UEFOC Fish arrow build?

[jpcarlson]

#5272

Hey guys, I am trying to figure out how I am going to build a UEFOC arrow for carp/fish hunting. I still want to use my hunting recurve. I draw 30″ and am shooting 54#. With a normal heavy fiberglass carb arrow, this isn’t enough for any shot over up close. The carp are big ones, 10# and up. Their scales are the size of 50 cent pieces and tuff as nails. I got to thinking, (scary I know) that this is a perfect application for FOC!! I want to shoot through these bad boys with the weight I’m shooting on my hunting bow. Any ideas out there? I will use a muzzy type fish broadhead with the sharpened point, but I think I will try and get one with the barbs that fold flat to the shaft to allow for less resistance. I’m not sure what to use for the shaft, but I think I will try and use a carbon shaft for the strength with a weighted insert. Then maybe the heaviest steel adaptor I can get a hold of, and glue the fish point onto that with ferrel tight? I can put one of the slide/stops you screw onto the end and a slider with a ring to attach the line. I’m using a bear spool that I will bolt onto the front (My recurve is an old Bear take down with the magnesium riser. It has a threaded hole in the bottom front of the riser that might have been for a stabilizer of some sort) I think I can find a piece of all thread and a couple of nuts and secure this quite well. I usually just tape it onto the limbs with electrical tape. Help me out guys as I have been preaching the FOC doctrine to my wheelie friends and am looking to make some converts here!:)

All advice welcome

Jans

[Stephen Graf]

#39423

Fish arrows are very heavy. Therefore making an UEFOC fish arrow is probably impractical.

Bowfishing is a slimy business. I just buy the cheap fiberglass arrows setup with points and don’t worry about it.

Carp are so mushy, the problem is not limited penetration, but passthroughs that require a lot of effort to get the arrow back through the fish so the line doesn’t have to be cut.

In fact, there are some tutorials on the internet for making penetration limiting stops for the arrow to keep it from going all the way through.

I’ve shot many gar with the old cheap fiber glass arrow and had no troubles at all. Now that’s a tough fish.

[jpcarlson]

#40186

Steve,

Thanks for sharing your ideas and experience. I don’t know what kind of carp you have to shoot where you are, but the big boys we have out here in the Dakotas have given me troubles since boyhood with penetration. I have always used the heavy fiberglass shaft with a sharpened Muzzy fish head, but am going to try and make more of an FOC shaft for my 54# recurve. I think it will really help when shooting at fish deeper in the water or when taking shots over 10 yards. I’ll follow up here if I get the arrow built and tested. I might try a larger aluminum shaft with a piece of steel or cable as an insert for front weight.

Thanks again,

Jans

[James Harvey]

#40280

Jans,

Something I’ve played with to maximise weight in front is using lead wire to make a footing wrap, like you see with sinew. Obviously lead is incredibly soft so after gluing in place glue an aluminium footing over the wire wrap. Huzzah. You don’t want lead in your food though, so make sure it’s well sealed in the aluminium. Tungsten is an alternative material that’s not toxic and about 1.7 times as dense. But I don’t have any tungsten wire in my garage 😉

Another thing I considered was attempting an insert of a small piece of tungsten rod behind the regular insert in a carbon shaft. To give an idea of the effect, a 1/2 inch piece of 0.1875″ diameter tungsten rod weighs about 270 grains.

Just some wild ideas if you can’t use a heavy head for some reason 😀

Jim

[jpcarlson]

#40315

Yes yes, ahh ha ha, the mad scientist are coming out of the closet and proposing great ideas!:)I like it. I was thinking of building something along those lines, with the heavy tungsten insert. I’ll let ya know what I come up with.

Thanks

Jans

[Stephen Graf]

#40809

jpcarlson wrote: Steve,

Thanks for sharing your ideas and experience. I don’t know what kind of carp you have to shoot where you are, but the big boys we have out here in the Dakotas have given me troubles since boyhood with penetration…

Jans

Down here in the hot and humid south, they are mushy. Maybe your carp aren’t any harder… They are just frozen 😀

[Ed Ashby]

#41614

First off, high FOC fish arrows work very well, but you’re not going to get very high FOC using a solid fiberglass shaft; just too much weight to the rear. Using other shafting means that you will occasionally lose a shaft to breakage, but not as often as one might suspect. Since you do need pretty high total arrow weight I use relatively thick-walled carbon or aluminum shafts, which does cost me a bit of FOC, but I also add an Internal Footing (either a dowel, a section of another shaft that will fit inside or, better yet, a section of a solid carbon or nylon rod) to regain a bit of that FOC back. Then I use high total point weight; heavy point, brass or steel inserts and tapers and, sometimes, additional weights back of the insert. Building such fish arrows is a good way to use up old, miss-matched or leftover shafts I no longer need.

Secondly, I’ve never found a commercial ‘fish point’ that I liked. Years ago I switched to modifying a high Mechanical Advantage, single-blade, single-bevel broadhead by grinding notches on the trailing edge, to create a barbed BH. The rotation caused by the single-bevel during penetration helps assure that the point won’t come out easily. Works great, and you can sharpen the head for easier penetration. I drill a small hole at the broadheads rear, through one blade. I attach heavy wire trace to the broadhead itself (using a standard crimp collet) and then back along the shaft, attaching it again at the shaft’s rear, just forward of the nock, with tape (since drilling a hole through the hollow shaft creates a weak spot). I cover the tape to help protect it from the water; fingernail polish works well. And, yes, the tape still has to be replaced fairly regularly. I just carry several arrows along, so there are some to use while others have the nail-polish coating drying. The wire trace ends with a loop (another collet) to which I attach the line going to my bow reel and/or float. Unless one uses a screw-in BH adaptor the points are not detachable, so to remove from the fish the arrow is freed at the back loop and the entire arrow pushed through.

I’ve used mostly the 190 Grizzly to make my fish points but the stainless steel, 300 grain TuffHead should make a fantastic fish point. This type of fish point works very well on everything from carp to crocs. It also makes a superior, better penetrating fish point for use on standard, solid fiberglass fish arrows; better than the commercial fish points

If you’ll be using the fish arrows in salt water I’d recommend brass inserts/tapers and, definitely, a stainless steel broadhead. It’s amazing what a day of shooting in saltwater can do to a carbon steel Grizzly BH.

Ed

[jpcarlson]

#42462

Great ideas Doc! So glad to see your elbow/arm issue must be healing up and you are able to type and join us again!! I never thought of using one of my 300gr Tuffies as a fish head, but that sounds like a great idea! I will probably forgo drilling a whole through it though as I just can’t bring myself to do that to one of my “good” broad heads:) I might be able to rig some kind of spacer/collar right behind the steel insert that I can drill a small whole through for an attachment point up front, and still be able to screw the head in and out for removal. I can rig something up with one of my old carbon shafts that should be nice and strong. Can’t wait to try this out.

Jans

[William Warren]

#43766

I think the solid glass arrows are pretty effective even if they are not FOC. In my experience a closer shot is better even with a heavy shaft like fiberglass because you have the fact that the water is going to slow your shaft down no matter what arrow you shoot. So the distance you shoot and the depth your target is figures in on the effectiveness of your arrow once it reaches the target. The arrow also loses energy the farther the target is and the angle of penetration adds water it must penetrate. It just seems to me you get better penetration on the fish with closer shots. If your fish is finning the surface, angle of penetration is not such a big deal at a longer distance, then I could understand a need for a more accurate arrow. Maybe clear water does not allow you to get close. We rarely have clear water here.

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