Vol. 1, Issue 4, April 2015 | Page 11

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Obscure Adventures Magazine

Our first tournament of the year is just a few days away and we’re finally ready. After a long winter and some major reno-vations to our boat, including some last minute carburetor work on the fan motor, plus the need to replace a damaged fan blade, we’re hooked up and rolling out.

Team Carpzilla, consisting of Captain Justin Wilke, Caitlin Tooley, Josh Ring and Kurt Demmerly, now face 800 miles of driving from Wisconsin to Lake Guntersville in Alabama to par-ticipate in one of the biggest bowfishing tournaments of the year.

Our plan was to leave at 7pm on Wednesday night hoping to avoid traffic in Chicago, with a goal of reaching Backwater Out-

doors in Gurly, AL by 9am on Thursday. The entire drive went very smooth with the exception of some heavy traffic around Nashville, TN.

Along the way we were seeing many a thumbs-up and our boat was the star of a few pictures as onlookers must have been wondering what the heck our boat was used for.

We made it to Backwater at 9:30am and our team was greeted by their wonderful staff. We sailed through the registra-tion process then bought some supplies and headed to the hotel for some much needed rest.

We arrived next at the Hamp-ton Inn in Scottsboro, AL and a few other teams were head-quartered there as well. The hotel accommodations were great, including power posts throughout the parking lot to hook up and charge batteries.

After a nap, we were up and ready for some scouting, or so we thought. Around 5pm a few more teams arrived, including Jeff Neiball, Team Common-Swag,

and a team we just called “The

North Carolina Boys”.

Josh brought out some Wisconsin cheese and Spotted Cow beer and suddenly Thurs-day night scouting turned into a pretty big bowfishing tailgate party right in the Hampton’s parking lot. This was one of the many highlights of the trip, as we shared stories and exper-iences with our fellow bow-fishermen.

After some very good sleep Thursday night, Friday morning had us ready to hit the water and check out some of the areas on the lake the locals had told us about. Kurt Demmerly was our navigator with the Gunters-ville lake map, highlighting the areas that he wanted to check first.

Our Wisconsin winter was harsh this year, so this was the maiden voyage for my boat since adding float pods, as well as some other untested mod-ifications, since the 2014 season. Needless to say, I was a little anxious. Luckily, the boat all checked out and we hammered

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Backwater

Outdoors'

ALL OUT

CARP OUT

BY: Josh Ring and

Justin Wilke

Photos Courtesy of Josh Ring

Lake Guntersville is a big body of water. Kurt Demmerly of Team Carpzilla scours the map for potential hotspots.