Night bowfishing is very productive, and there are a few ways to go about doing it. A bow mounted light or a head lamp can be used very inexpensively.
But most bowfishermen using a boat will use deck mounted floodlights powered by a generator or D/C battery power. This first how to on lighting will deal with D/C lights.
With D/C lighting you will of course need several D/C floodlights. BoatUS carries some very good flood lights made for boats. A halogen bulb in them will make them brighter, and make the battery last long. The wire you use will have to be thick enough to handle the amperage draw of your lights, or they will melt. A great wire to use is the two wire Malibu light wiring sold at Home Depot.
A battery will be needed, and I recommend dedicating one battery to the lighting alone to make it last a long time. Mount the lights around the front deck of the boat, making a frame to keep them about 3 ft above the deck if you dont use a shooting platform on the front deck.
Now, you need to wire the lights.
In this picture you see a simple parallel circuit. E is the voltage source, your battery, and R represents the load, your lights.
As you see, a wire is run from the positive and negative of the battery to each light. I recommend running seperate wires from the battery to each light rather than going from one lights terminals to the next to avoid overheating the first set of wires. In a parallel circuit, there is no voltage drop and all lights shine as bright as if they were powered alone. Here are a couple more pictures of parallel circuits.
In this circuit we have added switches. Each light has a switch[switch B&C] and there is a master switch[Switch A] that turns them all on or off. These switches can be basic wall switches and a handi box. The lights in this drawing is A & B.
And finally here is a actual picture of a parallel light circuit. Note the wires go from one light to the next creating the circuit. As I have said, I like to run one set of wires to each light from the battery to avoid overheating the first set of wires.
Well, hope this helps you with wiring D/C floodlights for bowfishing.
Next…..Generators.