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Message
Never Seen This Before: Gar Spawning
Posted on 6/7/20 at 6:32 pm
Posted on 6/7/20 at 6:32 pm
So. I'm driving down a county road that runs through our farm. And there's a spot where the MS River backwater is about 6-8" deep. And something catches my eye. And the water is all churned up and splashing. I pull over, and walk to the edge of the water. And it's literally hundreds of Alligator Gar. In what I can only guess is a spawning congregation. They're going nuts and they're churning the water up and splashing around. And there are no small ones. These things are all like 50 pounds or bigger. As far as the eye can see.
This picture doesn't really do it justice. This one congregation seems like it was one female. Surrounded my 20-30 males. All trying to mate with her. Or fertilze her eggs or however they do it. But this is like in 8" of water, so their backs are coming out.
And there's like 10 or 15 of these pods within sight. All with dozens of fish.
So about this time a game Warden comes by. And he's like: "I've never seen anything like this in my life." So he gets on the radio and calls another game Warden. And we just sit there and watch them.
Eventually one of the wardens is like: "I sure would like one of those to eat." So I go back to the house and get my biggest spinning rod and an alligator table hook. And I just waded out in there. And I literally walked up on them. These things were close to 100 pounds and they were just swarming around at my feet.
So I hooked one and battled it for a while and eventually got it to where we could get a rope around it. So green jeans took his gar home for supper.
Anyone ever seen them do this before?
This picture doesn't really do it justice. This one congregation seems like it was one female. Surrounded my 20-30 males. All trying to mate with her. Or fertilze her eggs or however they do it. But this is like in 8" of water, so their backs are coming out.
And there's like 10 or 15 of these pods within sight. All with dozens of fish.
So about this time a game Warden comes by. And he's like: "I've never seen anything like this in my life." So he gets on the radio and calls another game Warden. And we just sit there and watch them.
Eventually one of the wardens is like: "I sure would like one of those to eat." So I go back to the house and get my biggest spinning rod and an alligator table hook. And I just waded out in there. And I literally walked up on them. These things were close to 100 pounds and they were just swarming around at my feet.
So I hooked one and battled it for a while and eventually got it to where we could get a rope around it. So green jeans took his gar home for supper.
Anyone ever seen them do this before?
Posted on 6/7/20 at 6:49 pm to No Colors
quote:
Anyone ever seen them do this before?
No, they usually just check my license and leave me alone.
Posted on 6/7/20 at 7:25 pm to No Colors
quote:
And I just waded out in there. And I literally walked up on them. These things were close to 100 pounds and they were just swarming around at my feet.
Posted on 6/7/20 at 7:27 pm to No Colors
(no message)
This post was edited on 6/7/20 at 8:03 pm
Posted on 6/7/20 at 7:30 pm to No Colors
Yes. When I was at lake fork for a tournament in March they were spawning there. I’ve seen them numerous times in the LA marsh were one female will have 3-5 males rolling all over her.
Posted on 6/7/20 at 7:30 pm to No Colors
You should have loaded your truck with them and sold them.
Posted on 6/7/20 at 7:50 pm to No Colors
Saw this happen in the marsh one time while kayak fishing. Thought it was reds crashing bait and I paddled as fast as I could for about 300 yards to get to them. I was pretty pissed when I realized it was far fish.
Posted on 6/7/20 at 9:29 pm to No Colors
Why was green jeans just cruising around your land?
Posted on 6/7/20 at 10:00 pm to No Colors
You don’t want gar spawning next to your hoop nets. Nothing worse than picking up a hoop net and having 20 or 30 dead rotten gar stuck in the webbing.
Posted on 6/7/20 at 10:55 pm to No Colors
I saw this in the biloxi marsh in March in a duck pond. From a far I thought we came across some tailing redfish. It was very dissapointing.
Posted on 6/8/20 at 12:16 am to No Colors
quote:
n what I can only guess is a spawning congregation.
you mean an orgy?
Posted on 6/8/20 at 5:29 am to No Colors
Yes. Just as you have described off the Red River
Posted on 6/8/20 at 5:30 am to No Colors
quote:
green jeans took his gar home for supper.
Gross
Posted on 6/8/20 at 9:02 am to No Colors
I’ve seen it happen several times on our place in Tensas next to the river. Same circumstances.
How far north of Natchez are y’all on the MS side.
How far north of Natchez are y’all on the MS side.
Posted on 6/8/20 at 9:32 am to No Colors
During the spring at Sardis lake, we would always wade in the shallow flats and shoot carp and gar with our bowfishing rigs.
Posted on 6/8/20 at 10:23 am to No Colors
surprised he didnt ticket you for some trivial infraction when you have him the gar
Posted on 6/8/20 at 10:48 am to No Colors
Same thing was going on in my buddy’s dead end canal in Tiki Island TX a few weekends ago. See a few big gar in his canal every so often but that weekend there were 40+ 3’-6’/7’ gar rolling the entire day. Never seen that before. We hooked and landed a few 3-4 footers.
Posted on 6/8/20 at 11:09 am to No Colors
quote:
These things were close to 100 pounds and they were just swarming around at my feet.
WTF, weren't you worried they were going to bite a chunk out of your massive balls?
Posted on 6/8/20 at 3:54 pm to No Colors
I have out in the marsh. Don’t remember where it was because I was like 12 but we thought they were redfish at first and we got excited. We were let down but it was pretty cool seeing it. They were all in one pond. They were the size of the one in the picture but there were over 1000 of them.
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