We were collecting trash today along Lake Grapevine today and saw at least 6 gar carcasses.

Anyone know if there is a reason if they are dying more frequently or just decompose slower?

Curious about this as well
Noticed some on the middle bosque

Check them for holes. I'd guess unethical Bowfishermen dumping them.

Bowfishing ********s

The only one with enough body left to see had a hole in it.

How can you bow hunt in such cloudy water?

High powered bow lights and skinny water make it pretty easy to thwack gar. Their bodies light up when hit with the light

FIDO*98* said:

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Check them for holes. I'd guess unethical Bowfishermen dumping them.

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I'm not much for over regulation, but making gar illegal by bow can not happen soon enough.

Hopefully they were harvested at least.

So it's just a sport and they dump them?

Unthought Known said:

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So it's just a sport and they do them?

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On the Brazos I see a lot that obviously were a photo opp and dropped on the bank.

Thanks everyone!

That seems pretty stupid. The wife and I like walking down the bulkhead with a flashlight and watching all the gar and buffalo hanging out at the rocks on Limestone. Idiotic things like that are not doing anyone any good.

fightingfarmer09 said:

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FIDO*98* said:

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Check them for holes. I'd guess unethical Bowfishermen dumping them.

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I'm not much for over regulation, but making gar illegal by bow can not happen soon enough.

Hopefully they were harvested at least.

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Why do you think that bowfishing gar should be illegal?

There are enough examples everywhere of d-bags messing it up for the rest of the people doing it the right way.

Gar are a trash fish just like carp, buffalo, talapia, etc. There's nothing wrong with shooting them. It's fun as hell. You should try it.

Gar are not trash fish. They are apex predators of their ecosystem. That is pretty ignorant and disingenuous of people to dismiss them as trash.

Shooting them with a bow and then leaving them to rot is hard to even think of as sport. To me it's pretty disgusting.

What makes something a "trash fish" in your mind?

RickSawyer said:

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Gar are not trash fish. They are apex predators of their ecosystem. That is pretty ignorant and disingenuous of people to dismiss them as trash.

Shooting them with a bow and then leaving them to rot is hard to even think of as sport. To me it's pretty disgusting.

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Are coyotes also not an apex predator? What about a bobcat? I'd wager that no one eats those either.

Well both those species reproduce at a healthy speed versus a gar that takes decades to reach the size that most people are targeting.

And I'm not a biologist but maintaining apex predators is one of the best ways to keep our fisheries healthy.

Finally, gar is actually good meat.

This has the potential to end up like the bicyclist thread.

You know what is also an apex predator? Fox. They will eat up an outdoor cat given the chance. Probably best to kill all the foxes in your neighborhood. At least, that's what momma says.

Gator gar are actually apex predators and also good eating, once you get through the scales. Large fish take most of a century to reach that size, and so they are very vulnerable to over harvest.

Bowfising has a very high mortality rate. There is no catch, photo, release option. Those people overconsuming the resource and wasting it will exhaust the population of mature gator gar and put a huge dent in their ability to reproduce. Gars only tend to reproduce when there are flood conditions or a long stretch of flooded shoreline brush and vegetation. They may go several years without reproducing in a time of drought.

Imagine if a fair number of hunters started ahooting trophy bucks, taking a picture, then dumping the deer in a ditch. For fishermen, these bow hunters are basically doing that when they harvest many large gator gar, then don't even harvest them (a legal requirement, even for taking non-game fish or even live bait in Texas). Wasting the resource is unlawful.

Gar is about as good of meat as raccoon or armadillo. Sure there are people who enjoy eating them, but we are speaking in generalities here not microcosms.

Secondly, litter sizes for coyotes is about 5 to 7 pups. Bobcats have about 3 kittens. They reproduce just as fast as any other land predator. Aquatic predators eat game fish. That's the main problem.

You and I are in agreement that dumping dead fish back into the water is not only against the law, but it makes the lake look like garbage. However, bowfishing is not a bad thing in and of itself even though some yuppies don't like it.

They are prehistoric, I didn't know that!

Really good article and it includes a lot of info about them & a recipe so the fish doesn't get left on a bank. Leaving a fish like that is not a very nice thing to do.....

Edit: forgot the link! https://www.google.com/amp/s/blog.chron.com/thehomeguru/2011/07/how-to-prepare-alligator-gar-fried-alligator-gar-balls/amp/

After running into some of these *******s bow fishing gar on PK under spotlights, have no respect for them.

Gar balls are good.

Deats said:

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After running into some of these *******s bow fishing gar on PK under spotlights, have no respect for them.

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So someone doing something lawful that you don't agree with makes them an a-hole because you "ran into them"?

In on page 1!

LBM-Aggie-2014 said:

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Deats said:

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After running into some of these *******s bow fishing gar on PK under spotlights, have no respect for them.

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So someone doing something lawful that you don't agree with makes them an a-hole because you "ran into them"?

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Nah. When we asked them to extingquish spot lights and maybe tell the other boats/tourney organizers to possibly avoid 1/2 mile shorline b/c we had 200 dads and kids under 5-9 trying to sleep at midnight at Camp Grady Spruce, we were told to **** off b/c it was some big $$, yeah it was them being *******s.

Deats said:

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LBM-Aggie-2014 said:

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Deats said:

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After running into some of these *******s bow fishing gar on PK under spotlights, have no respect for them.

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So someone doing something lawful that you don't agree with makes them an a-hole because you "ran into them"?

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Nah. When we asked them to extingquish spot lights and maybe tell the other boats/tourney organizers to possibly avoid 1/2 mile shorline b/c we had 200 dads and kids under 5-9 trying to sleep at midnight at Camp Grady Spruce, we were told to **** off b/c it was some big $$, yeah it was them being *******s.

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This sounds like something a homeowners association president/housewife would say.

It's a public lake. They had a tournament going on. Do you really think that someone fishing a tournament will go out of their way to AVOID fish that they're on because someone wants to sleep?

If this were not a tournament and it was just some weekend warriors, I'd probably side with you. I think you're being unreasonable.

Some vivid memories from my childhood. Sitting on my dad's shoulders in chest deep water of Lake Whitney as he cut the gars off his trot line using a small knife tied around his neck. Would hold each one up out of the water so i could see, slice them long ways down the gut, then work the hook out and toss them dead back into the lake. Mid 60's.....lake was still fairly new, but lots of old ones that were born in the Brazos.

I just wanted to know why there were so many dead gar.

Didn't mean to get everyone's panties in a wad.

And thanks for the answer.

You obviously haven't ever had alligator gar, or if you did, it wasn't cooked properly.

LBM-Aggie-2014 said:

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Deats said:

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LBM-Aggie-2014 said:

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Deats said:

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After running into some of these *******s bow fishing gar on PK under spotlights, have no respect for them.

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So someone doing something lawful that you don't agree with makes them an a-hole because you "ran into them"?

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Nah. When we asked them to extingquish spot lights and maybe tell the other boats/tourney organizers to possibly avoid 1/2 mile shorline b/c we had 200 dads and kids under 5-9 trying to sleep at midnight at Camp Grady Spruce, we were told to **** off b/c it was some big $$, yeah it was them being *******s.

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This sounds like something a homeowners association president/housewife would say.

It's a public lake. They had a tournament going on. Do you really think that someone fishing a tournament will go out of their way to AVOID fish they they're on because someone wants to sleep?

If this were not a tournament and it was just some weekend warriors, I'd probably side with you. I think you're being unreasonable.

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Yeah its kewl to wake up 100 6-9 year girls to kill fish you're gonna chunk on the shore b/c you got no brain, a POS boat, 10 trillion candle power spots and beer belly so big you aint seen your peen in 20 years.

PK has 310 miles of shoreline... Who is being unreasonable?

You sound like the quentisential yuppie.


Like a card carrying, board member yuppie.

In.

I always thought that gar were trash fish was that they compete with the more desirable fish....eg bass...for bait fish. Shad. Minnows. Etc.

And if you caught a gar. You offed it to help the more desirable population flourish.