we got gars in my freinds pond and there eating our live bait and our fish whats the fastest and easy way to get rid of them

Catch them. Why get rid of them? Once to hook into one you will not want to "get rid of them". Also are you sure they are Gar and not turtles?

bow and fishing arrow rig. (where legal of course)

I was striper fishing in a river down in Florida and wasn't catching much of anything.  Decided to tie on a buck tail jig I had made a few weeks before.  Of all colors, it had a pink butter bean shaped head about 3/4 ounce with 5/0 hook and white hair.  Before I could get it in the water, gars were eating them up--caught one about six feet but I couldn't figure how to get it out of his mouth.  Finally, I just cut the line.  Did not catch any stripers but had a ball with those big gars.  As they say:  "Never have known a bad day fishing!"  Uncle Tom  Take a kid young or old fishing!

some people, like myself dont want ugly gar eating up all the pretty bass. im not saying that in a mean tone or anything, its just a common oppinion held.

Id rather catch a pretty ass bass than a dinosuar looking fish i dont know why?

my question when people ask why I like to catch "trash" fish is this."Do you like to have fun while fishing?". Unless you are specifically targeting something to eat,just roll with it and enjoy catching them. I enjoy catching bass, trout, walleyes, and other "sportfish", but day in and day out I would rather catch BIG fish. This has included carp over 20 lbs., gar over 40, bowfin to 15..etc...Also, most fish that are considered non-gamefish are much more accessible and in most cases easier to catch. Don't look a gift horse or in this case a gift fish in the mouth...happy fishing and good luck

Like any pond gar will serve a purpose as long as there is a balance between them and other fish in the pond. if a pond was to be stocked with bass only in a short amount of time you would be catching a bunch of stunted fish.a good pond will have a good balance of predator and prey, the gar a part of the natural process they will eat bass fry and other fry in turn if the are spawning their fry will be eaten.i would suggest leaving them alone for the time being and trying to get in touch with a fisheries agent and see if they can help you out or at least give ya some tips.

Don't.
TIGHT LINES!

I have never seen a gar in my lake but two days after I read this original past  my grand daughter were fishing late one afternoon for blue gills and catfish and what was the first thing she caught--that's right one of those prehistoric creatures.  She loves "critters" of all kind and I think she got more out of it than anyone possibly could.  My daughter who will be teaching oceanography this fall insisted on freezing it for her class.  Can you imagine what the guys will be saying when they open my freezer and on top is "Gary the gar"--thank goodness I convinced her the alligator snapping turtle was on the endangered species list and she let it go.  Help!!  Uncle Tom

UncleTomJigs, you could always get her to keep it in a tank. Longnose Gar are pretty easy to take care of. Just feed them live minnows.
TIGHT LINES!

BOWFISHING!!!!! TRY IT

BOW FISHING!  Sounds like a winner--probably better at night?  Since some of us don't have the strength to pull a bow any more, was wondering if you can use a cross bow?  Uncle Tom

Gar can be alot of fun to catch. I have been catching them for about a year in the same area i catch bass. they havnt seemed to effect the bass much. Long needlenose pliers usually work good on the hooks

never tested the crossbow fishing way before. but if you get into a school of big gar, your back will start hurting from bending down to redraw your bow. it happens with a compound bow to but just hurts your arm after a while.

Posted By multispecies101 on 26 Jul 2010 10:25 AM
UncleTomJigs, you could always get her to keep it in a tank. Longnose Gar are pretty easy to take care of. Just feed them live minnows.
TIGHT LINES!

Done this before. I fed one guppies and goldfish. of course it was only about 18" long. they are fun to watch eat. They recoil back like a snake and then let loose and poof the feeder is gone and the gar has a little bulge in its belly. I can see how fun a big one would be to catch.

Brian

I've posted the best gar lure before, but I'll do it again. Take a long shank 1/0 hook and whip tie a piece of 4" white nylon rope to the shank by the eye. Apply varnish to the tie to seal it. After varnish dries, unravel  and fray the rope. Cast this as a surface or slightly subsurface lure when you sight gar or near gar habitat. The frayed rope tangles in their teeth and they can't throw the lure. Of course you don't need the hook for gar fishing, but you may also get strikes from bass or crappie while casting this lure and then you'll be glad to have the hook. Happy gar fishing.

State laws for netting usually don't apply to private ponds. Gill netting is the only direct control available to you. For around $40 you can purchase a 50' long nylon flag style net. Choose a mesh size smaller than capable of easily holding a big headed game fish like a bass. The gar are probably slimmer than the bass, and their bony gill cover is such that they can get snarled in a net size too small for a bass to get in. At the same time smaller fish might get into the net, but they don't roll over and over like a gar, wrapping themselves up. That's why you would want a flag style net. There's only one top line, none across the bottom of the net, so the net hangs like a curtain (flag). Each end of the top line is anchored tightly with the top of the net right at the surface where gar feed. It's ideal in still water like a pond. When you detect a gar in it pull the whole net up and unroll it, cleaning trash off as you go.

A real delicacy is deep fat fried gar balls. I peel the skin off the back then scoop flesh out using a metal ice cream scoop. Bread and fry. The rest of the fish is quite bony, hardly worth messing with unless pressure cooking to make fish cakes (chicken style patties).

So what next? Figure out the sizes of gar and the desired fish. Let's say your gar average 6" diameter, while the bass average 4". A 3" nylon flag net can stretch to twice that, 6" between mesh knots. Even if a bass can match that the outer gill structure will allow the bass to escape, or the bass will not try to pass through. It's best to avoid a mesh size that tempts a bass or other game fish to try going through. So, you select the smallest mesh that should do the job, counting on stretch.

In the absence of comment I will continue. Maintaining a single gar in a private pond is not a good idea if bass production is your objective. It would be analogous to inviting a 500 pound friend to move in sharing food while your children are suffering malnutrition due to lack of food supply. The ideal is for the angler to be as close to the top of the food chain as possible. Some pond owners don't realize a family of raccoons have broken into the middle of that. Depending on pond size and natural nutrients in it, keeping a gar or two could require supplemental feeding of the pond population sooner or later. I think you indicate you prefer game fish, so work to eradicate the gar. What can't be netted should be actively caught and removed, then killed. Use a steel leader and a high-noise (sonic) shallow running minnow type lure and heavy line and rod. I find catching a gar to be more like hauling a log in, but there's a lot of splashing of water when the gar sees you. You get wet, and could receive a gash from the frantic swaying of teeth. I have never found any joy in catching gar. There's a reason they are not listed as "game" fish, but are listed as "freshwater" fish. The idea of tolerating gar in any fishery is to finish off the food chain where angers don't frequent the fishery. They eat up the swimming forage, thereby starving the bass and themselves out of a food supply. When managing for bass it is far better to manage their forage base, but that might involve having to harvest some of those bass.

Gar are stocked in some bodies of water to control very large, stunted, panfish populations.

I realize it is sometimes said gar are stocked for that reason, but have not found a nursery providing them, and so far no modern examples of prescribing gar stocking. We have far more effective chemical controls followed by total restocking of ponds. Could you link me to a current example of a fisheries biologist prescribing gar for controlling "very large" panfish or stunted panfish? Very large ones tend to attract panfishing patrons. if stunted they indicate a nutrition problem such that no other gamefish would survive if the undesirable fish species were removed.

The keyword is "pond", not a natural lake or river where restoring an endangered gar species is the situation. I can't imagine any pond owner aiming at feeding some gar their stunted or overgrown panfish. Once the panfish are removed you would have a pond full of gar. I don't think I've heard of a pond owner raising gar on purpose. To have gamefish reintroduced would require a pond deadening and restocking.

For about 6 years one of my jobs was to evaluate farmsteads towards owners qualifying for federal and state cost share funding to improve the environment. I found many pond owners who had to accept really bad news, having done some dumb things like introduce a hardy predator fish to try fixing problems. "Well, my neighbor swore by it." All it takes is a little bucket of the wrong fish or exotic crayfish. Introducing gar into a closed pond system could result in having to spend tens of thousands of dollars to repair the damage, or abandon the pond except using as a stock pond. If it's to deep even that use might require some filling in so cattle can use it.

From my angle I still have a want-to to try preventing bad mistakes, though retired and out of that loop. Even if a fisheries biologist were to recommend gar, I'd get a second opinion. A much cheaper and rewarding way of removing oversized panfish would be to seine them out and maybe donate them to a homeless shelter. Put desirable fish over the seine to swim again.

I'd like to say that lots of advice given here probably gets carried out without researching the advice as applicable to some local area. Anyone giving advice needs to consider that possibility. Most counties have access to university agri dept county agents that can at least send you to a professional that knows what's best for your area.

Off the stump now.

Definately bow fishing. You don't need a real strong bow, anything from 25-40 lb draw works great. It also works great on tilapia.
><>Jake<><

That would do, if you know how. It takes a lot more skill to shoot em right.

best way to take care of your gar "problem" is to harvest them. using a basic river rig to fish off the bottom with a 5/0 circle sea hook and a min. of a 12 inch steel leader (a few dollars for a pack). best bait is a live bluegil. the gar will come up to the bait, chew on it for a while, and then once he finds the hook he will fight hard. You just have to be patient sometimes because I have had a gar on the line for up to ten minutes before he found the hook and really started to fight. if you attempt to set the hook before the hook is entirely in his mouth he will drop the bait and leave. when you are trying to land these beasts, I have found that a lip grabber(I use a 50 pound lipper scale when fishing) is much better than a net. it also makes it easier to control the fish while you use your needle nose pliers to extract the hook. these guys can be really energetic once you get them on the bank (or in the boat) so its a challenge until you learn how to read them. keeping the gar in a water system, as has been said before, can benefit the balance of fish populations. But you also need to control them, because it is frustrating as hell when you want to cat some game fish (i.e. catfish and bass) and all that bits are gar. so my advice, keep a gar every once and a while so that the populations dont boom and hurt the fish you want to keep popular. gar have nice backstraps and can taste pretty good if you cook em up right. I have gone with some friends to an area where we caught over a dozen gar per person within a few hours. we ended up frying those beasts in a cajun batter. almost as good as some southern catfish!

Wait, so some of you goofballs consider Gar to be a junk fish or "ugly" or a "dinosaur fish?" They are awesome! I don't fish for them I live up North but I know Gar are a great fish and why not leave them alone and let them grow in your pond? They are already endangered from what I understand and one could argue that they are a better game fish than bass considering they are much more difficult to catch and much larger! I say give this fish the proper respect if you are a true angler.

,Never saw a bass get that big...