Never starved any of my gars to get them onto sticks. I just feed them live by dropping single gut-loaded (just fed with a good flake and crushed carni-vore sticks) feeder minnows in the same corner of the tank until the gar begins to anticipate being fed in that corner. That takes about a week. Then, I start the following week by dropping a minnow then, dropping a carni stick. I repeat the alternating minnow/stick routine until the gar stops spitting the stick. Usually only takes a few days until the gar actually eats the sticks and I can cut back on minnow drops. By the end of the 2nd week, the gar is only getting daily sticks with live gut-loaded minnows only occassionally.
This method has worked every time on my spotted, longnose, FL, tropical, gator, and cuban gars.