How can i catch a longnose gar?

[Hornytoad 10]

I have caught all kinds of freshwater fish, but i have never caught a gar!!! >, i know it sounds odd, but i actually want to. Any pointers?

[catchnm]

Find one swimming the shallows and put something in front of it. They'll chase anything.

[bass or bass ?]

Gar are fish eaters with very bony mouths, very hard to get a hook into that bone. Take a 2/0 straight shank hook and wrap tie a 4" piece of white nylon rope to the shank, then paint some varnish to the thread wrap to seal it. Now unravel and fray the rope. Cast this and retrieve on or near the surface, jerking it like a minnow swimming. The frayed rope will tangle in the gar's teeth and it will not be able to throw the lure. The hook is not really needed for gar fishing, you could tie to just a hook shank without the hook, however, a bass or crappie may strike your lure and then you'll be glad you have the hook. Have fun!

[Hornytoad 10]

alright, thanks.

[Leever]

Another way is to use the rig suggested about and in the place of the rope use a piece of panty hoe.  Sounds strange but once a gar bits down he won't be coming off.

[Matt Fly]

Like mentioned, gar have very tough boney mouth.

    We always just put a minnow on a cork/bobber about 18" under water and let the gar take it for a few minutes, give them time to work it into their mouths, this may require them taking it 10-15 yards to work that minnow into the softer part of their mouths.

  Same with Aligator gar, I have allowed them to carry it a good 30-40 yards before setting the hook, again, this allows them to get the bait into the soft part of their mouths.

[LCpointerKILLA]

use a medium to small sized in-line spinner and reel it right in front of one. They tend to love inline spinners

[Raul]

Gar are prey munchers, they do not behave like northerns, muskies and many other predatory fish which come and swallow their prey fast, gar chew on the prey for a long time before swallowing it, so for fish like gar you can fish with cut bait and a large bobber ( you can use a balloon for that purpose ), let the fish take the bait and move with it for as long and as far as it wants and when the bobber sinks get ready for a good hookset to penetrate that really hard bony mouth.

They can be quite hard to catch and apparently if they know you are after them they don 't bite, I 've caught many by accident while fishing for bass or for catfish ( with cut bait ) but it 's more like they know I 'm not after them, it 's only a matter of me planning to fish for them and they dissapear. :-?

[sundog49]

There are some good videos on youtube. Just go to youtube.com and put in How to catch gar. 8-)

[ZJ23]

if u have access to a pier w/ lights on it go out at night and they all flood to right under those lights. get some circle hooks or octopus circle make sure they are real sharp and you can put any kind of bait out there and they will chase it

[florida strain]

bright colored topwater lures