chiefks

Whats your guys and gals opinions on which bow fishing reel to use?? I see a lot of you are useing spin casts and having trouble with them.

After looseing quite a few fish arrows with boththe zebco 808 and spool that you manually wrap the line around, I bit the bullet and spent a little more money on a AMS. I have not lost an arrow since! Don't think you could get me to use anything else.

Johnny b

Glad some one likes the AMS. They are too slow and cumberson for me. And what a mess if you ever shoot a big fish. The spin cast work if you take care of them. But what ever floats your boat. I just gave my AMS away, got tired of moving it from one place on the shelf to another.

chiefks

Whats wrong with AMS and big fish?

bowman15

The retrieval-speed isn't there with an AMS. And there's no drag to help fight the fish, so you have to hand-line them in. The line ends up all over the deck (or over board and into your trolling-prop if you're not careful). The main reason people have problems with the spincasts are that they either forget to hit the release button and shoot while the pins are engaged, or (like me) the hit the handle on accident and engaged the pins and shoot. The same outcome, either way. Johnny B shoots bigheads most of the time, so he really uses the spincast's drag. Most of us just shoot smallish carp (less then ten pounds), so a Retriever would be fine for most of us. The Retriever is a great reel, no question about it. Everyone just has their own preferences. Use what works best for you.

cartman308

all the videos i've seen of aligator gar being shot were with AMS retrievers. Don't think that fish get much bigger than that [&:]

Johnny b

Cartman308,
Did'nt say it could'nt be done. Like Bowman15 said it just makes a mess with the line all over the place. Personnaly I like to feel a fish run the drag and the sensation of cranking it in. I guess I got hooked on that when I caught my first bass as a kid. There are probably more fish caught with retreivers. I just prefer the other's.

bowman15

No, they don't, except maybe sharks. But you don't fight aligator, or sharks,on a reel either. Those reels are Slotted Retrievers with a float fastened to the line. The slot allows for the line and float to leave the bow. Then you follow the float and shoot em again when they come up. Or you could tie the line from the arrow to a fishing line attached to a rod. Then you could fight them on a rod and reel.

jmarti1

I can't say for big fish. As for carp in the 5 to 10 pound range, you can't beat the AMS retriever. I've shot 10 to 30 an outing and reel everyone in with the reel. I would say that a huge fish would take some effort though. I'd use gloves and hand line them in. No matter what you do with bowfishing, it's gonna get messy!
Either Carp guts or line tangles, something is gonna get cleaned up afterwards. Part of the fun!

later,
jmarti1