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Thread Like Summary
esshup, FishinRod, jpsdad
Total Likes: 3
Original Post (Thread Starter)
by FishinRod
FishinRod
Has anyone ever tried spotted gar in their pond as a means to control overpopulation and stunting of the preferred gamefish?

This is certainly another one of my "crazy" ideas, but I don't see the flaw (yet).

(I can get mature spotted gar from our creek, just by using a bit of frayed nylon rope as the lure. Spotted gar side-strike their prey, and then throw it down their gullet a little later. Kind of like how a heron eats small fish.)

Many of the articles on spotted gar describe them as "voracious predators". However, despite the appearance of their long, toothy snouts, their gape widths are very small for a fish that is 36" long.

Their size is also strongly sexually dimorphic, with the mature females be significantly larger. I have observed a bimodal size distribution in our creek when the spotted gar are abundant. I think it might be possible to have a single-sex pond of spotted gars - and you could therefore strictly control the amount of gar predation.

Ideas

Could you use spotted gars to control reproduction in a pond where the channel catfish are pellet fed? I am envisioning the gars eating fingerling catfish, but being unable to consume the larger catfish. The pellet calories would then be distributed mostly to your "game" CCs, rather than the small fry.

Likewise, would the gar be effective in a crappie pond. It would be nice if the gar would decimate the population of small crappie, but leave the larger crappie alone. I think the key here would be a good food source for the crappie. Would it be possible to have an ongoing population of some smaller forage (Gambusia?), that is too small to be targeted by the gars, but an abundant food source for the crappie? It might be much easier to keep an abundant minnow/shiner population - if there are no small crappie consuming a portion of that limited resource.

Further, consider a scenario where it is impossible to keep enough standing weight of forage in the pond for your large crappie. You could add BG so the crappie could forage on the supply of small sunfish. If the crappie wipe out a portion of the small BG, and the gars wipe out a portion of the medium BG, would it be possible to have a trophy crappie and trophy BG pond?

I am sure I am wrong (or it is WAY more difficult than I have implied), or it would have been done before! However, if anyone has any good data, or even random musings, then I would like to hear about any experiments deliberately (or accidentally) using spotted gar as a pond management tool.

The most likely problems I can think of:

1.) The gar are more efficient than your gamefish at consuming the forage intended for your gamefish.

2.) Despite their small mouth gape, mature spotted gars DO NOT only consume small prey. Are they capable of killing a trophy bass or large catfish with many small strikes and then consuming the larger fish in a series of tiny bites? (Like a pod of orcas eating a whale?)

Thanks,
FishinRod
Liked Replies
by FishinRod
FishinRod
The only gars I have landed with a traditional lure is where a hook managed to get stuck in the hinge of their jaw.

Originally Posted by jpsdad
The fuzzy frayed rope can catch in the toothy mouth but you still have to play them.

We had a bunch of spotted gar in a stream pool two summers ago.

Our best technique with the fuzzy rope was to hold your rod tip up with light, steady pressure after they took the rope. They would swim a while, and then make this powerful head jerk to try and throw the "prey" back into their gullet. They also rolled their heads a little with that movement.

We never lost a single gar once you were able to play them to that point. There were some steep banks around the pool, but one spot with a sand bar just above the water level. We used that as our landing spot. We even successfully passed rods around trees with "fish on" to walk over to the sand bar.

I could not remove the frayed rope from their mouths. I would have my son hold the fish with their snout's closed, and then I would cut off rope fibers with my sharpest Rapala fillet knife.

I hope they come back this summer!



P.S. If they turn out to have some value in a pond, but they get overpopulated, then I think you could cull the gar with an air rifle. When it is hot and still, they just float like logs at the surface.
1 member likes this
by FishinRod
FishinRod
Originally Posted by Augie
Gar is good eating.

It don't last long enough here to get cold, so I can't speak to that.

I have the same problem with tasty fish in my household.

I need to save enough money to get my pond projects moving. I figure I will make most of the money back as savings on our grocery bill!
1 member likes this
by RStringer
RStringer
We go to big hill quite often. I didnt know they was in there. Iv never heard of anyone getting bitten there either. If they wipe out my crawdads it wouldnt be a big loss. I got them from the creek 100 feet from my pond. So they would be easy to her more. Last year I would just scope them out with a small fish net and get 20 or 30 small ones ever scope.

The girls havnt caught any yet (HSB). Only fished it couple times this year. I'm hoping next year they will have a fight on there hands with them. I caught one on reel and one in throw net. They were around 10: then and tht was several months ago. The one I got on a reel felt like a 5 pound lmb.
1 member likes this
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