Summer 2023
Article and photoa by Wm. Hovey Smith
I was spoiled after working in Alaska, where I could go down to the creek and catch as many salmon as my crew needed for supper. These big delicious pink salmon that grilled up fresh on alder wood made the perch and bass I grew up eating seem insignificant. If I were going to fish, I wanted big fish; and I now lived 90 miles from salt water. As I was later to learn there were suitably-sized fish five miles down the road. Not only were there what I now considered to be good fish in the Ogeechee River, they were found in the state’s other river systems to the point where they were considered pest. I could also hunt them with a bow, which to a 23-year-old was much more exciting than sitting on a bank with a cane pole.
By this time, I had already taken deer with an old Fred Bear Kodiak recurve. I went to a small outdoor shop in Augusta and got a bowfishing reel, reel seat, sight, arrow rest, and arrows. The arrows were solid white fiberglass and tipped with points with reversible barbs. These barbs allowed the fish to be held and the arrow recovered after flipping the barbs over. My first trial was on the Oconee River in Milledgeville. Not much water was being released from Lake Sinclair, and I walked out to a rock in tennis shoes and after several attempts took a smallish gar.
The Bondo Boat.
Subsequent trips to the river were made with increasingly sophisticated equipment. I added a Bondo Boat and Weldo Trailer to my gear, as I started gathering material for my book Practical Bowfishing. The reason I felt compelled to write the book was there was no other similar activity that I could do all year, take an unlimited amount of the carp and gar, bowfish anywhere in Georgia, try for a variety of fish and harvest some of the best eating fish that exist. More people needed to know about bowfishing, and I felt that I was the person to tell them all about it.
I bowfished the Savannah and Chattahoochee rivers where I added carp, suckers, and other non-game fish to my take, and also took trips to the coast for stingrays and small sharks. These activities prompted my coming up with recipes to cook the fish that I took. I was not interested in shooting a hundred fish at the time, but was interested in getting enough to put on my table.
Some were better than others, but with a little spice, a touch of salt, a dash of vinegar, butter and a bit of wine, these could be turned into something eatable, and sometimes delicious. Stingray wings, with a bit of spaghetti sauce turned out to be very good. My favorite turned out to be the strips of white meat extracted from the backs of gar. These backstraps could be grilled without falling apart, made into meat loafs or paddies, smoked, grilled or fried and turned out to be very mild tasting, quite unlike the smell of the fish. Those fishermen who were killing and throwing gar back, where throwing away a better fish than they were keeping.
There are a couple of problems with gar. The row and anything contaminated with it are deadly. Any meat that the arrow touches should be thrown away. The second problem was getting into the fish as the scales are tough and sharp. I designed a pole tool and had my “gar ripper” built by master blade smith Murray Carter to work on the larger fish.
The author with a bow-killed gar.
I widened my experiences by bowfishing in other states and attending bowfishing tournaments where some very elaborate, custom bowfishing boats participated in the all-night events. I put some lights on Bondo boat and rigged a canvas spray shield for the bow, and continued low-cost bowfishing with minimal equipment. This equipment now included compound bows and crossbows. Still, the most fun was going out by myself and maybe my Lab and taking a few fish as I wanted them. As I became more skilled, the fish I took got bigger. The gar increased in size from those that averaged about 2 feet long to long-nosed gar that approached 5 feet long.
Some of my favorite places became the shallow mud flats and cove heads on Lake Sinclair, Lake Hartwell, and Lake Oconee. I also duck hunted the upper end of Lake Oconee and came to know that area well.
It was also interesting to go down to the coast and take stingrays, and sheepshead, although I did have to be cautious to observe size and take limits, because there is no such thing as catch-and release bowfishing.
Hovey Smith is a resident of Sandersville, a member of the Georgia Outdoor Writers Association and he literally wrote the book on bowfishing. Contact him at hoveysmith029@gmail.com.