Mounting Ideas for Your Swamp Eye Bowfishing Light Bars
The Swamp Eye Light Bar is one of the most trusted bowfishing light options there are. We've been fortunate enough to have our supporters send us photos of their flounder gigging, fish gigging, and bowfishing boat setups with their Swamp Eye Light Bars. (Please scroll down to the bottom to see the different boat setup photos.)
Bowfishing Boat Lights
The Swamp Eye Bowfishing Lights are most commonly used on bowfishing boats of all makes and sizes. The setups we see vary across the board, but the single most common bowfishing light bar setup is 2 lights across the front of the boat and 2 lights down each side of the boat. That's a total of 6 bowfishing lights, which can run for ~8.5 hours on a 2000W generator. Some folks will run them off two or three 12V DC deep cycle batteries, and they may get 4-5 hours or better.
Flounder Gigging Boat Lights
The Swamp Eye Light Bars and Swamp Eye Submersibles are both common for flounder gigging, but for those looking for an above water gigging light option - they work great. The flounder gigging crowd typically has a smaller sized boat in comparison to the bowfishing crowd, so they are able to get away with 3-4 Swamp Eye Light Bars. The most common setup we see is either 1 or 2 light bars across the front, and 1 light bar down each side. Most flounder giggers will supplement the Swamp Eye Light Bar with a Swamp Eye Submersible at each front corner of the boat. This isn't absolutely necessary, but it certainly helps light up the bottom in muddy water.
Fish Gigging Boat Lights
The fish gigging crowd are strong advocates of the Swamp Eye Light Bars. Their boats are sized similarly to most flounder gigging setups but they do not run underwater lights. The reason for this is because it is unlawful to use underwater lights for gigging in several freshwater lakes they gig in. Fish gigging is done across the nation but the most popular locations are the lakes near the Ozark states of Missouri, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Kansas.
Lights for Bowfishing and Gigging from a Kayak
Boats can be large in size and cumbersome to haul around to different spots, which is why bowfishing and gigging in kayaks has become more popular. Believe it or not, the Swamp Eye Light Bar has been mounted to kayaks on several occasions. Most of the time our customers are looking for a portable boat they can throw on top or in the back of their car / truck / SUV and be able to hit the water to scratch the fishing itch.
Photos of Mounting Ideas for Your Swamp Eye Light Bars:
Outrigger Outdoors
Both of these lights would be great options – combining above water lighting with below water lighting gives you the best of both worlds and the most coverage possible to see more fish. The Swamp Eye Light Bars can run on generator or battery (12v DC or 24V DC). The Swamp Eye Submersibles can run on 12v DC only (battery). If you want to run Swamp Eye Submersibles on generator, we do have power converters to allow you do so.
If you run them all on batteries, you should get pretty decent run time if you run 2x 12v batteries in parallel. In this case, you should be able to run 3x light bars and 2x swamp eye submersibles for ~4-5 hours.
Mike King
I’m looking to rig up my old 16 ft Jon boat for flounder gigging and am thinking about both submersible and light bars. What would be the best power source to run three light bars and either one or two submersibles. or would it be best to just go with lightbars. I would rather not go the generator route.
Outrigger Outdoors
Hi David – it really depends on the amp hour capacity of your batteries. Assuming you are using ~100-120 amp hour deep cycle batteries you can expect somewhere between 5-6 hours of run time or longer. We’ve seen people get longer run times, we’ve seen people get shorter run times. It is heavily dependent on the quality of the batteries you are using.
David
If I purchase 6 light bars, how long can I run them off of two 12V batteries?
Outrigger Outdoors
Hi Brian – most on-board chargers provide a “trickle charge” which is a low amperage charge. This works great for plugging your boat in and letting your batteries charge over night, but does not work as well if you are constantly draining the batteries. For example, a “fast charge” in terms of battery chargers is 2 amps. 4 of our bowfishing lights would draw the equivalent of 20 amps on 24V DC. An on-board charger would most likely not be able to keep up for the long term, but it would provide some recharging power.
The better option for this situation is to use the small in-line power converters that come with the Swamp Eye Light Bars to run them on your generator directly.
In this situation, we recommend running two 3 prong extension cord from the back of your boat, where the generator is, to the front of the boat, where your lights are. Once the power converters are hooked up, just plug two into each extension cord and you are ready to go. You can easily add more lights later on as needed.
Note: We recommend extension cords because they are factory sealed, a cheaper alternative to heavy gauge marine wiring, and they come with the proper AC plugs you need already installed.
I hope this helps!