Thanks alot Preach.
I sealed the wood with 4 coats of spar-varnish with a U.V. inhibitor, to help protect it against the sun, and water of course. I'll clean it up and add another coat every spring, and that's all I should have to do to it, unless it gets a ding in it.
We don't eat the carp, but we do eat some of the gar. They have a 'tenderloin', for lack of a better description, down the back on both sides. It's very good eating. It has the texture of lobster, but it tastes like perch or crappie; nice clean mild tasting fish. The trick is cleaning them and preparing them for the frying pan. You can't soak gar-meat in water like other fish; you have to cool it by setting it on ice as soon as you clean them, and you need a pair of tin-snips to clean them. They have boney scales and thick, tough skin that you have to cut through. Very well-worth the effort tho!
The carp are mostly used for fertilizer. It's not uncommon for us to shoot a few dozen of them in a few hours, and frankly I don't eat that much fish in a year! But they are very hard to make tasty. We usually dump them on a farmer's land that LOVES them as fertilizer, so they're not wasted. Alot of people don't care for the fact that they're not eaten, but there's too many of them in our water-ways because other fish don't eat alot of them either. We just try to get as many of them out of the water as we can, and bowfishing is the best way to do that, short of netting them. The DNR here in Illinois has contacted our club several times over the past 3 years to help them 'clean up' a few different lakes in the state. It's cost-effective for the state and it's enjoyable to us, so we do what we can. The boat was a great means-to-an-end here. Plus, it looks good on the water.
I'm really glad you guys like it.
