The Gar That Didn't Get Away
Sitting at home on Sunday playing World of Warcraft and decided I needed to go out fishing. Remembered how much fun it was to catch the mudfish on Saturday, so I shut down my game, grabbed my wife, and loaded my fishing poles in the Jeep and set course for the golf course again.
This time I was focusing on big fish, such as large mudfish. I knew they were in the pond and wanted to have some fun fishing. We stopped by Bob's Bait and Tackle at US 1 & SR 206 to pick up some worms and other fishing essentials.
Once we arrived at the pond, my wife and I split up to do a divide and conquer method. I got started rigging up the heavy pole the handle whatever the pond may throw at us while she start fishing for bluegill aka bait.
My rig was a Shimano Baitrunner 6500B on a Shakespeare Ugly Stick Tiger. The reel was loaded with green PowerPro 80 lb. test braided line. This pole was setup this way because the original purchase goal was to catch cobia.
I used a 3/0 circle hook on 25 lb. test mono leader. Had a standard line-through weighted bobber tied about a 1 1/2' up the leader.
Just as I finished rigging the pole my wife caught the first bluegill. I choose to hook the bluegill behind the head, in the "shoulder" area in front of the dorsal fin. Tossed the bait out and waited.
About 15 minutes later, the bobber started going all over the place. A minute later the bobber went time. I jumped up from my chair and set the hook. Next thing I knew a weighted bobber and an empty hook came flying back to my head.
I repeated this process two more times, both times coming up empty handed. At this point I decided to change the rigging up. I took off the single circle hook and added two offset worm hooks that I normally fish plastic bait with. The top hook went through the shoulder while the bottom hook was attached at the tail. My thought was that the fish was biting the back end of the fish and I was ripping the bait off the hook.
Threw out the rig with a fresh bluegill and waited.
The wait was only about 5 minutes when the bait started dragging the bobber trying to get away from whatever was chasing it. The bobber went down about a minute later. This time I knew I had the fish hooked. I set the hook once, twice, third time and snap. The knot I used to tie the leader line to the braided line came undone.
Went back to the Jeep to figure out new riggings. This time I used one of my red circle hooks used for holding finger mullet when I'm chasing after redfish. I also doubled the 25 lb. test leader line and tied it to the PowerPro using a uni-knot. I made sure no fish was going to come off now.
Walked back to the bank and noticed at the bobber from the last rig was still out in the pond moving around. As I watched the bobber I saw a huge mudfish surface near it. Thought that would have been such a fun fight.
My wife supplied me with a new bluegill and I was ready to fish again. This time I hooked the bluegill through the tail.
Chunked the bait out and waited. And waited. Several times the wind blew the bait back into the bank forcing me to throw out again. I was beginning to think the only big fish in the pond was currently attached to the bobber on the other side.
Then the bait started acting scared. It was trying to get away from something. Hopefully something big was on the end of my line. The bobber when down and I set the hook. This time it held.
The fight was fun. The fish made a couple of good runs and almost got tangled up in some weeds. I still wasn't sure what it was until it made a run for the bank. At first I thought I lost the fish when I realized what it was doing. I quickly reeled in all the slack that I could before the fish made one last run. The battle was over after that. The fish had submitted.
Once at the bank I could see it was a large gar. I could also see that I had lassoed the fish instead of actually hooking it. The double leader line had wrapped around the gar's mouth and the hook had penetrated at the perfect position to lock the line in place.
I didn't have anything to measure the gar with, but I'm guessing it was around 4 feet. This is a wonderful prehistorical type fish. Heavily armored with razor sharp teeth.