My son and I are headed to Wisconsin next week to partake in a little bowfishing courtesy of a good friend of ours that blogs here on the Skinny Moose network.  Jerry Long of Mostly Archery has graciously invited us over to his great state to visit for a bowfishing adventure on the local waters near his home.

     Mikey and I gladly accepted his invitation and began to plan for our trip.  The biggest obstacle in our way was that our boat (“Fowl Mouth Two”) wasn’t set up for bowfishing.  There wasn’t a shooting deck to stand on and no lights for night shooting.  Since these were two things we really needed to address, we got after it this weekend.

     Once I figured out the size we needed I started planning and designing the platform.  I wanted it at least four feet by four feet so the shooter would have plenty of room for moving around while not taking up the whole boat.  Our boat is 14′ long and a good 51″ wide.  The nose tapered down slowly to a point so the front was more rounded than pointed which left us more room to work with.  We got the basic shape cut out with some careful measureing and cutting, then we made the supports for the front and back of the deck.  The middle was supported by the front metal bench seat, which gave us some great support. 

     While making the back support I thought I would leave an opening for storage so we wouldn’t waste that space in the floor.  Then we attached four mounting brackets to the deck for the anchors of our light rails.  We then used PVC 1″ tubing to make the light rail.  After raising them up 3″ off of the floor we used a 45 degree elbow to shoot them out over the side of the boat along with a 12″ extension.  After using a 90 degree elbow, we cut a length of pipe to connect the two supports and complete the bar.  This is what would then hold the lights in place along with a conduit pipe clamp attaching the lights to the PVC. 

     We are going to use a small quiet generator to power the lights since we are running on a public lake late at night.  We don’t want to wake anyone while we are cruising the water!  We got the boat out this weekend and tried out the platform to make sure the boat was steady while on the water.  It worked great and all we need to do now is to paint the deck or put some indoor outdoor carpet on it  and head to Wisconsin!