Cuda Dreams, Mullet Reality - East Coast Bowfishing

The plan was easy enough – arrow a barracuda. Maybe not the smartest plan in the world but a challenge that no one I know has attempted. The idea was to visit a buoy south of Ft. Pierce Inlet where local fisherman stop to sabiki sardines and threadfins for the more serious business of offshore fishing. It is also here where the barracuda lounge around, eating at leisure on the hapless bait and the foraging bonito, jacks and assortment of other piscine predators there to fill their stomachs, as well. It’s 25-30 feet deep here, but if there’s not a lot of boat traffic, the cuda will tread near the surface, tail fins often poking out of the water. Over the years we’ve seen real leviathans, and I wanted to stick one badly.

But apparently Tuesday, August 2nd was a holiday I was unaware of as there was a merry band of boaters on the water. 6 or 7 boats peddled around the buoy trying to fill their livewells. Another 3 or 4 boats were on a plane in that direction. This did not bode well for the prospects of lazy barracuda and easy targets.

We could have maneuvered our way into the mix, but I was downright hostile to the idea. One, I don’t like people stuck all up in my beeswax. There’s every reason to believe I was the first ever who’d visited the buoy with a bow and arrow. Fishermen are a curious bunch, and I didn’t care to repeatedly explain myself. The activity is perfectly legal, but you never know when an ignorant angler may call the law and have to deal with that hassle.

Next, barracuda have this terrible habit of leaping out of the water when hooked by standard fishing tackle. There may be Minnesota-Americans reading this who don’t have a clear concept of what a barracuda is – once it leaves the water, it is a wayward rocket with teeth that clips serious holes into whatever it hits. Occasionally you’ll read stories of one jumping randomly in a boat and chewing up its crew, but more often than not, it’s a hooked fish darting into the cockpit that tears people up. So arrowing one amidst a bunch of boats had the potential for a sad, litigious ending.

Dad and I tossed out a couple spoons and trolled the area for mackerel, without luck, until the boats cleared away. Immediately I could tell the fish were spooked. They were down deep in the crystal water and showed no signs of rising. Oh, we saw plenty – schools in fact, some fish that’d probably hit the 30 pound mark. I did tag one in the side with an arrow - I was more surprised by it than he was - but at the depth he was cruising, the arrow harmlessly bounced off and he sped away.

So we pulled out the SWAT tactics. Dad would cast a surface plug and retrieved it as fast as he could. Cuda love chasing fast-moving lures. And they did, but still stayed deep. The next trick was to rig up the sabikis and try to lure the barracuda alongside the boat with fresh bait. For those of you who don’t know, a sabiki rigs is a gangline of five to six small gold hooks with little white “wings” that you attach a weight to and jig through schools of bait. The baitfish attack the miniscule lures, and it’s a pretty effective manner of filling a livewell with frisky baits. We had one sabiki rig. On the first cast, I hooked into four or five scaled sardines.

Annnnddddd, the line broke sending the rig and baitfish into the Locker.

I was flabbergasted as the clown music was now blaring loudly. Foolishly I expected easy and planned accordingly. This cuda thing just wasn’t going to work out today and the August heat was cranking up. Dad mentioned a grassflat in the Indian River he had fished the previous day filled with mullet. Mullet are on the other end of the spectrum of dangerous game, but I am sure in the annals of African safaris, some lion hunter frustrated with his ill-fated pursuit, soothed his irritations on a herd of impala or dik-dik. So, we left the blue of the Atlantic to head to emerald green of the Intercoastal.

Dad was right. There were plenty of mullet. Also stingrays.

I’m on the fence about stingrays. They are tailor-made for bowfishing. But, what to do with them? Their only real purpose on Earth is to feed sharks, but that still is not enough reason to shoot one. And these were big rays – 30-40 pound rays. I’ve caught enough on rod and reel to know that, unless I brained the fish, it would be a struggle to get it to the boat with what little line I had in the AMS. This is in extreme violation of the fisherman’s affliction with reeling in the Big Catch, but I could log no ethical reason to pop these slow-moving flat fish. Then again, I didn’t have much reason to shoot barracuda either. Silly how ethics works sometimes.

The other frustrating fish were the snook. It is highly illegal – as in, BBQ a bald eagle illegal – to spear snook. And it was out of season. And most of them we saw were over slot size. But linesider after linesider drifted by the boat as I perched near the center console awaiting passing schools of mullet. They’d given me the electric chair had I pegged the 20-pounder that hung off the transom, eying me, almost Triple Dog Daring me to shoot.

Mullet it would be. I shot three in about 200 shots. Two were intentionally shot; the smallest I flock-shot. So, I didn’t bag the biggest fish in the seas.

But unlike stingrays and cuda, mullet do nicely translate into this:

Adventures of the Novice Bowfisherman

As if life isn’t complicated and frustrating enough, I decided I wanted to take up bowfishing. I put a starter’s kit on my letter to Santa, and lo and behold, it was under the tree Christmas morning. He’ll be taking note of the naughty in 2011...at least the naughty words.


Before we get to my nincompoopery, let’s tell ya what I got. It is a PSE Kingfisher kit – a recurve with two arrows and a spool you wrap with 80lb braided line. The spool goes where the stabilizer normally would, and the rest is a roller of sorts. I will be replacing the spool with a reel when I’m done paying off my sizeable Most Wonderful Time of the Year debt.

Not being the engineering type, I was a touch dismayed that the kit came disassembled - even more so when I realized there were no instructions, in French, Korean or otherwise, included in the box. But what the heck, I am a pretty smart guy, I should be able to assemble this with little problem.

I screwed in the limbs so the bow would resemble your standard half-moon shaped archery tackle. But the string was too long. Hmm. My first thought, naturally, was someone else had erred severely. Where the hell does the tension necessary to fling an arrow past my feet come from when I have six inches of bowstring coiled around my hand?

A dim bulb brightened. Maybe they are on backwards. So, I took it all apart and re-screwed the limbs in so the rig was inverted. Guess that's why it's called a recurve. Ha! I looped the string on and the loops correctly locked into the notches at the ends. (My archery terminology sucks, BTW. Feel free to correct me.) Then I realized that the thick part of the string (See?) that held the nock (Better.) was upside down.

I started to back off the screw to correct this problem and thankfully realized that the strain would be too much. Either the limbs would crack and it’s be all over, or it’d come whipping apart leaving me with fewer teeth. After consultation with a friend, I learned I could use my own brute strength to flip the string around without damage to the bow or my face. I was ready to shoot.

And here’s where the real trouble started.

I went up to Homosassa to my in-laws’ river house for New Years. Dreams of smoked mullet chased me up the road. Alas, the water was murky and the sky overcast. Nothing moved. (Basically just described my actual bow season this year.)

Just for the fun of it, I fired an arrow off the end of the dock. A manatee roiled a few yards away. That would have been embarrassing. I would have had to cut the line, wipe the bow of fingerprints, and toss the albatross into the nearest channel for the Navy Seals to find for their prosecution. Lesson relearned – don’t shoot into what you can’t see.

Moving along, fully expecting angry e-mails for confessing that, I shot at leaves in shallower water where I could see clearly. I learned some fun things. One, make sure the fishing line is clear of any snags on the bow. One arrow flew playfully back into my Thank God I Was Wearing Jeans At The Time left leg. The arrow popped off another time, and I had to roll up aforementioned jeans to wade into the frigid water to recover my dart. Finally, if the breeze caught the fishing line correctly, the braid would come unwinding off the spool, hence my desire for a reel.

I truly feel, though, wisdom comes with courting advice from those in the know. We repaired to a party up the road where I knew the boys there had been bowfishing for some time. As expected, they were whacking fish like starving Aborigines.



They imparted that the trickiest part of this – and here I thought assembly and preventing self-harm were the trickiest parts – was aiming below the target fish. More so the deeper the fish is underwater due to the refraction of the water. I'd learned this from shooting at the leaves, sometimes aiming as much as a foot below the objective.

They plucked away at a school of mullet. I'd left my bow at the house because I truly, truly hate being embarrassed in front of others. Plus, it was New Years Eve, and if I'd nearly impaled myself and an innocent sea cow while sober...

Anyway, New Years morning I staggered back down to our dock and found a young stingray lounging in the shadows.

Easy.

Three shots later, the ray finally tired of the ploinks of my wayward arrows and drifted into the manatee-infested dark water.

Sigghhhhhh.

This is part of an actual review of the PSE Kingfisher kit on Cabela's website from PGKIRK of New Holland, PA:

"This is a fun package...Whacked a monster fish with my 1st shot."

New Holland, PA, birthplace of liars.

But I enjoy the challenge. I have no familiarity with a recurve and aim to learn to aim one properly. Plus, it gives me another toy to fiddle with and customize.

As always, I invite tips and hints for such things. I’m looking forward to plunging my first fish. And with your gentle advice and guiding hand, it’s possible you may spare me embarrassment.

You may end up saving a me few pints of blood along the way, too.