Slow-cruising between fishing spots under bow-mounted electric trolling motor power, I was standing up front with eyes glued to the forward fishfinder screen at my feet as we ghosted across the broad, flat-as-a-pancake bay. Scanning for any deep cover that might hold fish on the sweltering summer afternoon, I was about to give up the search on the local water supply reservoir when I looked up just in time to see what I took for a log floating just underwater off the bow. The two-foot-long “log” reacted with a violent splash as I slapped the handle of the motor aside to turn away from the obstruction before it fouled the plastic prop.

I needn’t have worried. The ‘log’ was long gone by the time I settled down to figure out just what had happened. Before we moved another 20 yards, I spotted another log-like object just under the surface ahead. I shut the motor off and allowed the pontoon boat to drift close enough to the creature to make an ID. As with the first encounter, the sub-surface fish allowed us to get within rod-poking distance before submerging with a sudden flick of its broad, spotted tail.

I went on to discover that the bay was full of gars basking in the sunlight. Once I learned what to look for and dialed-in the best approach (motor upwind under silent electric, turn off the motor, and allow the boat to drift toward the fish), I counted nearly a dozen of the long, narrow fish that resemble Northern Pike but for their distinctive heads that give way to an exaggerated, prehistoric-looking snout. The dark-green colored fish were spotted and some measured nearly three feet in length.

Naturally, I wanted to catch one, having never hooked a gar of any kind over more than half a century of fishing. I had seen one caught in the same lake when I was a kid by a guy in a nearby boat dunking live minnows for crappies, and that gar was the strangest fish I had ever seen. So I shouldn’t have been surprised that they were in the reservoir. I just had not encountered any since.

With no live bait aboard, I threw every minnow-imitating artificial lure I had at the fish I found that day, and received nary a glance from a gar. When that happened, I went into study mode. I learned that gar are indeed prehistoric fish species with unique, overlapping ganoid scales and a long snout filled with a single row of short, sharp, fine teeth, which they use to capture prey fish by ambushing and stunning them with a lightning-fast slashing action, before quaffing the baitfish headfirst.

There are three species of gar in the area of the Midwest I was fishing, according to the book The Fishes of Ohio by Ohio State University and Stone Lab Ichthyologist Milton B. Trautman – a friend of my dad’s back in the day when they both taught there. Our local gar include the spotted, shortnose and the much more common longnose gar, the latter description of which matched the fish I had encountered.

Longnose gar are widely distributed from the Mississippi watershed to the east coast and from the Great Lakes watershed down through Florida. When it comes time for spawn, as with many species of fish, larger female gar are surrounded by numerous males ready to fertilize her eggs as she releases them over vegetation, including mats of attached algae. The adult gars’ bony scales provide hard, armor-like protection from many would-be predators and abrasions from the dense vegetation that they often inhabit.

During the summer, longnose gar can be found skulking around the entire water body, in protected bays, along the rocky shorelines, as well as in dikes, lower stretches of streams and marshes. The state record in my waters was 49 inches long, weighed 25 pounds and was caught in 1966 in the Ohio River.

Because of their ability to gulp water to obtain oxygen, much like tarpon and some species of invasive catfish, gar survive throughout the summer in stream backwaters and oxbows too warm and/or devoid of dissolved oxygen for most gamefish species to tolerate. This is right where I found them, on the surface when nothing else could tolerate the heat. I also learned that gar are considered ‘rough’ fish through most of their range, and their propensity to cruise along just under the surface makes them prime targets of bow fishermen, both wading yeomen and those releasing arrows from boats such as my pontoon.

That said, gar can be caught by rod and reel with the use of a live bait fish under a bobber, or with a special hookless gar rig also known as a ‘rope lure.’ Most rope lures are homemade, using combed, braided rope or decorative yarn or can be purchased pre-made from specialty lure makers (Google ‘rope lure for gar’). The lures are designed to fool the fish into a strike by mimicking a baitfish, then allowing the fish’s actions to entangle its sharp teeth into the shredded nylon rope fibers long enough to reel it in.

Since gar are often seen lurking just under the surface, sight-casting to them can result in a vicious strike. I also learned that when using live minnows as bait, it’s important to allow the gar to return and grab the stunned baitfish before setting the hook. That’s not the case when using a rope lure, which immediately begins to snag the fish by its toothy maw.

At that point, a hooked gar may jump or run or both, and the battle can be formidable. At boat- or bank-side, aggressive flopping may occur by a fish that is presumed to be subdued, so be ready. A large-hooped landing net and gloves are recommended to avoid being cut or scratched by the teeth or rough scales while landing them and removing the lure or hook.

Most folks who catch gar release them unharmed, appreciating their role as a surviving, prehistoric relic. They are also often released because where gar are found, most anglers know there are plenty of better-tasting, easier-to-catch fish to tangle with and put on the dinner table.