The Case for Gar and Bowfin, North America’s Oldest Gamefish

Two of the most maligned fish in American freshwater are quietly building a following. The alligator gar and the bowfin have spent generations on the wrong end of a reputation, blamed for wrecking bass and crappie fisheries, shocked with electricity, hacked with machetes, and left to rot on riverbanks. The science has caught up, and so has a small but committed group of anglers who have figured out that both species are among the most challenging and rewarding fish you can target.

If you want a fight that pulls harder than a trophy bass and a quarry that may be older than you are, these are the fish to learn. Here is what they are, why their reputations were wrong, and how to catch them.

What makes the alligator gar worth chasing

The alligator gar is the biggest and longest-lived freshwater fish in Texas, and, along with sturgeon, it is one of just two freshwater species in the U.S. that regularly crosses 100 pounds. A full-grown fish can stretch to 8 feet and weigh 300 pounds. These are not quick-to-replace fish. Dawson Hefner, who has guided alligator gar trips on the Trinity River from a johnboat, says a 7- or 8-foot gar can be older than 70, and he figures a 6-foot fish at anywhere from 35 to 45 years old.

Most of that growth happens early. Hefner says a gar hits 5 feet in about 12 years, then adds only around half an inch a year from then on. Dan Daugherty, a fisheries research biologist with TPWD, puts the species’ lifespan at 50 to 100 years. Researchers estimate a fish’s age by reading its otolith, an ear bone, then confirming the figure with lab methods. In 2011, biologists at the agency examined the otolith from an 8-and-a-half-foot fish taken in Mississippi and pegged its age at about 95. The oldest gar researchers have landed in Texas was 63.

Why the “bass killer” reputation is wrong

Through most of the last century, sportfishermen wrote the alligator gar off as an armored, sharp-toothed pest that preyed on bass and crappie. Research has taken that apart. Dan Bennett, a fisheries biologist with TPWD, says studies show the fish does no real damage to gamefish populations. When Texas sampled gar stomachs, the majority came up empty, and the diet was dominated by rough fish such as carp and shad.

Daugherty describes it the same way. He says no study has ever found sportfish to be a primary part of what alligator gar eat. In most waters, the fish feed on carp, suckers, and buffalo, taking whatever happens to be most plentiful. A bass shows up in a stomach now and then, but never as a mainstay. He also notes that strong bass fishing and healthy gar numbers have shared the same lakes for years. Toledo Bend, Choke Canyon, Falcon, and Lake Amistad are man-made reservoirs that have carried large gar populations since the day they filled, and all of them sit among the best bass waters in Texas. In 2012, Bassmaster Magazine named Falcon the top bass lake in the nation.

The threat to people is exaggerated too. Hefner says there has never been a verified gar attack on a human, and that bites blamed on gar turn out to come from actual alligators. The genuine risk is physical: the teeth that stick out past the mouth can slice you open if a fish whips its head around.

How overharvest nearly wiped them out

The hostility did real damage. Decades of heavy killing pushed the gar’s range back from Ohio in the north down to the lower Mississippi and the drainages along the Gulf Coast. In the 1930s, Texas fisheries officials set out to wipe the species out with a boat named the Electrical Gar Destroyer, which pumped 200 volts into the water. Dam-building, flood control, and the straightening of river channels cut off migration and choked off spawning, because alligator gar reproduce only when seasonal floods spread up onto the floodplains.

Rules arrived slowly. Texas had no harvest limits of any kind until 2009, which left killing unchecked. That year TPWD set a limit of one gar per day statewide and began its research, pushed along by collapsing gar populations in Louisiana and Mississippi. In 2019, the state added a requirement that anglers report what they harvest. Daugherty says that before roughly the past dozen years, almost nothing was known about the fish.

Safeguarding the old fish is the priority. Daugherty says nearly all the large gar are females, and he describes how important those bigger, older females are to the population as “hypercritical.” Males neither live as long nor reach the same size.

Where and how to catch a trophy gar

Texas has the healthiest alligator gar populations in the country, and Falcon Reservoir holds one of the densest. It is the one place exempt from the state’s one-fish rule: on Falcon, TPWD permits up to five gar a day with no slot or length limits, a nod to the fact that the lake straddles the Texas-Mexico border and is co-managed by Mexico.

On the Trinity River near Gun Barrel City, the water runs so murky that there is almost no visibility, which turns gar fishing into a bait game. Hefner suspends a carp steak beneath a 10-inch slip float on 130-pound Dacron line. His own first gar came at 16, on a chunk of freshwater drum drifted under a Coke bottle on the Sabine River. A growing catch-and-release crowd has handed the species a cult following, though there is also a rising number of bowfishermen keen to shoot them. Hefner has brought in fish carrying healed machete and ax gashes, caved-in skulls, and jaws bent out of shape by baseball bats, a living record of how the fish was treated for generations.

The bowfin: smart, strong, and misjudged

In some regions, the bowfin wears an even rougher reputation. It is routinely dismissed as by-catch, thrown onto the bank and left to die, under the belief that its one job is to kill bass and crappie. The fish is ancient. Linnaeus described it in 1766, and scientists long held that it had changed little since the Triassic, close to 250 million years ago. In 2021, a Harvard research team found that two separate lineages of bowfin swim in U.S. waters, overturning the old idea that every bowfin was genetically identical. That finding has spurred more research and more protection.

The fish is made for a scrap. Bowfins carry enormous jaw strength, arguably the greatest of any freshwater fish on the continent, a skull as hard as stone, and rows of cone-shaped teeth that slope back toward the throat. They can gulp air through tubular nostrils and have ridden out drought and pollution.

Drew Price, a veteran Lake Champlain guide whose real specialty is fly fishing for bowfin, has championed the species for nearly 20 years. He argues the fish are far smarter than many celebrated species, pointing to their natural curiosity and saying they have met his eyes head-on. He built a method he calls “splash-bang,” slapping the surface with his pushpole and tapping on the hull, and the fish will often swarm in. His 2013 stint guiding Jeremy Wade on River Monsters opened the door to more show appearances, and renowned instructor Tom Rosenbauer took up the fish after spending time with Price. Bookings have climbed.

Just understand the bowfin makes poor eating. The flesh goes mushy fast once the fish dies and tends to taste muddy even when cooked right away, which is reason enough to let what you catch swim off.

Where to start

If you want a trophy gar, book a Texas guide on the Trinity or fish Falcon, and plan on catch-and-release. For bowfin, Lake Champlain grows the biggest fish thanks to its size, depth, and cold winters, and fly tackle has produced standing records across multiple tippet classes. Either way, you are fishing for an animal that predates most of what shares its water.

The post The Case for Gar and Bowfin, North America’s Oldest Gamefish appeared first on AllOutdoor.com.