Yesterday Russ and I made plans to head out and hit the creek again. The water level had reached its typical summer level and water clarity is improving. The last time we went out I estimated the clarity to be around 8", the clarity for this trip was somewhere around 10-12". With those two factors in mind I decided to float the bottom section of the creek. The bottom section is significantly deeper with less riffles, which meant we wouldn't have to get out and drag our kayaks as much as we would in the shallow northern stretch. Since the lower section of creek is deeper and slower moving it holds less smallmouth. In this section you typically find "big river" fish such as gar, freshwater drum, catfish, spotted bass, carp, etc. With that in mind Russ and I decided to tie on a few rope lures (A home-made lure created from braided nylon rope. Used to tangle in the teeth of gar.) and see if we could find a few gar while we floated along the slower sections. The plan was to hit the rocky shallow shorelines, weed lines, and riffles with crankbaits and soft plastics for smallies and then paddle through the slower moving (deep) sections and look for gar.
We got on the water around noon and immediately had to get out and drag through a series of riffles. Between the riffles we worked crankbaits and plastics but failed to find our first fish. As we were dragging through the last small riffle I noticed a gar breach the surface in the slack water below, he gulped air and then dive back down. I didn't know what to think of this, on one hand I knew the gar were close but on the other hand I knew that this particular fish wasn't staying on the surface. In short, if we cant see gar on the surface then we cant catch them with a rope lure. About 20 yards down the bank I got my first bite of the trip on a jointed crankbait, but the fish quickly shook off the treble hooks. Five minutes later I heard Russ say, "What the heck?" He too had gotten his first bite of the trip, but it cut his line immediately. It appeared as if the gar were active but they just weren't staying high enough in the water column for us to see them. Russ shook it off, retied, and went back to fishing for smallies on this rip rap shoreline.
About 1/3 of the way through the float we had only managed to catch one small drum, but our luck was about to change. We had paddled to a section of creek that was deep, slow moving, and had a few fallen trees. It was actually so slow that scum and leaves had started to accumulate on the surface. I started slowly paddling along one bank and Russ took the other. I quickly raised my seat to the high position and started scanning for gar. I didn't see my first gar until I got to a huge fallen tree that spanned 3/4 of the creek. The gar wasn't very big, maybe 18", so I decided to let it swim by. I was hoping that I'd get a shot at a much larger one down the creek....and I did. I quickly spotted a gar sitting a few feet off of my bank near a fallen tree. I made a cast over its head and quickly drug the rope lure across his face....and he hammered it. I quickly dropped my rod tip, let him thrash about and wrap himself up, and then started adding pressure. I brought him to the surface and began taking pictures.
It wasn't a giant, but I was defiantly glad to get on the board. Now it was time for the fun part.....unraveling the rope lure from its mouth. To do this I took a pair of
metal fish grips and clipped his bottom jaw, and then began carefully
picking at the rope lure.
I was a little rusty so it took me a little longer than usual to free the rope lure and the fish got a little cranky. As I put him in the water to release him he began trashing about, eventually landing a quick shot on my upper wrist. It was just a minor scrape but it bled for what seemed like forever. (Side note: It may be a good idea to bring a first aid kit when targeting gar!)
Fifteen minutes later I spot yet another gar, probably less than 10 yards from where I had landed the first one. I made a long cast over his head and began pulling the rope lure across the surface. This time around I didn't have to bring it over his nose, he heard it hit the water and he took off like a torpedo after the lure. I gave it a quick tug just to entice him even more and he blew up on it. I dropped my rod tip and started adding slow and steady pressure until I felt he had sufficiently wrapped himself up. This fish went 3" longer than the first one, but was still far from what I would call a big gar.
All the while I was fighting and landing fish Russ was working the gar over on his side too! He managed one gar at 29" and lost several others. The gar were definitely drawn to this particular spot for some reason, and it wasn't until later that we realized that the gar were holding close to wood. Russ and I paddled down the stream very slowly as not to spook any gar near the surface. We could each see about 10 feet from our kayaks until the glare started to hinder our ability to spot gar. For that reason we paddled about 10 feet off of each bank and scanned both sides of our kayak. About an hour later Russ and I found another good school of gar, the first of which I saw in the middle of the creek near Russ. I whistled at him and pointed toward the gar...."One at 11 o clock." He made a cast but ended up missing the gar by about 5 feet. On his second cast he brought the rope lure within a foot of the gars nose and that's when the water exploded. It was a good gar, somewhere in the 40-45" class, and it was pulling drag like a champ. Less than 10 seconds later Russ' line went slack, the gar hadn't wrapped himself up good enough. We continued down the bank and eventually ended up losing another 3 gar. These fish were smart, some of them hitting the lure and never moving an inch. They would clamp down on the lure and then would just sit there. Once we added a little pressure they would simply spit our lure back at us. After loosing a couple fish in the 35-40" range I decided that maybe I should try a new rope lure. Mine had lost a few strands from its encounters with gar and maybe that was part of my problem. Russ tossed me a thick rope lure and I trimmed it to about 6" in length. I was hoping that the thicker lure (more strands) would tangle the fish easier, but there was only one way to find out.
I eventually found a gar willing to thrash about for me. I actually made a bad cast and decided to reel my lure really fast back to the kayak and make another cast when he decided he was going to eat my bait anyway. I took about three handle turns when I noticed him swing around and take off toward my bait, the whole time the water was swelling up behind him as he was putting off a miniature wake. Once he got on top of the lure I slowed it down and he hammered it. Once he realized it wasn't food he went nuts.....and that's just what I needed him to do.
We went on to catch a few more gar in the 28-32" range and lost nearly a dozen other fish before coming up on our take out. Since the water was slow moving we decided to paddle on past the take out and fish a little longer and then paddle back upstream to our take out.....and its a good thing we did. Just below the take out we found a nice school of gar with fish in the mid to upper 40" range. We had a few takes but they just wouldn't wrap themselves up for us. On one occasion I saw an odd looking log under an overhanging tree, I thought that it looked awful orange for a log. I told Russ that I saw something, "If its a gar its a good one!" I made a under hand cast up on the bank and brought it right over the log, when the log made a move...it was a gar! I made a couple quick twitches on the surface and then began a slow and steady pull and that's when the gar started following it. At this point he was 15 feet from the yak and he was stalking the bait slowly....if I waited too long he would see me and get spooked so I made the decision to move it real fast and see if I could get a reaction out of him like I did out of the other one. Sure enough that's exactly what he wanted, he took the rope lure about 8 feet from the kayak and just sat there. He was just close enough to where I could drop my rod tip and wrap him up myself so that's what I tried. I pulled the line tight and began to wrap my line around his nose, all the while he started shaking side to side as he tried to throw the lure. It was too late for him, the more he struggled the worse the rope lure tangled. He then decided to give up on freeing the lure from his teeth and then focused on trying to get away. My drag began to sing as he made a hard run downstream. With each burst of drag I just shook my head and smiled at Russ. Eventually I got the gar to the kayak and began my work on the rope lure.
The gar went 44", which happened to be my biggest caught while sight fishing out of a kayak. Shortly after we released this fish the sun began to set over the tree tops, the wind picked up just enough to put ripples on the water, and the gar began to disappear.
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