Bass-gar Relationship Question

[dwiebenga]

In my last two trips to the lake, I noticed a substantial increase in the number of gar surfacing in the morning in areas that I normally target for bass.

Are the bass being impacted by the gar? Do the gar run the bass out of their normal positions? Anyother insight would be interesting.

dave

[carolina-rig-01]

i have heard people say before that if there are gar in an area you might as well leave. however monday i was on table rock and caught a ton of fish, and 90% of them were in an area where the gar were thick. not really an answer to your question but maybe it will help you out some.

[bassman1308]

I had someone tell me that bass will hang under gar gourging on shad that the gar have chopped up. I think he was speculating, as most fishing experts tend to do, but I remember a may night a few years ago when I sat on a 50 yd streach of bank all night catching over 3 limits of bass and many smaller ones. Gar surfaced around my boat most of the night. Also on bull Shoals, I caught several blacks & whites casting spoons under surfacing gar. Snagged a couple gar too. Man was that fun.

[Fishrman]

Fished on Friday of last week, sorry so late of a post. I too had gar surfacing, but I caught several bass in every spot I stopped at. Caught the fish shallow on a spinnerbait and on a rattle trap. The gar did not seem to bother the bass. I have seen where the bite seemed to be affected by gar presence, but that is in the spring.

[Crappie5]

My experience with the gar is nothing but gar. I have never spooned under them to see if there are any Bass though, makes sense. I have been on Bass & Crappie one day and then the next gar are everywhere and can't catch anything. I was way up the Kings yesterday looking for a crappie bite and found several gar rolling.

I wound up with 11 keeper crappie on mostly minnows a few on jigs. Had one 14" crappie and one 14-1/2".

My counter had 66 crappie on it before the end of the day. Lots and lots of real small crappie moving up right now.

[chub minnow]

One of the biggest smallmouth I caught this year was at Gar Hole on the War Eagle. As the name implies - tons of gar. I caught it on a plastic crawfish. Relevant? Probably not.

[Hunter91]

Growing up, I use to fish Toledo Bend on the LA/TX border a lot. One of the best springtime bassin spots was called the gar hole. And Man, there were some gar in there that made you think a 14 ft boat was way to small for that area

[J.E.]

Think about this. What are the Gar eating? What do bass eat? Find the bait, find the fish????