One of the first animals I ever took with a bow was an
alligator gar. I took my wheelie with me on a crappy fishing trip to Lake Weis. I couple gars were finning near the shoreline. I was a lucky shot at the skinny 3 inch body at about 30 yards. The gar was only 26". I quickly learned that once you arrow the gar, you have another problem--how to get him off the arrow once you get him to the boat. haha Even on this small one it beak full of the razor sharp teeth is quite scary. I managed to slide him to the middle of the shaft, unscrew the fishing point, then slide him into the live well.
Another time a friend and I were fishing below the spillway of Barren River Reservor. The fishing was slow, so we went up a little feeder creek. Their were literally 100's of gar in this little creek. Since nothing else was biting, I tied a steel leader to the spider wire on my casting rod. I removed a treble hook from one of my lures and hooked up a minnow. I flipped the minnow right across the nose of a gar. He followed it down as it dropped and took it. I knew it would take him awhile to munch the minnow down from the boney nose to the softer tissue of his mouth. I pushed the release on the reel and let him take all the line he wanted. Half an adult beverage later, I reeled up yards and yards of slack line and set the hook HARD. The gar exploded to the surface like a marlin 70 or 80 yards from the boat. It was a hoot landing him. He was small 28 inches maybe. I caught another the same way. It was a bit bigger.
Then I decided we needed to fine a 40 incher or bigger. We trolled around for a bit and found us a monster gar. It a lot longer than my little 36 inche emergency boat paddle. I flipped the minnow rig across his beak and handed the pole to my friend and opened another adult beverage. We it was half consumed, I instructed Tom to reel up the slack until he felt the fish, point the rod tip to the water and jerk hard all the way across the bow of the boat. Fifteen minutes later, Tom had the gar to the boat.
Now, unhooking those small gar with the needle nose pliers was no concern to me. But, I didn't want to get my hand that close to this monster. I grab the boat paddle and attempted to smack him across the head. Well, I snapped the line and the gar swam away. haha haha
My point being to this long story is, have a plan to deal with a monster gar once you get him to the boat.
correction: these were long nose gar not alligator gar. sorry
