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Now all that being said, why the hell would want to mess with those prehistoric #$@%ers?

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i was kinda wondering the same. Anyways, I used to save up M60s from the 4th of july and duct tape 3 of them together and throw em in the water. Not a high success rate on stunning them, but lots more fun than just getting a .22 out and pulling a trigger IMO

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Be careful using a 22. They can and will ricochet off the water!

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Not if they go through a gar first!

They always richochet away from you, so the way I see it is that its not your problem.

Back in highschool, a friend of my dad's and I caught a 168# out of the Brazos. We used a "mudcat", rumor is they (gar) crave them like a good steak. We use a drift type line on with a small weight on one end, then a 5 gallon bucket, with a steel leader about 30ft long on the other with a treble hook. We would hook the "mudcat" thru the lips with the treble hook and the gar would swim up behind the mudcat, inhale the bait and the squeeze it using muscles in the throat with more or less hooked the gar, they would them try to swim off and they could sometimes swim a mile or more from where the line was set. Best time to catch them is when the river is low and moving slow. Good Luck !

My understanding is they eat anything that swims, but catfish is only about 25% of their diet, and bass is about 5%. They mostly eat shad and sunfish, and seem to be fond of gaspargou, too.

We decided to cook one up, the cleaning is a royal pain in the @$$, but I would say the meat (backstrap) was similar to scallops in texture.

Also where I grew up (Katy) the creeks are really sandy and not clear, so the meat had a hint of "grit" to it. It still was pretty good eating though, but man that cleaning with a hatchet ain't fun.

We figured you got to try it once.