bowfishing

alt=Night bowfishing|thumb|367x367px|Modern sport bowfishing often occurs at night, shown here on a specialized boat: raised bow (watercraft)|bow platform with powerful [[floodlights to expose and attract fish during the placid condition of night, often with several bowfishers covering different sectors.]] Bowfishing is a fishing technique that uses specialized archery equipment to impale and retrieve fish. A bowfisher will use a bow or crossbow to shoot fish through the water surface with a barbed arrow tethered to a line, and then manually retrieve the line and arrow back, in modern times usually with a reel mounted on the bow. Unlike other popular forms of fishing where baiting and exploiting the fish's instinctual behaviors are important (e.g. angling, netting, trapping, and hand fishing such as noodling), bowfishing is similar to spearfishing and relies purely on the fisherman's own visual perception and marksmanship, and usually do not involve using other tools such as hand net.

Historically, bowfishing was practiced for subsistence, but in the 21st century it has increasingly become an outdoor sport, practiced across the United States, that is prone to unregulated waste and disposal of native species. Bowfishing has also grown in popularity due to social media influencers and YouTube outdoorsman such as the Ozark Outlaws. Sport bowfishing is unregulated and unmanaged as of 2026, but the practice has increasingly gained attention and study across disciplines over the past decade. Due to the lethality of the bow or crossbow, catch and release is not possible with bowfishing.