to apples.
Great Lakes Bowfishing Championship

I agree, I see it no different than spotlighting for deer at night or using thermal scopes...

Which is very illegal.