BowCountry.com @ Northeastern Bowfishing Championships

Carping '99 or Driving '99?

To be kind, our trip to shoot in the St. Lawrence Archers Northeastern Bowfishing Championships didn't start out well. To be fair, let me tell you about how we prepared.

Time to get the new rig on the road.

Weeks before the tournament we started preparing the equipment and rig. Our boat is a glass, flat bottom, 17 foot, bowfishing dream. We equipped it with decks, front and back, made out of lightweight aluminum. The front deck was designed to hold 2 shooters or up to 500 lbs while the back deck was smaller but just as sturdy. The two decks combined added less than 100 lbs to the boat overall. Being that they placed our eye level nearly 11 feet from the water, they stood to give us a definite advantage.

Other niceties on the rig included our 5000-watt gas generator which powered our 3000 watts of light for night shooting. A second dream setup! An 80 horse merc for getting to the spot quickly and a trolling motor powered by a 200 lb. forklift battery. That battery ran practically the whole weekend without using 10% of its juice, with no recharging!

So here we go with our dream setup. We headed up to the St. Lawrence area, which has become well known for huge carp over the past few years. About 30 miles into our 100-mile journey, things took a bad turn. Without any warning, of course, we blew out a tire on the boat trailer while driving 60 mph in heavy traffic. With some good driving and a LOT of luck we managed to keep the boat on the trailer and the trailer out of traffic.

Upon stopping, we found the news was worse than we thought. The additional rigging had pushed the weight limits on the tires a little too far. With one tire blown and a single spare, we discovered the other tire was hotter than hell and also ready to give. Then there was that sinking feeling of losing weeks of preparation and investment. After a couple hundred phone calls looking for "super tires" we gave up and began the long trip back at 10 mph. If that wasn't bad enough, we also stopped every 3 miles or so to check the tires for heat stress. It was a long, long drive back.

To try and save the evening we decided that "back" would be Fair Haven, NY. It was a little farther but had excellent access to Lake Ontario and also somewhere we could work on the trailer come morning. We arrived back nearly five hours later and spent only enough time to change clothes and launch the boat to start the tournament. Legal shooting began at 12:01 AM Saturday & we were on the water at 12:15 AM. Never Give Up!

She sure does float low!

We spent the next 6 hours shooting lots of carp. Since the bay had lake access the potential for large fish was good. However, our largest fish between 12 & 6 AM weighed only 29 pounds. Definitely not a trophy winner.

To make the trailer story short, we managed to acquire a set of tires by noon Saturday that were rated for 2000 pounds more than our whole setup. We were fairly confident that we would be ok to travel now. Thus, with 1 hour sleep in the past 24 hours we were back on the road, headed north. Big fish here we come.

We arrived at the launch in the evening and wasted no time getting on the water. We had reports that they were pulling the carp out fast and furious the day before. Well, they must have pulled them all out! We spent 6 hours hitting prime spots around the area. We were confident that our advantage lay in our night shooting. Carp are easier to see and get close to at night and we were well equipped for it.

Nice evening to be on the water

While we did see a few throughout the night, nothing of substantial size came our way. The fish were suspended 6 feet down and fairly inactive. The weights ranged from 15 to 25 lbs and would certainly not make the leader board. In fact, we saw more turtles and Needle-Nose Gar than we did sizable carp.

Back on the road!

We packed up the gear at 1 AM and headed up the road further north to other spots on the river we had scouted. After some drive time and some catnapping by the team we arrived at our 3^rd spot. It was 2:30 AM and we decided that catching some sleep would probably be more productive than shooting. We still had the early morning and mid morning and we would probably be more successful shooting with a couple hours of rest. This "mistake" is still being debated.

At 3:30 AM the lone boat we had seen on the water came ashore near where our team was sleeping. The boat caught our attention and prompted us to get moving. As it turns out it was Mark & John from Muzzy Products. It was amusing that we would pass like this in small unmarked cove in the complete darkness. They looked like we felt. The Muzzy team was on the tail end of a 2-week tournament trail starting in Michigan the previous week and ending in the St. Lawrence this Sunday.

After a couple of minutes of sleep deprivation induced chatter John told us that they too had been having trouble getting at the big fish. As we had seen, the fish were suspended deep. Up here in the river they were staying even deeper at about 10-12 feet. Muzzy team shooters were using recurves, most effective in shallow water. Deep-water penetration was difficult at best. We had felt more confident using our Oneida Eagle, Split Limb, compounds, some of which were set up around 80 lbs. of draw weight.

After a few minutes we parted ways with Muzzy and grabbed a couple more hours of sleep before the morning shoot. We felt we would have a great advantage shooting in the deep water and could still pull out a tournament board spot. However, luck still had one more card to deal us.

Staff Shooter David Macri Check out those special carping shorts!

Staff Shooter Jeff Sagehorn sneaks one out as Mike looks away.

The morning shoot started out fine, but quickly turned into a wind festival. We had followed the carp into 30-50 feet of water in the river. We found them suspended on the banks of drop offs near floating weed beds. Our depth finder showed us that they were hovering around 20 feet and were submarining back and forth up the ledges. Basically while trying to fight the wind and current, we were trying to get shots at fish 10 feet down through 8 inches surface chop. Needless to say, it wasn't optimal.

Once again, we managed to pull in fish but not anything of trophy caliber. Now I understand the attraction of tournaments that use fish count to determine winners instead of size. Our team pulled in quite a few fish. We lost no fish that we hit. The Oneida Bows and Muzzy quick release tips are a deadly combination.

Finally, at the weigh in, we were comforted to see that many of the top picks; Chris Sauers (1990 Winner), the Oneida Eagle Team, and the Muzzy Team, all came up short of the trophy board. Like us, they had pulled in a lot of smaller fish but were shunned by the big St. Lawrence monsters.

Mike McCombie & soon-to-be Staff Shooter Dustin Moore pose.

The top 5 winners show off prizes.

All in all, we had a great time (eventually). The people at the weigh-in were fantastic. We got to meet up with old friends and make many new ones. Shooters came around to admire the boat and rigging. They took pictures with the boat and with the BowCountry.com team. We got to spend a weekend shooting fish with family & friends in beautiful country. While we didn't take the spot from the leader, weighing in with 44.60 lbs., we did thoroughly enjoy ourselves. Isn't that really the point?

Don't forget to check out....