last weekend I went out in search of some spawning sandies but they were too busy doing their thing. ended up catching a couple gar on a rooster tail. both were on six pound test with extremely low drag, when reeling the first one in on my kayak my other rod that I let out (tipped with a shad i accidentally snagged with the same rooster tail) started to go off and I almost had to reel in two at the same time. luckily I did not get a good hookset on the second gar and he got off. the second gar that we landed (pictured below) i caught right before sunset was about 4.5 feet long and I handed the rod over to a family member in another yak which took over 20 minutes to land and dragged him about a city block downstream. needless to say even though my arms weren't tired from catching sandies, they were from catching these guys.The water body we fish usually has plenty of longnose and on each outing we might accidentally catch a couple of them, but this is the first one that we landed bigger than two feet. anyone else have luck catching any gar species on rooster tails/ road runners/ the like?
thanks guys. also, @gar1970, how do you fish those jigs?
There are a few ways to work our jigs. If I want to fish the surface or upper column of water i use 1/32 jigs with a fast hopping retrieve. I can slow my retrieve and swim the jig fishing the middle. Another is cast and let sink to the bottom then hop it back to you. This is the easiest and best way to fish our jigs at least for me anyways. 80% of the fish i catch come useing this technique and more than half the fish never let the jig hit the bottom These 2 gar hit the jig on the fall