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Welcome to The Bowfishing Podcast — the ultimate destination for bowfishing enthusiasts of all levels. This show dives deep into the fast-paced, adrenaline-fueled world of bowfishing.
Hosted by Industry Professional Chuck Belmore and joined by top bowfishers, gear makers, and conservationists. Tune in for real stories, expert tips, tournament recaps, and everything you need to hit the water with confidence.
00;00;00;00 - 00;00;18;00
Unknown
Go, Kevin. How you doing, buddy? Man? I'm doing great. Pretty cool to be down here after. I mean, I was at the very first one, so that was 12 years ago, I guess. I think that's the first time I met you, actually. And I gave him a lot of fish and chips. Pretty cool to see how you water bass fishing.
00;00;18;06 - 00;00;40;43
Unknown
Yeah, And I ever since and he's made millions since. And so he was telling me while burgers for lunch JP Jack, just Mike We all came by lunch I'm dying to eat, my man. Yeah. JP did this. Let me put it back on there you go to him for. So first thing I want to say, when you was doing your podcast with Alan is it's pretty amazing.
00;00;40;56 - 00;00;59;44
Unknown
And I agree with 100% with everything that he said about luck and preparation and so I'm sitting here after it's over with and this man right here, you don't know this man. He is right here. You need to get up. Don't find him. You've been on the right here. This meal is the greatest bass fisherman that'll ever live.
00;00;59;49 - 00;01;22;34
Unknown
So with that being said, he walked straight up to Alan and told Alan the same thing Alan just said. That's how he preps. Probably one of the best tournament fishermen they'll ever be. Right. Translates over to what Alan's doing. I would argue that it is the best and not like I said, I'm not going to get up here and blow anybody's head up.
00;01;22;34 - 00;01;45;31
Unknown
I'm gonna call a spade a spade. But Mr. Van Dam is as good as doing some things that people have yet to accomplish. And, you know, like in our group of friends, I call you the Million Dollar Man, because when I was growing up and sharing a bowl of cereal on Saturday morning with Mr. Bill Dance and Roland Martin and Jeannie Houston, you were in the streets beaten, but at tournaments.
00;01;45;35 - 00;02;07;46
Unknown
Yeah. And you you were just rising at the low. I thought every time I'd get passed, Monster magazine caved, caved, caved. And I'm like, Holy crap, who's this guy hanging on TV on Saturday morning? But he's my kid. Chick's in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Next thing I know, you know, I'm going to Bass Pro Shops, and his name's on Lures, and next thing I know now he's on TV looking a shark.
00;02;07;46 - 00;02;27;28
Unknown
Manny Cal Yeah. I mean, there's a if you want this two inch area right here above the armpit, that's 1.5. That's all I can tell you. So, no. What he said, what he said is, is I don't believe in luck. And that is people say, what's the what is it? You know, why how do you go catch them?
00;02;27;33 - 00;02;46;14
Unknown
How do you know how it is that? I mean, it's it's work, it's preparation, equipment. It's you know, he said the same thing. And technology has been big in our sport and it's changing. I mean, just I look at just how the boats and bow Ibo, I've been bow fishing my whole life. I started doing it when I was a teenager.
00;02;46;19 - 00;03;06;08
Unknown
And what you know, what John Paul has done to boat fishing, to put it on, you know, because his passion for it and then now they're building the boats and, you know, the boats and just how, you know, technology's improved. It's same in fishing, you know, forward facing sonar now for, you know, boat fishing for for feet. Yeah.
00;03;06;08 - 00;03;32;46
Unknown
I mean, heck, yeah. Why wouldn't you use every advantage you can that's legal, you know, and and it's it's, you know, it's a lot of fun. But I mean, to me, the the big thing is, you know, fishing in general, you know, whether you like to you want to fly fish for trout. If you want to be a bass fisherman or cat fisherman, if you like to both fish, you know, there's there's obviously we are lucky to live in a country where we have all of these opportunities.
00;03;32;46 - 00;03;55;20
Unknown
But the biggest thing that that I see, I mean, that is a threat to our fisheries as a whole. I mean, and they've said it about zebra mussels. They said that about goby. They said it a lot, but invasive. But the these Asian carp, silver carp, that's the scariest thing for sport fishing in America today. And so that's a great point.
00;03;55;20 - 00;04;16;48
Unknown
And you have been around, I saw what it did to Kentucky late. Exactly. Right from the beginning to the to now. You're one of the few people that was there from ground Zero, you know? Yeah. Yeah. I've said the story many times. Myanmar tournament partner. We shot the 2007 World Championship up there in Kentucky. Like we had an airboat.
00;04;16;48 - 00;04;38;17
Unknown
We were scouting our tails off all week. We were doing, you know, 80, 90 miles a night covered shoreline. We never seen a silver carp the whole time. 2007. Now, fast forward to now in the last five years, it's an absolute epidemic and it decimated that fishery. it's the bottom. It's I mean, it's it's farming or biology one on one.
00;04;38;17 - 00;05;10;15
Unknown
You can only if you got a ten acre pasture, you can only have so many cows in it. And it's in lakes, it's the same. You can only have so much biomass in Kentucky. Lake I can tell you for four striking, we had a writers conference down there every year. The first week of October, year after year after year, and you'd go down there, then in the shed would start moving in the back to the creeks and you could go into a lot of the creeks down there by Parrish Landing, and it'd be wall to wall shad balls of shad all across the whole cove bass blown up on them crappie, you know, they're bigger,
00;05;10;24 - 00;05;30;03
Unknown
I mean everything's eaten on those shad. I saw that transition as the carp got in there to where there was no more shad at all because they're, you know, they're filter feeders and that's, you know, taken the, the foundation of the food chain out of the lake. And all it was is from floor to ceiling, wall to wall, side to side.
00;05;30;14 - 00;05;51;57
Unknown
You see them on your electronics is all silver, silvers, you know, and and the bass fish and just the lake, the population crash again. I mean, there's plenty of fish there. But they were just invasive, the wrong kind. So, you know, I mean, they opened up those processing plants. And obviously one of the first things that happened is people that love to go fish started flocking there.
00;05;51;57 - 00;06;13;20
Unknown
Then the outfitters and it popped up. But I mean, as many as you shoot, you're not even coming close yet on a place like that. But what I'm saying is, is anywhere it's beneficial. I mean, so many of these, especially older fisheries, get overpopulated with rough fish, period, whether it's it's it's gar or a regular common carp or whatever.
00;06;13;20 - 00;06;30;30
Unknown
And when when you get those chances, when it's really conducive, you know, when they're spawning in the spring, I mean you can actually even make it make a difference and make it make a dent in it, especially having an event like this. So, I mean, the amount of fish that are going to be in that parking lot tomorrow.
00;06;30;36 - 00;06;53;05
Unknown
Yeah, it's Yeah. Out of big scheme of things. Is it going to change that because it's a it's a well known bass like, like Okeechobee. I'm sure you fished in a bunch. yeah. Okay. Just to test it is running five six trips a night. They are. He's killing thousands of tilapia in a week. Yeah, and this has been going on for two years.
00;06;53;05 - 00;07;13;57
Unknown
He is not running out of fish to shoot, and that's a problem. I just I think on the surface, you don't really realize you talk to somebody like Kevin is competitive, like he sees how a body of water way better than any biologist ever could be realistically, because this is what man does and he's good at it and he's he's fish in a predatory fish that feeds on bait fish.
00;07;13;57 - 00;07;39;35
Unknown
And you see how it changes that whole dynamic. And these this is this is a wonderful thing. This is conservation is what it is. And the biologists know and get it. That's why they actually a lot of the states, you know, promote it. And it is or whether it's tilapia or, you know, Asian carp or whatever it is, I mean, the same thing you can only and they're looking to make sure that they have a good balance in the fishery.
00;07;39;40 - 00;08;02;41
Unknown
And it doesn't matter, you know, if it's in Michigan or Florida or California or, you know, Louisiana, every every body of water needs to have a good balance. And look, I'm not a hardcore where I'm just all about bass. And I want everything just for for bass. I want everybody to have a good time on the water and whether you can crappie, catfish, sunfish, bluegill, whatever.
00;08;02;41 - 00;08;26;40
Unknown
But but not a lot of people are going out fishing for for Asian carp. Yeah, well, I'm glad you came on this podcast because I don't really believe anybody would've seen this one coming. I mean, absolutely. Mr. Allen Legend And then but it really stuck my brain when he made the comment he made. And then you came right up the bass bass fishing there is and said that it made sense.
00;08;26;40 - 00;08;53;54
Unknown
So everybody's watching this podcast. I'd use that information and try to stick to your game plan. That's kind of what these guys are saying. The harder I work, the luckier I get. 100% wondered how that works. The Kalamazoo Key and Raptor voice telling me about a joke I was playing. I want to talk a little bit. I was going to tell Kevin because I didn't get to do the starter, but Chuck has got a new way of a laminate and silver carp, so I'm going to let Chuck kind of tell you what he'd been doing.
00;08;53;54 - 00;09;14;50
Unknown
I thought Kevin would like that too. Yeah, you brought that up last night and thank goodness JP fielded the ball for me on that one and got us shut off real quick. But no, in Mississippi it is legal to actually shoot silver carp with a shotgun on private water. And my good buddy here, he's walking around Jody Accost and that's I've seen the video.
00;09;14;50 - 00;09;38;23
Unknown
It's so much fun. Yes. And, you know, a lot of these guys, especially from the Midwest and Illinois and up that area, you know, they're like, man, I wish we could do that legally. And I wish they wouldn't allow it to happen. But they don't in a lot of places. Yeah, but but yeah, it is one of those things where if you ever get the right place where, like I said, it has to be a private body of water and then you can actually shoot them there with a shotgun when they jump.
00;09;38;25 - 00;09;58;17
Unknown
It's amazing. It is as much fun as you know. It reminds me of like the first time I met Kevin. we talked the first thing we talked about was helicopter. All got to go, Mike. And then how, how long it took to get the law passed so you actually could have an outfit or take a paying customer so it didn't have to be like a government person.
00;09;58;30 - 00;10;15;13
Unknown
And I was trying to that wasn't working until it got popular. And people's like, yeah, I'm going to take my buddies and we're going to go do that. Well, of course now the price is ten fold what it used to be. But we talked, me and Kevin talked about bringing his boots. My boys have. They've always wanted to do that.
00;10;15;13 - 00;10;44;19
Unknown
And he's like, I got the I got the deal and it's happening and you have made a difference. That's the thing is it's the only way. And if you I mean, all you guys that do this all the time, you know what the you see the problem whether I mean you do with hogs how detrimental they are to the habitat and if you don't have your own place that has hogs on it and you don't, you go plant a food plot and then you come back the next day and the whole thing is decimated, You, you know, and a lot of people don't realize what they do.
00;10;44;24 - 00;11;07;57
Unknown
They turn on the population. Animal just comes in and grazes it down to the dirt like a horse. Nothing ever. Every the roots, like the bulb, the seed is pooled and it's it's got to be replanted like it's a it's billions of dollars in damage across the United States. But it's the same thing with the fish you think about tomorrow, okay, we're going to way in no telling.
00;11;08;02 - 00;11;26;13
Unknown
And you're like, man, you know, that's a whole lot of fish. That ain't a drop in the bucket of what needs to be done, right? Great fertilizer. Yeah. Like Kevin said, it's about the biology, too. And if you take you take these invasive species and we get asked all the time, you said it earlier, what do you do with this fish?
00;11;26;18 - 00;11;44;18
Unknown
And that's what everybody wants to know. Like on this tournament. Yeah, we have a organic for fertilizer company come in that JP contracted. They were super excited to work with Bass Pro. They come down tomorrow, they're going to take all the fish, put them in a refrigerated truck, and they make liquid organic fertilizer. So they're going to a good cause.
00;11;44;23 - 00;12;06;56
Unknown
But then after the the after you answer the right question or the question with the right answer about what you do with them, they're like, wow, why are you trying to shoot all these fish? Why are you shooting these Asian carp? And why are you shoot these common carp, blah, blah, blah? And the problem is, is that I used to get offended by it and I automatically thought they were attacking my lifestyle or or the outdoor lifestyle of of hunting.
00;12;07;01 - 00;12;26;40
Unknown
And and I would immediately jump to the defensive. But what I found out over the years is that a lot of these people, they really just didn't understand it. They don't they don't understand what Kevin said is if you don't live it and see it, you don't understand. And these same people don't understand. You can't put ten cows on ten acres.
00;12;26;44 - 00;12;48;59
Unknown
They think you can. But these same people don't understand. You can't put £100,000 of carp in this cove and everything else live. Something's got to give. So when you explain to them, you take a £20 Common Core and she produces a million eggs, you take a £6 female bass that produces 20,000 eggs. Just that simple math will open their eyes to like, okay.
00;12;49;04 - 00;13;12;16
Unknown
So when they're producing way more eggs now too, you've got an accelerated growth rate of these common carp three times faster than your average largemouth bass. That means you're cormorants. That means your other aquatic predators. Everything else is going to have three times better chance of eating a bass because it's growing three times slower than that park. Okay, good.
00;13;12;16 - 00;13;34;39
Unknown
That's why that that's why that cove is flat full of carp. And it's not that full of bass. They've got a three time last chance survival rate. That's where we come into play. We're trying to hit that natural balance to make it great for everybody. And once we introduce these invasive species across the nation, whether it be through flooding like we had this year, we've had horrible flooding all the way across the Mississippi Delta.
00;13;34;50 - 00;13;48;34
Unknown
And I mean, there's going to be these big fish. You're going to see them tomorrow. There's going to be guys coming here that's been looking in these places all week and they're like, we never seen big hits here. We never seen silver here. But when we went in or at night, we smoked them and it was from this flooding.
00;13;48;48 - 00;14;11;08
Unknown
These fish are genetically programed to go as far as they can whenever. Well, now the rivers flood. They're going as far as they can. And then when they the rivers pull back, they're trapped there. And that's how they get that's how they get split across the nation. It's almost impossible to stop, you know, and like where I live in Michigan, you know, the goby, when it got into the Great Lakes, everybody thought it was going to be the worst thing ever.
00;14;11;08 - 00;14;38;53
Unknown
And what and it's an invasive species for sure. And they're an egg eater. So they eat small moth eggs. They you know, they eat everything that's there. But what I saw is just like what you saw. So I've got property that is about 60 miles from Lake Michigan on the map. As the river flows, it's probably 180 miles right at the very where the water comes out of the ground, at the spur, at the springs where it is.
00;14;38;53 - 00;14;57;07
Unknown
Salmon swim from Lake Michigan up there to spawn. Okay. I had beavers get in there a couple of years ago and they built a dam about 300 yards from the water. The water bubbles out of the ground and it's 180 miles to Lake Michigan. They flooded about ten acres of woods there. And when my I trap the beavers, you know how detrimental they can be.
00;14;57;07 - 00;15;19;09
Unknown
I trap the beavers and my sons and I, we rip the dam out and it drain that whole swamp in that beaver pond. In about an hour, there was thousands of gobs in all the mud puddles left there, thousands there. How did they get so they stay It's the same thing that that these these Asian carp are that times ten.
00;15;19;12 - 00;15;35;07
Unknown
Right? The way they the way they spread. And you know, they they put this weir up and, you know, they're trying to stop some of this from in Chicago, from the Asian carp getting into Lake Michigan and then the Great Lakes. And I don't know that they can stop it no matter what. They might be able to slow it down.
00;15;35;07 - 00;16;07;01
Unknown
But what I seen happened in Kentucky Lake, I don't want to see happen to any other place. And because of a concerted effort from a lot of different people, a lot of sources, Kentucky Lake is is coming back. But I don't know that it'll ever be the Kentucky lake like when I was winning Bassmaster events there you know the fishing that it is and I mean just the crappie, the crappie fishing that was there, how incredible it is and how many people came from all over the country to, you know, with families and stuff to, to experience that.
00;16;07;01 - 00;16;44;30
Unknown
And they don't, they don't come anymore because it's, it's not there and you know, Asian carp don't bite of Spinner Bay and they're not they're not a sport fish They're not they're not fun I guess. Or maybe it would figure out a way, but they are fun to shoot. So that's why this is this is not only is it a great event, but we're doing, you know, as a whole, the the bow fishing industry is doing every sport fishermen a favor by like you saw them out with the fry like around Kentucky LAKE Like when you go up there and you see the the fry on the rivers, they'll be three foot wide from the
00;16;44;30 - 00;17;02;03
Unknown
rocks out for miles. You mean the whole shoreline? Yeah, I've seen the movie, and when you see it, you're like, that's when you realize how big of a problem it really is. Look at all of these fish. Yeah, And those fry that you see. Then when I go there in October, in the fall, there, back there, that big already, that's up.
00;17;02;05 - 00;17;25;34
Unknown
So they're bigger than, they're bigger than a bass can eat. They're bigger than any other predator, you know. That's their cormorants aren't them any more. Nothing. I mean yeah. It's just it's tilapia are the same way. You mean they grow, they spawn multiple times and a question because a lot of people because that's a tropical top fish. The way I was introduced to the tilapia was in Texas where I live.
00;17;25;47 - 00;17;45;52
Unknown
They had a power plant like there and the water was warm. And I'm assuming the same reason they put them in Okeechobee is for to feed the bass. Well, somebody for food, for bass. But first somebody didn't do the calculation. Right, Right there out of control. But honestly, that the bow fishing at that particular lake which is like Fairfield.
00;17;45;57 - 00;18;19;48
Unknown
Yeah everybody in there you mentioned multiple times. Yeah. And they bout wiped them out of it luckily. But there's no big river tributaries that come into the lake. You know, it's the white. The one thing about tilapia is they can't tolerate cold and every now and then you'll get and I've seen this over my career we'll go and we'll have a super crazy cold snap in Florida, whether it's the St John's River or Okeechobee or the Hare Shane or any of them, but Okeechobee, when it happens for it to happen that far south, it's got to be a one in 2030 year event.
00;18;19;50 - 00;18;43;23
Unknown
Yeah, there'll be millions of them dead from the cold. Yeah, I was just blown up. You can't. That doesn't work on silvers or Asian carp. You know, they don't have a no no Mother Nature control at all. Yeah, well, I just thought it was cool to get something out of the caliber of Kevin to comment on the raw fish that that what this whole event is about.
00;18;43;37 - 00;19;13;07
Unknown
Right? It's just so much with the black codes and everything else. And Oscar. I mean, it's just a cornucopia down there. You just like you say that Florida, you feel like it's lost. Yeah, it is. Yeah. Well, I know from the very beginning because as I've known Johnny for a long time and he's the greatest conservationist of the modern day era, I mean, they call him the new Teddy Roosevelt for a reason 100, but but even in the very beginning, John Paul and he traveled around and fished a lot of these places.
00;19;13;07 - 00;19;31;25
Unknown
And he saw he saw in his mind is like, man, there's so many so many fisheries being overtaken by rough fish that, you know, we can do it, make a difference. And it's fun, like it's a blast. I've he took me and my boys down on a table rock where it's not easy to shoot, shoot carp or anything like that.
00;19;31;29 - 00;19;55;30
Unknown
And but when we go out at night there and you see all those gizzard shad, like there's millions of them there, and when there's no carp shoot, you shoot guys or chad. So but, you know, again, it's just about balance and that and he saw that we needed to try to do something to improve the sportfishing, you know, for the for the the sport fish species by removing some of these rough fish.
00;19;55;30 - 00;20;15;00
Unknown
And now it's turned into what it is today here. I mean, to have this event here at the Pyramid this week and it's second time here, but it's this is the heart of where one of the problems is with, you know, with the Mississippi there with all those Asian carp. So I'd love to see how many tenders they could fill up 001 night.
00;20;15;05 - 00;20;30;28
Unknown
I think we're going to see them in the morning. Yeah, you're going to see I think we're going to see a whole lot of fish come in in the morning. A lot of them are going to be grass carp, you know, and that's a whole nother ideological nightmare that I. I'm not a yeah, yeah. I'm not an advocate of, you know, NASCAR either.
00;20;30;28 - 00;20;57;08
Unknown
And it's crazy. We set up here and we get, you know, we all get excited about both fishing and we love it. And it's it's amazing. You know, it's our job, just like anything else in the outdoors, is to educate people. And hopefully through this podcast and through events like this, we can reach some of those people that don't understand it, just like like with the silvers and what we're going to see in the morning, from what I'm hearing from all these teams, is going to going to be a lot of grass court.
00;20;57;12 - 00;21;20;34
Unknown
And you know, the grass carp were stock and they were supposed to be sterile grass carp. And turns out that 97% of them, they're not stocked. Yeah. So what you know, I've seen that 3%. I've seen that everywhere I go. I mean, if you if you're if you know, love bass fishing, you know that having grass and, you know, I mean, hydro is not the enemy.
00;21;20;34 - 00;21;42;51
Unknown
GUILFOYLE Is not the enemy. I mean, you can support a lot more sport fish of all, you know, in an area with grass. It's just it's a good habitat, right? I mean, it's just like food plots or or managing your timber for whitetail or anything else. I mean, having having grass gives more living area, good quality habitat. You know, for turkeys, you got to have edge cover, you know, same type, same type of thing.
00;21;42;51 - 00;22;00;11
Unknown
So it's really, really important. You know, overall, we'll look at this. So one of the things, if you don't know or don't understand or you even question what we're talking about, you should follow these guys on their social media and follow some of these teams that are that are big and or people like this that do it for a living.
00;22;00;24 - 00;22;28;30
Unknown
And you'll see what what we're talking about as far as just how many, how overpopulated so many of these fisheries are with with these especially invasive species like the silver. So and it's fun to watch. 100% is. Yeah. Just one of the things that like we all I've heard me all day preach about it it is it's one of the things that we are seeing lure more people into the outdoors now than anything.
00;22;28;43 - 00;22;50;12
Unknown
And the simple reason is, well, there's two simple reasons. One, it's an absolute blast. It's it's it's functions. But the second and and the really most concrete reason is access. You know, you don't have to have 5000 acres trophy managed to go enjoy this you don't have to have a hunting lease to go enjoy this. You've got public water all over the United States.
00;22;50;27 - 00;23;06;53
Unknown
You can walk, wade swim, whatever you want to do and get out in this public water. Enjoy the sport of both fish and and that's why it is skyrocketing right now. And we got a lot of great rigs. I mean, look great tracker makes some great ones that you but you don't have to have any you can have a handheld light.
00;23;06;58 - 00;23;27;33
Unknown
Yes. You know, a bow and it's it's not even worth you saying that you've both fished off of asphalt before. I've got I both fish off my Z 21. The problem is the carpet and the slide. Yeah. So you don't come out really. They don't come. I don't I don't put them on the deck, you know, but big thing is pretty cool.
00;23;27;41 - 00;23;54;16
Unknown
I speak for all of us is appreciation for the Morris family. Of course, Johnny knows JP loves the boat Fish. JP as one of the best sharks I've ever fished with in my life. He's he's a natural. A stranger on table rock. The first time I came up here and but just the controversy part of it, I know that that's why I know that that's what really tripped Johnny Trigger as being that person because that's who the that's who he is.
00;23;54;28 - 00;24;13;29
Unknown
And I know that I appreciate them. They've been good to my family and myself and everybody that's sitting on this couch, but that's just who they are. So just know that you're having fun and you're doing conservation, but you're also doing something for a with a really, really good family and a good bunch of people. That's well said right there.
00;24;13;29 - 00;24;17;59
Unknown
I think that's a good way to wrap it up. Thank you all for tuning in.