Garathon

A buddy of mine and I went bowfishing today on Ft. Loudoun Lake and really got into them. My usual hotspot was completely dead so we made a long run down to a honey hole I know of that's been pretty good in the past. Maybe some of you guys out there have seen gar like this but I never have in my 50 years of bowfishing. We were probably 50 yards away and could already seen fins sticking out of the water. When we got closer we could probably see well over 100 at a time in an area that was probably no longer than 15 yards long. Big females were accompanied by lots of smaller males. Although we didn't keep count, my buddy and I probably got 8-10 apiece and none were shorter than about 4'.

Them pictures make me wanna move south....................

:shock: TARGET RICH ENVIROMENT! gotta love that! are those gar good to eat or are they a nuisance fish? I'm in alabama so i know we must have them here....

Holy smokes. :shock:

Congrats on the outing.

We went all 3 days of the Memorial Day weekend but didn't get into them like that. We found a submerged island full of tailing carp the first day but only managed a handful and a couple of shortnose gar before they had enough. The next 2 days we concentrated on the longnose gar out on the main lake with much better success. KY Lake was in flood stage during the gar spawn this year which made it tough. I never even went (too busy catching bluegill and redear). What we are picking on now are the late spawners and random cruisers looking for a meal.

Yeah, it was a pretty amazing trip. I'll be going down there again in the next day or two but it certainly won't be like that. In the heat of the summer I'll still be able to pick them up onesie-twosie and they're usually pretty big ones.

nice!
reminds me of fishing the cumberland river

Like shooting fish in a barrel........

Well, not quite. The pics show that rocks were all around them and a miss or even a hit that went through the gar would severely blunt or break an arrow. As thick as they were, we had to wait until they moved away from the rocks before we shot.

I have seen that in the Goose Creek Reservoir where I fish. They only seem to do that in the early morning just before the sun rises or that is the only time I have seen them schooling like that. I do not bowfish but I use a piece of unraveled braided rope and a fish head for bait to catch them.

I've seen them schooled up in in groups of 15 or 20 at a time but never anything like this. This was around 11:00 a.m.