BowCast Blog

Aneal Roney is co-host of BowCast - a weekly podcast dedicated to the "New School" archery hunter. Aneal grew up splitting his hunting time between Pennsylvania and New York. Aneal has lived in Denver, CO for the last 10 years, and has enjoyed chasing all the major big game species in the Rocky Mountains. This blog is dedicated to everything related to BowCast, hardcore archery hunting, tips, tricks, and follies from the field. As always - Shoot Straight!

Dec 04

2009

BF #4 - Putting it All Together - Bowfishing Tournaments

Posted by Aneal Roney in Untagged

Once we got our "feet wet" Matt, myself and John North got hooked up with the Colorado Bowfishing Association and entered several of their tournaments. If you are looking to get into bowfishing, I highly encourage you all to look up your local bowfishing chapter, and go out to one of their tournaments. They are a ton of fun, and the guys and gals who compete in them are usually extremely helpful by sharing their knowledge about equipment and tactics......when they are not competing of course!

How Bowfishing Tournaments Typically Work

We entered a few tournaments over the summer, and the format was usually pretty similar. Pretty early in the morning, there would be a long line at the boat ramp to get into the water. At the designated start time, a horn would blow and you are off. When teaming up, the rules we had to follow dictated only one team mate could be fishing while another was steering the boat. You could switch off at anytime, but only one person could be fishing at a time.

You had to be out of the water and at the weigh station with your tracsh can(or for some guys trash can after trash can after trash can) of fish to be weighed. There were usually two categories of fisherman - shore fisherman and boat fisherman. And usually there was a prize for heaviest overall fish, and then heaviest overall catch for the day. I gotta hand it to those COBF guys and gals, because they get hell of a lot of stinky carp weighed in a pretty quick period of time.

Many sponsors like Muzzy and AMS giveaway a ton of equipment at these events. From whole setups, to fishpoints, arrows, t-shirts, hats, string, reels, bows - you name it. And, most tournaments have a purse that comes from the registration fees (Usually like $20 a person). So often times, the big winners are taking home several hundreds of dollars! Not bad for a day of slinging arrows!

I am sure there are many different types and styles of tournaments out there. But on a beautiful summer day when no big game can legally be taken, it's great to get out there on the water, feed your competitive spirit, and just have some fun slinging arrows. If you have questions about Bowfishing tournaments, or experiences to share around bowfishing tournaments, leave a comment to this blog entry. In the next blog entry in this series, I'll start getting into some of the equipment we used and tested out.