Michele Eichler of Muzzy Products

No pressure, just pure fun. Shot, splash, fish, over and over again, as they spotted the fish and zipped arrows through them. Meanwhile I stood on the deck at the front of Harold’s airboat, posed at the ready with my bow and arrow set up, about as useful as some emblem mounted on the hood of a car.

By the second evening, I was doing a little better, well, there was nowhere to go but up, because just trying a shot was an improvement. When big solitary drops announced the slowest rain I’d even seen, the fish started zipping and jumping.

Harold’s big airboat was outfitted with spotlights, mounted like stage lights to shine out into the water. With the fish moving, my eyes started to pick out the parts that without the breakup of the waving weeds would connect to form the horizontal body of a fish.

Finally, I got one. And that was the second thing I liked about bow fishing.

It was so much fun to zip an arrow through a fish and reel it into the boat. Okay, so my fish was approximately the size of the big round pencils we all used in

kindergarden. I proudly held up the fish for Harold and Michele, explaining how the little ones are so much harder to hit.

Then Michele shot an alligator gar that made my fish look like bait. Her fish slipped under a swamp mat of vegetation that rolled like a giant shaken rug in the forward wake from the stopped air boat. Harold got another arrow into it, and Max Koch, the son of lodge owner Terry Koch, hacked away at the vegetation as the three of us hauled the heavy, prehistoric-looking fish out and into the boat.

We shared a great weekend in Louisiana, shooting alligator gar, redfish, spotted gar and buffalo carp. We stayed with Terry Koch, manager of Bayou Carrion Crow Refuge, near Jeanerette (985-855-9555).

Sharing a room, Michele and I had laughing jags that approached hysteria, since we did most of the bow fishing at night and were sleep deprived. Early one morning, as one of the airboats returned and rocked the lodge with its powerful engine, Michele called out from her bunk.

“Hey,” she drawled, sure of the power of her punch line. “Did you sneak over here and put a quarter in my bed?”

But it wasn’t sleep-deprivation that made bow fishing so much fun, it is so much fun. Miss one? No problem, just reel in your arrow and try again. Pick nameless muck and tangles of weeds from your arrow, and endure the teasing of your friends. They will surely miss sometime too, and you can turn the tables.

Harold is a classic example of how easy the bow fishing addiction takes hold. Convinced by friends, he gave bow fishing a try, and then went for 29 straight nights.

During the weekend, I learned how easy and inexpensive it is to get into bow fishing. I already had a Mathews Genesis bow, which I’d brought along. Michele shot the Mathews Sportsman model, which the company created with bow fishing in mind. Another great compound for bowfishing is the new FishHawk from AMS.

               Michele mounted a reel on the bow, swapped my flipper arm for a roller-style rest, attached the special arrow and I was good to go.

The total cost of my bow was under $200, but you could get into bow fishing for less if you have a light-poundage recurve bow gathering dust and in need of a second life.

I arrived back in Pennsylvania with just enough time before archery season to blab about my new vice. My hunting buddies are interested, to put it mildly. Bow fishing is something they can do with their families, day or night, with plenty of places to go.

It’s a long summer, with nothing to hunt. 3-D shoots are fun, but those targets just stand around. Fish, twiddling their fins in the weeds, are infinitely more interesting.

Looking for the perfect bowfishing gear:  AMS Bowfishing