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Urban Fly Fishing Adventure (DAMN bowfishermen)

July 01, 2009 By: Ward Category: Carp, Fly Fishing, OK River

Had an “interesting” experience Tuesday on the river…

Found a real nice shallow pool stacked with nice carp. I tied on a red sjw, took my time and snuck into position… Hooked into one on the first cast and horsed it out of the pool in a hurry to avoid completely spooking every other fish in the pool.

Not a monster, but always rewarding.

Not a monster, but always rewarding.

I was thinking about the fish on the first cast curse while I was fighting/landing/releasing the fish and wasn’t too surprised to look up and see my stacked pool getting a little extra pressure…

At least this guy just scoped it out and kept on moving...

At least this guy just scoped it out and kept on moving...

Thankfully, the fish started tailing again after a few minutes of waiting. I made probably 10 casts to a big one parked next to a tangle of rebar. No dice. Changed flies… a couple more casts. Nada, but hey… at least he was still there. I stopped for a moment to remove a bit of green/brown goo from the hook and thought about changing it up again when I heard a “ZZZZZPPPPHH“ and saw a splash… followed shortly by an enormous wake steaming off to the main part of the river. Grrreat.

Some jackass bowfisherman had set up shop a good 30 ft off the bank and 20ft up a concrete embankment. I guess he thought it would be a good idea to shoot at the fish I was obviously trying to catch for the past few minutes????

punks

Waited until I figured they were just out of range... ha

Fly fishing the Oklahoma River is certainly never boring.

10 Comments to “Urban Fly Fishing Adventure (DAMN bowfishermen)”


  1. Dangit Ward! Every time you invite me and I can’t go you end up running into some excitement. I called you on my way home from work to see if you were getting rained on, but by the time I was on the turnpike it was sunny and clear. Did the bowfisherman end up catching the fish, or did he miss?

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  2. I’ve encountered those clowns that would line up right alongside of me shooting at fish I was angling for. Now that is just plain rude.

    Those assholios want respect, but with they way they conduct themselves on the water they’ll never get it from me….

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  3. Rediculous, they need to go sit up in a tree stand somewhere and shoot something with legs…………..

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  4. hah Josh… You not coming is a good luck charm or something. But really, you’ll have to get out there with me sometime.

    He missed it… shot into the pool a total of 5-6 times (even though everything was obviously spooked from the first shot). Unreal.

    I’m sure they would have been furious if someone would have shot at a fish they were aiming for, but since I was holding a 9ft toothpick and they had sharp pointed projectiles… I guess they figured it be ok.

    cowards.

    It’s a shame to hear it’s not an uncommon occurrence. I was hoping it was just a bad sample…

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  5. I won’t get down on the bow fishermen as a general group – they’re shooting rough fish, and most of them that I know use the fish for something.

    But anybody, whether armed with a bow, a sparkly bass boat and baitcasters, Zebco 33 combos from Wal Mart … or fly rods … who snakes someone else’s water is a turd burglar for sure.

    Some folks just weren’t raised right.

    In other news, that first shot of the feeding carp is awesome – crazy perspective, took me a while to figure out what I was looking at.

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  6. Thats brutal bro! I’ve never seen anyone bow fish here in Canada…

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  7. Wow
    I’m amazed at the fact you can walk around with a bow in a city river.. If we did that in the LA River we’d be shot!

    another reason not to bow/spear…

    I don’t know why they don’t ban bow fishing.. it just plain out sux.

    De’Angelo
    UrbanFlyy

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  8. I wish they’d use them for something after they shoot ‘em around here Teeg. Seems they like to toss the fish on the bank to die or even “catch” and release. Always sad to a nice double digit carp struggling on the surface in the shallows after having an arrow yanked out.

    Bowfishing on the LA river… that’d really be a sight to see UrbanFlyy

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  9. Don’t see that much around here thankfully, couldn’t deal with idiots like that on the water~

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  10. Bow fishing is not permitted on the oklahoma river, I just looked at the web site for it so next time some clown pulls that crap give the five-o a call. Oh if you guys can make a trip to South Korea let me know I have got some amazing bass fishing here and some carp as well

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