When the first wave slopped over the side of the boat, I grew concerned. When the next wave made the 17-foot boat slide sideways, I decided this whole outdoor writing business is highly overrated and that I would henceforth stick to covering cooking tournaments.

The scene of our great discomfort was midnight on the storm-tossed waters of a large Indiana reservoir that was doing its best to imitate the southern Atlantic Ocean off Cape Horn. While the crew of T.J., Chad and I tried to ignore the sheets of water pouring over the gunwales, our intrepid captain and host John maintained a steady course across the lake. Provided we didn’t drown in the next few minutes, our group would soon be stalking the wily carp.

You are probably now asking yourself why I had risked drowning, loss of sleep and possible terminal mosquito bites for a shot at what most people consider as swimming vegetable garden fertilizer. While I ordinarily wouldn’t step across a sidewalk to save the life of a carp, the goal of this expedition was for John to introduce Yours Truly to the wild and wooly sport of bowfishing.

On non-flowing waters in Indiana, it is legal to shoot rough fish with a spear or bow and arrow. The sport is still relatively unknown but with all the opportunities presented by huge populations of unwanted carp, the popularity of bowfishing is poised to explode. A few years ago John had realized his love for the late-night sport and built himself a custom-outfitted boat just for shooting fish.

After surviving one of the worse 10 minutes I have ever had the misfortune of enduring on a Hoosier waterway, we motored into a large, shallow and weed-infested cove that was sheltered from the gale-force north wind. Shutting down the ultra-quiet four-stroke outboard, John picked up a long aluminum pole and began pushing our boat into the shallows.

Our host explained the tackle for the evening. Our weapons were a pair of recurve bows hand built by John in his home woodshop. Each bow was mounted with a trigger-controlled reel that contained what appeared to be sash cord that was attached to a heavy fiberglass arrow by means of a sliding harness. The end of the arrow held a large barbed fishing tip.

The primary safety rule was to make sure the cord was not tangled in something such as the reel handle or other part of the bow. Should you shoot while tangled, it is quite likely that the heavy arrow would fly back at lightening speed and make eyeball shish kabob.

We would be shooting with fingers only as John explained the carp did not wait around long enough for a mechanical release to be set up and fired. He said that the majority of our shooting opportunities would be snap shots that needed to be fired within a few seconds of seeing a fish. All shooting was instinctive, as the bows did not have mechanical sights mounted.

John explained that the biggest problem would be refraction caused by the surface of the water. The fish would be closer than it appeared, forcing the shooter to compensate for this optical illusion by aiming lower.

Thus prepared, T.J. and I donned shooting gloves then mounted the well-made aluminum shooting platform at the bow. Instantly, the silence was split by the steady growl of a large electrical generator mounted amidships. Simultaneously, four 120-volt halogen lights mounted on the front rails sprang to life. The glow was blinding and any other boaters still on the lake who hadn’t already drowned would have surely reported a close encounter of the third kind.

John poled us into shallow areas and up a tiny finger of water that eventually terminated into nothingness. Within a minute, T.J. had taken a shot at something I didn’t even see. Reeling furiously, he retrieved his arrow and said, “That’s how it’s done.”

“Well, not exactly,” he added sheepishly. “You’re supposed to hit the fish.”

As the night wore on, we saw a continual parade of carp, shad, game fish and millions of insects. Spiders were especially plentiful as we pushed through low-hanging tree branches; T.J. noted this with great gusto. Arrows flung left and right in countless missed shots.

The finally tally for the night was two fish stuck but not landed by the outdoor writer and two broad-shouldered carp speared within two minutes and two shots by John. The crew now suitable humiliated, we all retired back to the boat ramp as John shook his head in disgust.

“I don’t understand it. This is worse night we’ve ever had; we usually shoot 25 or 30 fish. I apologize,” he said.

“Aw, don’t worry about it. This has happened before,” I replied.

He apparently doesn’t read my column very much.

Eagle Creek Reservoir

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