Bowfin are characters. Their behavior is plenty distinguishable from other fish species but also different enough individual to individual to keep me guessing. That's a big part of what has made me infatuated with these fish. Each one presents me with a slightly different experience, and since I can generally see everything play out in extreme detail. It all happens at rod length, or at least close to. Close combat is so engaging. My heart rate increases, my excitement becomes palpable. But sometimes a fish doesn't give me any sign at all. Sometimes a bowfin seems like it won't even eat and then suddenly it does.
I was putting in some scouting time on a new bank, simply a little further from a launch than I've looked for bowfin in a system I fish a lot. It had a lot of key features, though the vegetated area was less constricted to a channel than the other areas within that system that have good numbers of bowfin so I wasn't sure how it would fish. Essentially, they were there in good number but less condensed on the low tide. There were bowfin spread out through a whole flat. It actually made it a bit more interesting than the tight concentrations that occur in other parts of the same system.
I picked off one small fish and blew a shot at another before I found one layed up on clean sand. I sort of spooked it though, at least I pushed it off station and it headed off. I pursued, slowly but trying to keep up. I was hoping it would settle down and stop moving, but just kept going. I paused to make a cast, just in case. Well, she ate. There wasn't any leadup, she didn't even falter, pause, slow down, or divert her course. She just sucked in the Mr. Bow-Regard from the side mid-swim. I've cast at a lot of travelling bowfin. In my experience it's a 50/50 chance of them eating, and there's no way to tell before I make the shot. Some of the ones I really haven't expected to convince ate like crazy, others that I thought were going to take spooked abruptly. It seems like there's no rhyme or reason.
There may actually be a way for me to know, though it currently doesn't feel like it. It would be so much easier to be able to rule out some cruising bowfin as viable targets and not waste the energy trying to present to them. There are definable ways to tell when other fish won't eat. A carp that's cruising at a fast steady pace hardly ever takes a fly. A trout sitting on the bottom with a curve to it's body is a fish primed to spook, and I never bother to cast at a fish sitting that way anymore. But with cruising bowfin I haven't yet found out the secret. That's part of the magic of sight fishing- you have to learn each fish's body language. Every species is a little different. It's so engaging.
I've got opening for sight fishing bowfin and carp over the next few weeks. While everything else in freshwater becomes tricky during the day, these fish remain targetable. The prime windows are morning and evening. Contact me to book. There are opportunities for record class fish, particularly carp.
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