For those of you that bowfish for big carp, my question is, what is the peak draw wt. of your bow? What do you consider the minimum appropriate draw wt? Note that, I'm sure you can get a pass-through on a carp with a very low-poundage bow - but in consideration that your typical fish arrow is solid fiberglass and probably weighs well over 1,000 grains, simply from a velocity/trajectory standpoint, how heavy of a bow did you eventually end up with?

I use 50# and up

Trajectory seems like a complete non-issue, doesn’t it??

Probably the best advice is to not overthink it and just use what you’ve got.

That said….

It’s funny…. I certainly think of fish as being fast through the water, but I have trouble wrapping my head around their speeds expressed as feet per second…

But 120 fps is about 82 mph, and the fastest fish in the world tops out at 68 mph. Which is mind-blowing - that’s faster than a Cheetah, so probably only hitting those speeds rocketing across the surface…..

Of course, the top speed for a fish (through the water, at least) is a function of length. And the fish we go after with our bows aren’t all that big, in the grand scheme of things…

Anyway, it just doesn’t seem like arrow velocity would be a big issue; if it were, it seems it’d be about impossible to catch a fish with a hand-driven spear, and that works so well it’s usually illegal.

My recurve is 45# and it works just fine as you can see.

I’ve used a 60lb recurve since the 80s. Still use it

i use 50...usually end up snap shooting from a boat because it happens so fast so i doubt im hitting 50 pounds. works just fine. carp are soft fleshed fish doesnt take much

I use a 50lb bow and even at that poundage I find it hard to find a solid fiberglass arrow that isn't too stiff. It's really important for your arrow to be flying straight so that when it hits the water it doesn't veer off either left or right. I've tried several times to get a low poundage bow to get fishing arrows to fly great with so I could take people that aren't able to draw 50lbs.

I use 60lbs when I bow fish.

I know some fellers who have used solid fiberglass bows of 35 or 40 pounds and take some nice carp with them. You use what you can handle, just like you should with every other form of hunting.

Corax, while fish might swim at a max speed that is far slower than even an heavy fish arrow, they still have fast twitch muscles and reaction times, just like a deer. Deer don’t run at the same speed, their reflexes allow them duck an arrow. Fish can most definitely beat an arrow if they are wary, alerts by movement or the arrow makes a large splash.

As far bows go, I have never found traditional bows that surpass efficiency at which compound or lever bows can fling an arrow. I shoot a Gnat, a purely lever bow, no cams. It slings those arrow like no wood bow I have ever tried. I am very happy with its performance at 40#.

Whatever you can pull while aiming down at the fish. Them fish arras is heavy. haha

I shoot a lot of carp

It really depends on whether you are shooting surface fish or deeper 5’ plus fish.

A 35# bow will work for the surface fish but the deeper fish need more bow. Heck, even the safety slides hurt you on deep fish- I never use them- no need.

I’ve always used 50# for bowfishing. No telling how many fish I’ve killed with that bow and my AMS reel.

I used a 50/55 Bear Black Panther this past weekend and got a gar and a catfish. If you're going after the larger grass carp and gar I'd say 50lbs minimum. The gar was right beside the hull. The catfish was about 10 yards out. I think the type bowfishing head used is more of a concern than how heavy the draw weight of the bow.

Used my regular bow I had at the time. First it was a Bear Kodiak Hunter that was 48#, I bought a Kodiak at 60# when I planned my bear hunt. Back then that was my "whole arsenal", now I would have a lot more choices but haven't bow fished for many years.

When I shot 75# I would stick the odd arrow in the bottom. Nearly impossible to get out. I switched to 50#. 45-50 is plenty for most fresh water fish.

I have no problem floating ideas for feedback ;)

But it’d be interesting to get high-speed film and get a good read on how often the fish zip out of the way and how often we just misread the refraction in the water and Whiff…. I don’t know what the answer might be, but I know it’s happens faster than I can see & process… And as I often say… it doesn’t matter how many times you’ve seen it if you don’t actually know what you’re looking at…

So do you guys hold for where you want to hit, or do you lead ‘em a bit in anticipation of an emergency dive, or what’s your preference?

55# Pearson 304.

The line attached to the nock end of the arrow will prevent fishtailing. You don't have to worry about spine. The heavy arrow penetrates water better.

Thanks for the feedback guys. I think I'll stick with my 47 lb DH Hunter (about 53 lb at my draw length). Man that heavy fish arrow goes slow - I guess I'll just have to adapt...

Awesome pic, BlackSpot! Not too deep, I suppose, which suits me fine!

Tradmt - So on stationary fish, if you don’t need to lead ‘em, then they probably aren’t accelerating out of harm’s way….

Doing the math again, at 120 fps, that’s 14.4” of arrow travel in 1/100th of a second, so even with lightning-fast reflexes and super fast-twitch muscle fibers, there’s not a lot of lock time.

I was using 48# and a deeper fish I got a scale but didn’t penetrate. Now use my 57# bow

Not every fish has the same reaction time. Gar are lighting quick.

And it is not like they accelerate forward. I have seen gar jump straight out of the water, their body parallel with the water surface, a diving turn is also quite common. You hit scales at an oblique angle while the fish is moving and it is likely going to result in a deflection.

“ And it is not like they accelerate forward. “

So you’re saying that they’re just straight-up levitating??

Fish have propulsion in the back and diving planes in the front; those do nothing if they aren’t moving through the water… I don’t know if it takes them a full body length or something more (or less) than that to get pointed straight up, but a fish can really only move through the water with the water flowing along the length of the fish.

So it’s not that they aren’t mighty quick, but they’re just not that fast (at all) compared to an arrow. Not even a slowish one.

Again, do the math; if I ran the formula correctly, to launch itself 1 meter into the air, a fish would only have to hit about 14 1/2 fps; with a 45° launch angle, I guess it would be twice that, but still under 30 fps. And you don’t often see fish over 3 feet in the air…

DISCLAIMERS:

This is not high-speed slo-mo footage.

I don’t know what bows were used or how fast the arrows were.

They didn’t show any misses in the portion I watched, so maybe some of the quicker ones got away?

But I couldn’t detect any reactions from these fish until they got hit. Not even on a couple which were swimming away from the camera, presumably in response to some perceived threat, which one would think would make them skittish.

But here you go…

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OMinBMGkBz4

55 Indian recurve here! Hard to shoot a ton but for me I do pretty well with it and a old tape on reel

Uh huh. A bunch of footage of one kind of fish, no misses, shot at night when fish are way less wary. Point unequivocally proved.

OK - you can add those concerns to the list of disclaimers. Feel free to locate footage which supports your POV.

My take is just that it seems likely that more fish are missed due to Operator Error (because judging the refraction is HARD) than because the fish were able to dodge a projectile moving (round terms) 5-10 times faster than are capable of moving.

Call me crazy. We did most of our bow-fishing using extremely low-performance equipment in very shallow water at very close range, so we did pretty well on the shots we could get.

Getting back on track with the OP here…

Just got a little catalog from 3R and I see a “featherweight” fishing arrow at a mere 650 grains, as opposed to 1400-1600 (and maybe more) for the solid glass shafts.

Might come in handy….

https://www.3riversarchery.com/rpm-feather-weight-bowfishing-arrow-shaft.html

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