This evening I took my nephew, Trent, on his first bowfishing excursion. My brother, Andy, accompanied.

Trent, a high school student at Woodway H.S. in Austin, with his first fish taken on archery equipment — a longnose gar

Trent got the compound bow he used tonight as a Christmas gift and has done well at target shooting since that time.

We’d looked at forecast after forecast since early April trying to get out on the water, but calm nights have been hard to come by.

No sooner did we get on the water this evening than the wind ramped up and stay up for most of our trip, thus greatly increasing the difficulty in spotting fish, making the water turbid, and preventing us from getting on key areas for this time of year.

We took a “lemons to lemonade” approach to things and persisted, however, and it paid off.

About an hour into our fishing efforts following some practice shooting at a submerged jug, we came upon a lone gar cruising parallel to the shore. I got as close as I felt we could without spooking the fish and gave Trent the go-ahead to shoot.

He released the fiberglass arrow and either hit or spooked the fish, resulting in it bolting out of the water and up onto the bank about a foot from the water’s edge. Trent quickly got reloaded as the gar squirmed back to the water. The gar continued swimming along the shore at a faster pace now and we caught back up with it. Trent shot again and this time hit the gar at its mid-point and managed to keep it on and boat it. Our first (and only!!) fish of the night and the first fish Trent had ever taken by bow was now in the livewell.

We pressed on for 2+ more hours hoping against hope that the winds would go slack, but that was not to be. Trent got a few more shots at other gar, drum, and buffalo, but we just didn’t connect on those opportunities.

Trent “paid his dues” tonight. When conditions are right sometime in the future, he’ll appreciate them that much more having toughed it out tonight in less than ideal circumstances.

Tonight I got to run one last bowfishing trip for a young lady, Jess D., of Round Rock, who has been out with me on 2 prior bowfishing trips as well as two previous conventional tackle trips focusing on white bass. Jess and her family are pulling up stakes and heading north to be closer to family. Jess is the current holder of all three “Junior Angler” category bowfishing records on Stillhouse Hollow Reservoir, including the records for longnose gar, smallmouth buffalo, and the common carp.

Jess with her largest fish of the night, a common carp taken in ~2.5 feet of water

Jess with her pending Stillhouse lake record longnose gar measuring 22 1/8 inches and weighing 1.75 pounds

We’d looked for an opportunity to conduct this trip since early April, but the winds this Spring were unusually high both day and night, thus prohibiting our efforts. Bowfishing at night is typically done with the aid of bright lights used to illuminate the shallows where rough fish come to feed under the cover of darkness. Any conditions outside of flat calm water greatly increase the difficulty of spotting fish.

As we got started this evening we did some practice shots at a submerged plastic jug. This was the first time Jess would use her compound bow for bowfishing (up until now she’d come equipped with a recurve) and so we wanted to work the kinks out before getting on fish.

The fishing this evening was just average as we lost some of our potential to winds at the beginning and ending of the 5 hour trip. We spotted longnose gar, drum, carp, and buffalo over the course of the evening, not to mention one very curious beaver! Jess took about 25 shots in all, hit 4 fish, and brought 3 in over the side including a carp, a gar, and a buffalo. The longnose gar she arrowed turned out to be a 1.75 pound fish measuring 22 1/8 inches, thus beating her former record for that species. I’ve begun the application process for her with Mr. Joedy Gray at Texas Parks and Wildlife Department to make that record official.

By 1:30am, the fish were hard to come by, the water was getting more choppy and I had but 2 1/2 hours of sleep to look forward to before heading out in pursuit of bait for a hybrid trip beginning at 6:45am, so, we called it a night then, snapped some final photos and parted ways.

TONIGHT’s CONDITIONS:

Start Time: 8:30p

End Time: 1:30a

Air Temp: 87F at trip’s start.

Water Surface Temp: ~83F

Wind: Winds were SE ~8-9 at trip’s start as nearby thunderstorms fell apart. Winds were slack from 10-12, then picked up again after midnight .

Skies: Dark with partly cloudy skies showing a waxing cresent moon.