Josh Bowmar, who was a track & field All-American at Heidelberg, recently broke the state record with a 43-pound Bigmouth Buffalo sucker he shot while archery fishing on Hoover Reservoir, north of Columbus.
Bowmar Fitness/Bowmar Bowhunting Enlarge
BLENDON TOWNSHIP, Ohio — Record fish don’t usually come about as the result of extensive scouting and planning, years spent in pursuit of that one freak-sized fish, and the execution of a sophisticated plan. The best in strategy guarantees nothing because there are myriad variables in the world of fishing, and often the fish just don’t cooperate.
Record fish are usually the product of just plain dumb luck. One angler is in the right place at the precise time, and the fishing gods sprinkle angel dust on him. Or the planets just find a perfect alignment, or the fisherman happens to be standing on the bank with his line in the water during a triple harmonic convergence, if there is such a thing. Or maybe you just get dealt a royal flush, while everyone else at the table is frowning and discarding.
But luck was only a minority partner when Josh Bowmar recently put an arrow in a behemoth Bigmouth Buffalo sucker that shattered the current state record. He set out to break the record, stayed with it, and fueled by determination and the competitive DNA of a lifelong top-tier athlete, the Westerville resident and northwest Ohio native recently got his fish.
The Bigmouth Buffalo is not a species many have heard much about, and it is a species far fewer anglers actively pursue, but Bowmar has been on a mission to break the state archery record for years. In late May, on the waters of Hoover Reservoir in central Ohio, the former collegiate track and field star and champion body builder put an arrow in that record Buffalo.
“Six years ago I saw one that was just a monster fish, had to be over a foot-and-a-half wide and well over 40 pounds, but I missed it,” Bowmar said. “Ever since then, I’ve been trying to time it just right and get another shot at what I was pretty sure would be a record fish.”
Bowmar, an accomplished archery hunter who has taken big game all across North America and in Africa, said the key to pursuing record-class fish is to time the hunt with the spawning period, which would have the biggest fish at a peak weight.
“In Hoover Reservoir, the Buffalo only spawn for a day or two and that’s the only time you can catch them in shallow water. The rest of the time they normally hang out in the deeper water,” he said. “I had always heard that there were some huge fish in there, but when I say trying to take a Buffalo with a bow is hard, I mean it is very hard. There have been years when I didn’t get one.”
Bowmar and his wife Sarah had been on the water at Hoover the day before and had seen a couple of big fish, but they could not get close enough for a shot. Then, on May 21, they returned to the same area. While Sarah piloted the boat and Josh readied the equipment, Moby Dick’s distant cousin surfaced.
“She said ‘Josh, look!’ and it was like there was an elephant splashing in the water up ahead,” Bowmar said. “I knew it had to be a Buffalo, and a big one.”
They killed the engine on the boat as they approached the area where that had seen the commotion and allowed their custom archery fishing craft to quietly glide closer. They were in five or six feet of water when Josh pulled hard on the bow.
“I saw a flash and said that’s got to be her, so I over-drew on purpose because the water was deeper. When the string took off I knew I hit it and I was confident it was a big fish,” he said. “That lake has some monsters, and this was the biggest one I had ever seen, so I was pretty pumped. I thought it was going to be 55 pounds.”
It turned out the huge Buffalo weighed 43 pounds when they got it to an official scale at A'mays'ing Meats, a butcher shop in Johnstown that is known for its deer processing skills. The Bowmars had first tried to use a scale at a nearby Kroger, but its measurement zone wasn’t big enough to accommodate the beast, which was recently certified as an official state record.
Bowmar’s fish was losing eggs and weight from the moment it left the water, so it likely weighed considerably more at the time he caught it, but the Buffalo was still plenty big enough to overtake the previous record, a 40.8 pound fish taken by archer Brent McGlone of Marysville in October, 2013 in the waters of Lake Erie.
“That was the moist depressing part — she probably lost close to four pounds of eggs during the time it took us to find a scale that could handle this size of fish,” Bowmar said. “It was a straight-up fiasco just getting it weighed, but it’s great that it still beat the record.”
The hook-and-line state record Bigmouth Buffalo, a 46.01-pound fish caught by Tim Veit of Galena in 1999, also came from Hoover Reservoir, a 3,272 acre impoundment that was constructed in the 1950s to supply water to the growing population of Columbus.
Bowmar, who is a native of Marengo in Morrow County, attended Heidelberg University in Tiffin where he was a track and field athlete and set the school record in the javelin. While at Heidelberg he was a two-time All-American in track who broke four university records, a two-time Academic All-American, and maintained a 4.0 GPA in exercise physiology.
He started his own business while still in college, and today owns Bowmar Fitness and Bowmar Bowhunting with Sarah. The two met at a bodybuilding competition in 2014. Josh was the 2012 Arnold Classic Men’s Physique Overall Champion and the 2013 Arnold Classic Men’s Physique Champion, and has won other regional and national awards. Sarah, who has an undergraduate degree and an MBA in marketing, shot a 25-pound Bigmouth Buffalo the same day that Josh set the new state record.
“My wife and I love to hunt and bow fish, so we will keep trying to chip away and see if we can get another record,” Josh Bowmar said. The couple has an unguided caribou bow hunt in Alaska scheduled for mid-August.
Note: Record fish in Ohio are based on weight and must be certified by the Outdoor Writers of Ohio State Record Fish Committee. Blade Outdoors Editor Matt Markey serves on that committee.
Contact Blade outdoors editor Matt Markey at: mmarkey@theblade.com or 419-724-6068.
Guidelines: Please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Comments that violate these standards, or our privacy statement or visitor's agreement, are subject to being removed and commenters are subject to being banned. To post comments, you must be a registered user on toledoblade.com. To find out more, please visit the FAQ.
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Record fish part of the plan for former Heidelberg athlete"
Post a Comment