Hello I'm new to the forum and to bowfishing. I live not too far from rend lake and am starting to bowfish in it's spillway. Anyway am i allowed to shoot paddlefish (spoonbill) in illinois. I didn't think it was allowed but i read of some others doing it and i see them occasionally in certain spots. Any advise would be apprecitated
Thanks

Unfortunately NO, you can not take paddlefish by bow and arrow in the state of Illinois. Now in Kentucky, I know that as of this spring the law was changed so that you can now take I think two per day by bow. Oh and btw, the DNR used to be down at the Rend Lake spillway all the time looking for people to ticket that were taking spoonbill by bow.

The paddlefish and catfish you'll read about people taking during bowfishing are most definitely from out-of-state.

Carp, carpsuckers, gar, dogfish (grinnel or bowfin)and buffalo are the only legal fish in IL.

Welcome to the board!

Rend has some awesome bowfishing. I hear there are some bigheads below that spillway. Good luck to you!

Unfortunately, we cannot shoot them in MO either. I have been wanting to get one or two for a while and finally managed to shoot some a couple of weeks ago in KY and got some good video to boot! Look for that video clip soon here on HuntingNet.

Great pic Robin boy that dam inthe background looks familiar. I have a question did you by any chance see any bigheads during the day there while you were chasing spoonbills.

no, all our shooting was at night. That was after sunrise.