The Fish I Never Intended to Catch on a Fly: Longnose Gar on the Fly

I wasn't trying to catch a longnose gar.

I was fishing for striped bass on the Coosa River in the winter when something kept hitting my fly deep in the water column. I'd caught stripers in that same area before, so I assumed that's what was happening. Whatever it was, though, I couldn't get it to stay hooked.

Then one of the fish finally stayed with the fly long enough for me to see what it was. A longnose gar stayed connected to my line, held the fly in its mouth and then spit it out as it approached the boat.

That one fish changed the way I looked at longnose gar.

Longnose Gar Are Built Differently

Longnose gar are one of the most distinctive fish in Alabama waters. They have an elongated snout filled with sharp teeth, thick armor-like scales and a body that looks more prehistoric than most of the fish anglers are accustomed to seeing.

They're also big. The Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources lists adult longnose gar at 3.9 to 5.9 feet, and the species occurs throughout essentially every major river system in Alabama except the Escatawpa.

Longnose gar are predators that primarily eat fish. Rather than simply chasing prey from behind, they often attack from the side, lunging and thrashing their heads laterally before repositioning the prey to swallow it.

That feeding behavior makes a difference when you're trying to catch one on a fly.

The goal isn't simply to make a gar eat the fly. You have to give the fish a chance to get tangled in it.

Figuring Out the Rope Fly

Gar are notoriously difficult to hook conventionally. Their long, bony jaws and rows of teeth make getting a traditional hook to hold a challenge, and I've seen the damage hooks can cause to these fish.

That's what led me toward the rope fly.

Instead of trying to penetrate the jaw with a hook, the rope is designed to wrap around the fish's teeth and give you a way to stay connected. When a gar takes the fly, those teeth can become tangled in the rope.

That changes the entire way you have to respond to the fish.

And that took some experimentation.

Don't Set the Hook

My first instinct was to do what I would normally do when a fish ate a fly.

Strip set.

It didn't work very well.

The more I experimented and thought about how gar were attacking the fly, the more I realized I was doing exactly the wrong thing. If the goal was to get the rope wrapped around the fish's teeth, immediately pulling the fly away wasn't going to help.

When you feel the initial hit, don't set.

Stay connected to the fish, but don't put excessive pressure on it.

Sometimes I'll feed a little line as the fish turns away. More often, I'll slowly strip in line as the fish swims toward me. I want enough tension to feel what the fish is doing without pulling the fly out of its teeth.

The initial take can feel like a quick tap. Then you'll often feel small head shakes or gentle movements as the fish works the fly around in its mouth. As the rope begins to wrap around the teeth, those movements can become more pronounced.

I've found that allowing the fish roughly five to eight seconds before raising the rod gives the rope time to do its job. Sometimes it happens faster. Sometimes it takes longer. Wait too long, though, and you can create a different problem when it comes time to free the rope from the fish's teeth.

One of the counterintuitive parts of gar fishing is that too much tension can be just as bad as too little. If you pull too hard, you can actually pull the fly out of the fish's teeth before the rope has a chance to wrap.

I demonstrate this to clients before we start fishing for gar. I'll hold the line and act like a gar taking the fly so they can feel what the initial strike is supposed to feel like. They quickly understand why their first instinct, setting the hook, is the wrong one.

Finding Gar in the Coosa

Learning how to hook a gar is only part of the challenge. You still have to find them.

I typically start looking in slower, deeper water with structure. Rocks, drop-offs and deep pools can all hold fish. I've found some of my largest gar in eight to fifteen feet of water, generally toward the bottom of the water column. However, I've also found gar in shallower water, particularly around boulders, trees and other structure where they can ambush prey.

Over the years, I've found them in enough unexpected places that I believe gar can be found throughout much of the Coosa. Some of those discoveries happened while I was actually fishing for bass. A gar would eat the fly or follow it, and suddenly I had another piece of information about where these fish were living.

One of the best indicators that gar are present is one you don't need electronics to find. They come to the surface to breathe, especially as temperatures rise and dissolved oxygen content lowers.

Sonar has also helped me understand the deeper fish. If I'm fishing a large pool and the gar aren't cooperating, I'll sometimes idle around and use the sonar to see where fish are marking and how deep they're holding. Then I'll adjust my fly accordingly.

Finding gar means figuring out where they're holding that day.

The Setup and Presentation

I primarily use a nine-weight rod for gar because it makes casting a heavy sinking line and an eight-inch rope fly much more manageable.

The fly itself is mostly unweighted, so the sinking line does the work of getting it down and keeping it in the strike zone. I'll let the line sink for a certain amount of time based on the depth I'm trying to reach, then begin retrieving.

For deeper fish, my standard retrieve is a fairly slow strip of roughly one to one and a half feet. If that doesn't work, I'll vary the retrieve, sometimes going faster or shortening the strips. Once I start getting strikes at a particular depth or during a particular retrieve, I pay attention and repeat it.

My leader is generally four to five feet of 16- to 20-pound monofilament. I want something stiff enough to cast the fly and abrasion resistant enough to stand up to a fish with a mouth full of teeth. I check it carefully for nicks after every fish.

I also use a loop knot rather than a conventional clinch knot. The loop gives the fly more freedom to move, and I've consistently had better success with it when fishing the rope fly.

There isn't one magic color or retrieve, either. Black and chartreuse have worked well for me, but I've also had good days with yellows, oranges and pinks. The fish may want a slow retrieve one day and something considerably faster the next.

The key is figuring out where the fish are and getting the fly to them.

When the Fish Gets Big

The first few gar I caught intentionally were enough to convince me they were worth pursuing.

Then we caught a really big one.

I had a friend in the boat who had already been casting for a while. She had caught several smaller gar, probably in the 36- to 40-inch range, and we were fishing an area where I had previously caught some larger fish.

At one point, I noticed a slight smirk developing on her face. That was my first indication something different was happening.

She stayed tight to the fish and gave it the time it needed. When she finally lifted the rod to fight it, the fish made a long, hard run toward the middle of the river and into faster current.

The ten-weight bent under the weight of the fish.

We didn't know how big it was until after the third heavy run, when it finally flashed underneath us.

That's when things got serious.

The fish made several more long, powerful runs before we finally got it alongside the boat. It measured 55.5 inches.

Seeing a fish that size up close was impressive, but what stuck with me was the fight. The long powerful runs and the massive headshakes were something I hadn’t encountered before. It was a powerful river predator that had earned its place on the end of a fly rod.

Why I Keep Fishing for Gar

Fly fishing for gar presents a challenge unlike most of the fish I pursue. You're not simply banging the banks as you drift down the river. You're deliberately probing the water for a hunting predator, figuring out where it's holding and then fighting the instinct to set the hook the way you've done on every other fish you've caught.

That's what makes gar so interesting to me. They force you to approach familiar fly-fishing skills differently. You have to find them, understand how they're feeding, get the fly to the right depth and then completely change what you do when the fish finally eats.

It brings a different angle to fly fishing and expands your game.

The Technique Travels

One of the things I've enjoyed most about learning to fish for gar is hearing from anglers who have taken the technique somewhere else.

One client took what I taught him back to the Columbia, South Carolina area and started applying the same approach in rivers and lakes there. A friend of his found gar holding around underwater humps in lakes, and he was able to target them successfully using the same basic technique.

He told me that essentially everything I had taught him worked in his waters with very little adaptation.

That's one angler's experience, not a guarantee that the same approach will work everywhere. But it reinforced something I've learned on the Coosa.

Gar aren't simply an incidental fish you occasionally catch while fishing for something else.

They're a fish you can intentionally hunt.

Once you learn how they feed, where they hold and how to stay connected long enough for the rope fly to do its job, the challenge becomes a lot more interesting.

The gar are challenging, but they're worth it.

Fly-Fishing is Bigger Than You Think.