May 15-16, 1999 - CT. Sponsored by

May 15, 1999

Through the Massachusetts Bowhunters Conference I met a fellow named Frank Leonardo who is the Vice President of the MBA. Mark Timney and I were shooting an upcoming video and met up with Frank and his Son in law Mike at Lake Quinsigamond in Worcester. The conditions were fabulous, calm lake, clear sunny skies and crystal clear water. We spotted quite a few carp and I shot one (Mike shot 4 and Frank shot 2) but it was probably a week too early for them to be rolling. Overall it was a nice day and we both thoroughly enjoyed our visit with Frank and Mike.

The water was not the clearest but that did not matter - the carp were everywhere!

May 16, 1999

Mark and I got up early and headed to the Connecticut River near Hartford. As we approached the backwaters of a cove I knew we hit it right. The carp were all over the place, rolling, land locking themselves, even bumping into our boat. The conditions were great, calm water blue clear skies but the water was very muddy which is typical for this cove.

This medium sized 8 pounder was the average. The largest went about 20 lbs and the smallest was 3.

We found a point where the grass jutted out from the shore into deeper water. This spot was hot as the carp would always seem to work their way around it to where we were waiting on the other side. While here, I shot a big 20 pounder which you can view in this video clip ( excellent quality - 1.4mb).

The action was red hot at 9:00 AM, so much so that I blew out my Zebco 808 and switched to a Retriever. Around this same time my Muzzy fish point came off my one piranha arrow (I did not glue it on good enough) and I switched to a regular fiberglass one. The older tips I had on the fiberglass arrow were not penetrating the fish and I lost four fish from lack of penetration. We decided to head back, get lunch, and get some hot melt to repair the Muzzy arrow.

Getting ready to shoot a big carp coming at the boat. The muddy water worked to our advantage - cutting down the fish' visibility as much as ours.

When we returned from lunch Mark and I headed for the North and furthermost side of the cove. This has typically been the hottest area but by the time we reached it the carp were cooling off. I did manage to shoot a couple fish here including this one on video (excellent quality 1.4mb) but overall things were pretty much over for the day.

Most of the shots we had in the afternoon were straight down from the boat as you can tell from this picture.

We stayed there until 6:00 PM and the carp had all but vanished but overall it was a great day. In all I guess I had about 80 shots, got 20 carp with the biggest being in the 20lb range. We'll be heading out for another bowfishing segment this weekend and hope to bring you some more footage from that hunt as well.

This is 1/3 of the days catch.

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