What do you bow fisherman do...

[catman529]

...with all those carp?

Is it population control or do you have a use for them? If I bow fished carp I'd probably try and make fish emulsion fertilizer (in a very, very isolated place... last attempt had a smell that can't be described in words).

Do you try to utilize any of the meat despite all the bones?

Just curious. Not talking about asian carp, I mean common carp, buffalo, etc that actually belong here in our waters.

 

[bowriter]

99.9% of them end up belly up on the bank. That is how you judge how fertile a lake is. The more carp thrown on the bank, the more fertile the ground becomes therefore, the lake.

Surely you have seen pictures in old school books of the Indian putting dead fish on top their corn seeds. That was to fertilize the ground and make the corn grow.

Then they learned to buy their corn in jugs and it just all went to hail. After a while, the hail got knee deep and it was used to cool the liquid corn and after a few years, they mixed it with sasparilla they got from the good cowboys and opened a casino to have a place to sell the mixed drinks.

It's all in the history books. It all started by shooting carp. Shooting Carp was the first great leader of a tribe formerly known as The Fish Eating Bird Nation. They later became just the Crows.

It's all in the books. If you would study more and fish less, you would know this.

 

[rukiddin]

...with all those carp?

Not talking about asian carp, I mean common carp, buffalo, etc that actually belong here in our waters.

Common carp are INVASIVE!!!!!!! they do not belong here!

If somebody wants the buffalo, I will gladly give them to anyone. I've tried to eat the gar, but not for me, the more I chewed, the bigger it got. On the big buffalo, some people say the ribmeat is the best. I've tried to donate the fish to a raptor rehab center, but they said they did not need that many! Common carp are useless, and deserve no respect whatsoever..When bowfishing at night, you would not believe the carp you see in bluegill beds and bass beds.
I will shoot 1500+ fish in a typical spring/summer and I'd guess that 1200 of those will be common carp.

Bowfishermen who "quick release" their fish or dump them at the ramp give the sport a bad name. Either cut the air sac and sink'em or take them with you and dispose of there.

 

[sango]

Carp are tasty when an put on a smoker with apple wood.

 

[stik]

turtles gotta eat

if pressure cooked and canned, gar is hard to tell from canned salmon.

 

[spitndrum]

I have heard that they are actually good to eat, however they are too nasty for me to mess with to fix if someone had some fixed I garuntee you I would eat some. I always through em in the blue bucket of death (50 gal drum) for pics after the shoot then take em to the middle and toss em, they sink after being in that bucket and water all day, no worries with them being around house boats or stinking up the banks. I try to be curtious

 

[Football Hunter]

fertilizer

 

[catman529]

fertilizer

That would be the best use I could think of, if I had a good remote place to let them decompose. I'd want them composted first so I wouldn't have raccoons digging up fish out of the garden.

 

[bowriter]

I have eaten quite a bit of smoked carp and it was pretty good. I have also eaten it baked and it was fair. The ribs from a big buffalo (meat attached) battered and fried is pretty good as well.

 

[rbreedi1]

I'll bring some in for the garden

 

[catman529]

I just hate seeing it go to waste... turtles can eat them, but the turtles do fine without the extra fish so if you kill that much I would want to put it to some kind of use, like fertilizer or cut bait or smoked up or something. But that's just me.

 

[stik]

I just hate seeing it go to waste... turtles can eat them, but the turtles do fine without the extra fish so if you kill that much I would want to put it to some kind of use, like fertilizer or cut bait or smoked up or something. But that's just me.

i don't see it as waste. i see it as a valuable help for the resource by removing rough fish. sorta like shooting coyotes.

 

[Mossy Oak]

Varmint food. Every night when we get back, we dump all the fish out in the field in the same place. They are gone the next day.

 

[stik]

I'd like to have a pile of em to run thru the wood chipper and then spread on my garden.

:sick: