Author Topic: Where can I find decent Bow Fishing equipment? Recommendations?  (Read 939 times)

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Offline Minnesota1

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I am going to go with a recurve bow.  But I'm not sure on the rest.  Any opinions on what works best?  Biggest bang for the buck?  I'm not going to go and do it every day just as a casual sport.

Thanks,

Offline lakota

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Re: Where can I find decent Bow Fishing equipment? Recommendations?
« Reply #1 on: May 19, 2012, 03:44:35 PM »
I use a recurve and I have shot off the shelf and used a brush rest with no problems

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Hi NSA! Can you see how many fingers I am holding up?

Offline Minnesota1

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Re: Where can I find decent Bow Fishing equipment? Recommendations?
« Reply #2 on: May 20, 2012, 04:47:58 AM »
What recurve are you shooting?

Thanks for the response.

Offline dukkillr

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Re: Where can I find decent Bow Fishing equipment? Recommendations?
« Reply #3 on: May 20, 2012, 06:23:27 AM »
Two piece of equipment that make a bowfishing rig:
 
1) Get a full capture rest.  It doesn't matter what type, I've got the product made by whisker biscuit.  You will be drawing and shooting quickly and sometimes at funny angles.  The arrow will fall off if you don't have it enclosed.
2) Get an AMS reel.  There is no competition, and there are no other choices.  The old fishing reel style reels are that much worse.  The AMS reels are expensive, but they are that much better.
 
and an important but not critical piece:
 
3) Get arrows with safty slides.  It'll keep you from cutting your hands as the line flys out and more importantly, it keeps the risk of bounceback down.
 
I use a compound because I found with my recurve that my shoulders got tired quickly and then I couldn't generate enough FPS to punch through a big gar.  The recurve was also tougher on my fingers.
 
From a few weeks ago in a flood:

Offline lakota

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Re: Where can I find decent Bow Fishing equipment? Recommendations?
« Reply #4 on: May 20, 2012, 09:07:32 AM »
I am using an old Ben Pearson Stallion 45# recurve. I bought an AMS Trad mount adapter and use the AMS retriever reel. I 2nd the recommendation of arrows with AMS safety slides. Always make sure your safety slide is out in front of your rest. Arrow snap back is no joke. If you buy pre rigged arrows most all of them come with a safety slide installed. I tie a loop of string through the slide and then I tie a loop on the end of my reel line. When I go to attach the arrow to the reel I run the reel line through the loop on the slide and then I run the arrow through the loop on the reel line and pull tight. This way the arrow is easy to disconnect in case you need to pull the arrow through the fish instead of pulling it out of the fish.(Sorry about the long winded explaination its easier than it sounds) The AMS reel is a bit expensive especially when you compare it to an old fashioned hand reel but its easy to use and worth the money if you are going to bowfish a lot.
 
I have started to shoot recurves almost exclusively for all my archery and I just use the same cordovan finger tab for fishing that I use for land critters
 
3Rivers archery has everything you need and lots of informative short videos there on set up too.
 
Here is a crummy picture of my rig:

 
Hi NSA! Can you see how many fingers I am holding up?