how did you catch those baby gar? cast net? i live in GA about 20 mins south of ATL and the flint river runs thru my back yard, i have seen long nose gar out there a few times, i have tryed to get them to hit different lures but could never catch them. im gonna keep my eye out for babys out there just need to know how to catch them.
wooo hooo super stoked
- Thread starter helix149
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Yes please do Solomon I look forward to hearing your opinion on the matter whatever it may be. I feel at this point I am an experienced aquarist and semi experienced with Gar after raising the one we had last year, with all its trials and tribulations. But I do not pretend to know everything and I am always open to interpretations, new information, and opinions. Especially from someone with your experience.
I cought them when they were very small between 1 inch and 1.5 inches. I used a small bucket to dip them up. When they are that small they are extremely fragile and I would not use a dip net on them with fear of injuring them. Therefore I dip them so they stay swimming in water the entire time from find through catch and all the way home and into their grow tank. The ones I caught last year , only 2, I caught in a river in dead calm water at night with a flashlight and they were still VERY hard to see at that size. The ones I caught this year I found in daylight on a large lake along one side of one Island I was on 6 or 8 Islands that day geocaching and they were only seen on one side of one island so it takes some work to find them. The section I found them on was being hit by wind passing over deep open water if that helps any. I believe they were there because the wind pushed the water they were in to that location and they were holding in the calm water eating other animals that were pushed to them.
If you can I'd love to see pics of the large gar, the ones you caught last year? I have seen the occasional large gar down here but never any baby gar, that's neat.
Here is a link to the youtube vid of our tank with our large gar and some larger bluegills in it. I relocated the large gar and all other fish (all wild) over 3 inches to a pristine private pond several weeks ago. We were actually talking last night about how we missed our big guy and that we wanted to go see if we could see him soon. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tprBwGVIiRA
Sorry, Sol I'm bad at topographical ichthyology!E_americanus;4175407; said:being from TN there's no way he'd be catching wild pike characins, people; use the info you're provided with. --
--solomon
But i try to learn every day!
looks like you are doing a great job raising them up man! young gar (especially from that small size/stage) can be quite delicate (although more robust than walleye, pike, muskie), and so your survival thus far is good.
the stage where they are just getting big enough to eat fish is a tough one...you can keep them fed with larger zooplankton, but if you can track down some small minnow fry this will push them to the next stage (piscivory) much faster and get them to grow to a more stable and manageable size too.
keep up with water changes and they should do just fine. be sure to monitor if any of them are getting noticeably bigger than their siblings...they WILL readily each other! best of luck, and looking forward to tracking their progress--
--solomon
the stage where they are just getting big enough to eat fish is a tough one...you can keep them fed with larger zooplankton, but if you can track down some small minnow fry this will push them to the next stage (piscivory) much faster and get them to grow to a more stable and manageable size too.
keep up with water changes and they should do just fine. be sure to monitor if any of them are getting noticeably bigger than their siblings...they WILL readily each other! best of luck, and looking forward to tracking their progress--
--solomon
