Is your 17 acre lake always connected to the creek or river, or is it just the flood stages that reach your lake?

If you are always connected, I don't see how you can keep out the species you consider undesirable. If you are only connected during floods, then building a 1-2' levee (or whatever is allowable), would probably be an important first step.

I do agree with Augie that gar are good to eat. They are a pain to clean (I use my tin snips), but they are tasty. (Also, the eggs are poisonous.)


The Spotted Gar in my creek are very binary in size. In most gar species, the females are the larger fish. You should be able to pick out the females just by sight. (I couldn't tell your species from the photo.)

If you do decide to target the gar population, you will have much better success by eliminating all of the females you can get.