Circle back to the Parie Tarpon.

I have been working at the bench more than at the water’s edge lately, and I have been looking into certain things that I have before deemed impossible.  Most know me for my work with Gar and lack of knowledge regarding a spelling and grammar check.  Gar have been a way of life for me since I  moved far from the home range of Pike and Muskie.  I had once felt gar would fill the void left in my angling obsession buy the biggest monsters of my childhood.

 

Gar have not really replaced esoxs, but they have made themselves out to be a better option than I had thought.  Like all fish, big Gar are hard fighters, but monsters really can be a hand full.  Up until now I have only tried one method for Gar.  The ever more debated rope fly method worked for me for years.  It catches fish, and with some invention is a dynamite method.  But fly fisherman have issues.  Purists say it is not really fishing, or whatever.  But I will give out one thing.  Rope gets heavy.  Casting rope flies is like casting a wet beach towel.  You need rope flies to be in then ten inch size range to tangle the best, and you really need to get out massive size rods to cast them.

 

Rope also is more nice to the jaws of fish, but the back fire of this is that the gar don’t feel like they are in as much danger and don’t fight till the see you.  This doesn’t happen all the time but it does happen a lot.

I went looking at new ways to catch them.  Fly fishing gives us the best chance to set a hook into the solid bone like jaws of a Gar.  The problem is that unlike baby Tarpon, the jaws are thin and give little of a target, you have a decent chance of missing the jaw.  Some decided to use a treble hook.  But if you have ever landed a treble hook in the back of your head, you don’t want to.  The advantage to using hooks is that you can have a quick release, and remove the hook, and say the fly get away attacked to a fish, it will dissolve out and like is back to normal for the fish.

SO I decided to trade in my rope.  I found another option.  Gar fishermen around the country are trying to find new ways to catch fish.   Casey Smartt or Gartooth Outdoors found a interesting solution.   He started to use a genius method.  With a tube fly and a 3/0 circle hook he found the hook caught around Gar’s lower Jaw.  I have been working on this method.  So far, I have had trouble getting to Gar.  Droughts have shrunk my favorite Gar holes.  Now I have to travel or fish the muddiest and dying Kansas river.  Once a gar high way, now a place to forget to memory.  I have a time to make more than a afternoon trip this week.  I’m planning a on a big trip, but here is the flies I have designed.  Here is to hoping they work.