675 miles, 15 hours on the road, 11 straight hours of bowfishing and no sleep.... It was a blast.
The trailer rolled along with no problems, the motor started on the first pull and ran perfect, didn't lose a single arrow, my shooting was at least 75% (a big suprise to both me and the fish), the generator purred without a hitch. We couldn't ask for better luck. We did lose one bulb to breakage on the trip down and fried a trolling motor wire.. minor stuff for sure.
We never ventured too far from the launch because we were worried about getting lost on that big lake. No map.. No GPS.. and every cove looks the same at night. Hence, we never got into the mud flats where the mass quantities of carp were hanging out.
We ended up with 37 fish, a great night for us.. but nowhere close to the first and second place boats that brought in 171 fish and 160 fish. I did get a bowfin, the only one taken that night. I was going to try and eat it... but it had the most horrendous smell.. [:'(] Got some nice gar and the local boys told me how to clean 'em. Got a pile of gar fillets... I'll let you know later how they taste.
My first ever bowfin..
Sunset at Rend... our boats are ready to go.
Some of the participants getting in a meal before heading off for the night.
Why bowfishing boats shouldn't have carpet....
Step 1 in making gar balls..
Once you get it figured out.. gar cleaning isn't so tough.. and there's a lot of meat on those toothy critters.
Night Fishing Tourny (pics even)
]
