Story later
82"x38.5"

Wow! She is fat and beautiful! WTG!!

Awesome fish. Good job.

She's been eatn good in the neighborhood. Good job Dawson! Hook?

Probably full of sand bass.

Eggs.

They will spawn if we get another high water event between now and June.

Livin' the dream.

Wow, impressive fish!

Nice HOG!

jeez. never seen one that fat.

Dang, that thing is a fatty. Nice catch

Awesome fish. Good job.

Beautiful fish, hopefully that spawn happens.

Awesome.

I had it typed out last night and accidentally lost it. I should have time to post some this evening. I have to resize all the pics.

Alright folks sorry for the hype without the story.

I had Greg and Mike with me for a one day trip. They were in the area for work and had the day off, so they decided to hire me to take them gar fishing. A good choice if you ask me, but I have a little self serving bias in that regard.

We started off the day with the river about 3 feet from bottomed out on a slow fall with our unseasonably cool temperatures. I had to dress appropriately.


At our first stop we promptly put a 5'+ fish in the boat and another at just under 5'. Average sized fish. Made a couple stops on fish that showed on the graph but would not bite. Missed a few runs. Got another fish just under 5. On our way back to the ramp I decided to make one final stop, but unfortunately the run we picked up came unlatched after showing us it was about 5.5'. I decided to make a other "last stop" because I really wanted to get these guys a big fish. We were about to call it quick when we got a slow up river run on one of our baits. Mike was up so he took the rod. The fish started swimming into a log so I had him set the hook. Imidiatly the rod loaded up and started stripping drag. The first time I saw this fish I knew it was a good one but I had no idea it had such mass. We had a pretty short fight with some good thrashing action. A great prespawn fish, still got a couple months for the weather to get right for a spawn.

Protip: You don't have to resize the pics if you upload them to a hosting website (like imgur) and use the "enter an image" function. Saves time for you and allows us to enjoy the full resolution!

Nice fish, and great writeup. 5' is really an average fish? I may have to start targeting these babies as well!

Yes, 4.5 to 5.5 foot is average. Crazy. Made me leave bass fishing.

Yes, 4.5 to 5.5 foot is average. Crazy. Made me leave bass fishing.

I had barely started when I left bass fishing once I saw big carp in the shallows!

I've seen a lot of gar and even hooked into some, but never managed to land 'em. Is there a specific technique you employ that you'd be willing to share?

On landing them as In getting them in? Fish heavy gear. They dont last long but they are strong for a little bit. If your bank bound you have got to take it to them. Most folks use a snare of some kind to physically land them, which is what I do.

Very disappointed in the title of this post... click bait.

Nice fish though, congrats!

Omg