Question on Gar...

[Stratosman]

We were fishing on the Croix on Saturday afternoon and saw what we thought were smallies or white bass surfacing in this area, we scooted over to it to take a look and after a few casts with no hits we were wondering what the deal was... so we eased in closer only to see hundreds of surfacing gar... they would comne up to the surface, and shoot right back to the bottom. Didn't see anything obvious that they would be feeding on, thought that was strange. They were occupying an area of about 3-4 acres...

Is this common, I have never seen anything like it?

[hogsucker]

Those gar were "breaking". These fish will roll at the surface occasionally to gulp air, because they posess a sort of primitive lung similar to the bowfin. I have usually seen this behavior with Shortnose Gar in the kind of numbers you are talking about, but on the Croix I would think they may have been Longnose Gar. What was the top size of the fish you saw? By the way, I'm envious. A concentration of Longnose Gar like that is extremely uncommon up here, as we are on the far northern edge of their range. Next time, free-line a shiner around them and see if any will take. They are a blast to catch! ~hogsucker

[Stratosman]

Didn't get a super close look at them, but they all seemed to be about the same size, maybe around 24 inches... we were wishing we had something to throw out to them but had only artificials that day.

They were everywhere, all around the boat, from 10'; of water out into 30+ feet. It was kinda cool

Thanks for the insight Hogsucker. Figured someone would know the deal.