have any of you ever went out bowfishing with a hand held spotlight at night. i want to shoot at night and i don't have a light set up yet. so would a hand held spot light work and is it legal.


thanks


William

We've bowfished using spotlights off a battery. It's legal and it works just fine. Sometimes it seems like you can see more fish without the genny running. The generator is much more convenient tho'.

I also use a hawglite on my bow. It has a on/off pressure switch. Right now they're powered by a 9volt battery which works good if you don't try to use it as a flashlight. We'll be testing a different battery pack for them down at the World's shoot.(supposed to extend battery life to several hours of straight use)
The hawglite is awesome for the bighead carp.
http://www.razorbackoutfitters.com/index_files/page0012.htm

The club gets these for a special price. We're out of them right now, but we are ordering more.

I have had a lot of experience with spotlights this past month. I use them in my canoe. On a boat, I recommend a 1 million candle light to run off your 12 volt deep cycle battery. I use 2 -500,000 candle power spots so I can look at 2 different places at once. I mounted the lights on a 6' pole. It works really well having the light elevated so the light can penetrate the water better and the size of the spot on the water is larger. I have been out 3 times with this setup and have killed about 30 carp and 7 gar. you will need to go very slow with your trolling motor stopping often or you will pass the fish without getting a shot. Another advantage to having 2 lights is that you can spot the fish with the first light, come to full draw, and shoot him in the second light. I also use a 130,000 candle hat light from Western rivers. It helps if you see a fish real close to the boat where the spotlights can't hit them.

We use hand held spotlights exclusively until I can buy a genny and build a removable platform. The one we use are 750,00 or 1 million candlepower depending on water clarity. typically there are only 3 of us in the boat so we take turns having one guy run the light and foot controlled trolling motor and the others shooting.

I have used hand held spot lights for several years. But I use a 3 million power from walmart. It does not seem to run down my batteries and does a good job of penetrating cloudy water. In march we went down to ky shooting big heads. We had two shooters and one with the light, and just traded off. The battery held up all night. But when you are shooting big heads, you just turn the light on and off. So it is not continous running. We are headed down again this weekend and this time i have a full set of battery lights set up. They are my old battery lights that I used back with my other boat. So this time we can all shoot at the same time.