Tell me about fishing for gars

Pilchards, Garfish, Berley, Whitebait, Fresh Squid, Tuna Oil, Chicken, etc
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4liters
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Tell me about fishing for gars

Post by 4liters » Wed Jan 29, 2020 9:08 pm

After my debacle of a effort at Portland over the long weekend I decided that I needed a backup source of fresh baits and/or livies when the water was too stirred up for squid to be a realistic target in a short bait collecting session before targeting something a bit higher up the food chain.

Gars (being kingy candy) seem like a sensible target, apparently being available almost anyplace where there is shallow water and a weed covered seafloor. Unfortunately I'm crap at catching them.

Most people I've spoken to say they're the easiest fish in the bay to catch but I've struggled to get more than one or two over any entire day.

To get some practice I went to the Grammar School Lagoon today to have a crack at them. First stop was close to the moorings, I anchored up and got the burley going. Pretty soon there were a bunch of minnows in the burley trail and a school of pinkies mooching in the 2m deep, crystal clear water. No gars though, and weed pretty quickly became an issue as the tide pushed clumps of seagrass into my lines, fouling the hooks.

Next stop was near the mouth of the channel, the weed was still a bit of an issue but a potentially bigger issue was that the wind was 90 degrees to the current flow and it was blowing my float out of the berley trail. After 40min or so of not catching a thing it was time to move again.

Final stop was over at Avalon. It's not a huge trip across from the lagoon, and this time I started drifting rather than anchoring. This was a bit more successful - I was moving in roughly the same speed and direction as the weed so it wasn't getting dragged into my lines nearly as much, the burley trail went straight out in the direction I had drifted from, and the float and unweighted hook I had out were both right in the middle of the trail. Not only that, I could see gars in the trail from time to time, and I even caught a few.

The problems with this approach were that I was plagued by tommy ruff and micro pinkies, and most of the smaller gars were not hitting the baits for some reason - the only ones I got were quite big with the red beaks, which isn't a problem as such but for bait I'd rather have lots of smaller ones rather than a couple of big ones.

My rigs:
Unweighted size 12 Gama longshank, drifted back down the trail
Size 12 Gama under a Gillies quill float, weighted down with 2 split shot sinkers so only the top quarter or so of the float was above the surface

Burley was chook pellets and tuna oil, wetted with a bit of water so it went all mushy.

Bait was small (less than 5mm) squares of PPB IQF pilchards.

Some thoughts:

I wonder if my burley was fine enough? There were some larger chunks coming out of the bucket and I'm not sure if that was feeding the gars too much. Next time I'm going to put the water and pellets into the food processor to make sure they're really fine and see if that makes a difference. I'm keen to hear what others think about this.

Are my hooks too big? They look like they should fit in the mouth of a fairly small gar but maybe they're a bit sensitive to hook size/bait size?

Will they swallow a moving bait? Drifting worked better than anchoring for me today, but 4 gars from 7 hours of fishing is a far cry from a quick bait collecting session. Does anyone else do it this way? Or is it generally better to anchor.

When anchored, how do people deal with the wind, weed, current etc. I can see it working well enough in a location where there is sufficient current flow to keep the kayak, berley trail and lines all lined up but in the low flow parts of the bay like pretty much all of Corio Bay is it still viable?


Here's some pics from the day. There's something wrong with the camera in my phone, it's struggling to focus properly for some reason. It didn't look like there was any crap on the lens so maybe it's just been dropped a few too many times.
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You can see the size of some of the burley bits in this shot, is that too big?


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I got a nice flatty on a plastic while drifting (another reason I'd love to get better at this method of catching gars)


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Obligatory sink pic


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Pinkies


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Minnows sheltering next to the yak. I scooped a few up in my landing net and used some as bait but nothing showed any interest


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Anyway, I'm interested in hearing peoples' thoughts.
2015/16 Fisting Victoria Species comp total: 289cm
Brown Trout: 37cm
Flathead: 51cm; Squid: 36cm; Australian Salmon: 51cm; Snapper 46cm; Silver Trevally 23cm; KGW: 45cm
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Irishfisherman
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Re: Tell me about fishing for gars

Post by Irishfisherman » Wed Jan 29, 2020 9:21 pm

Hi 4liters,
In the bay I have found that the easiest and most effective way to catch gars is to simply walk around the beaches at night with a bright headlamp and scoop them up in a net, the same technique can be applied in a boat and is even more effective, simply drive around until you find a patch and then the rest is quite easy and fun.

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Re: Tell me about fishing for gars

Post by 4liters » Wed Jan 29, 2020 9:25 pm

Irishfisherman wrote:
Wed Jan 29, 2020 9:21 pm
Hi 4liters,
In the bay I have found that the easiest and most effective way to catch gars is to simply walk around the beaches at night with a bright headlamp and scoop them up in a net, the same technique can be applied in a boat and is even more effective, simply drive around until you find a patch and then the rest is quite easy and fun.
Yeah I've done that, I tried scooping them from the yak using the head torch but they seemed to be spooked very easily so I went and bought a flounder light thinking maybe having the light under water would work a bit better. I haven't tried the flounder light from the yak yet.

I'm more hoping to be able to fish for them during the day on my way out to fish for something bigger which rules out scooping them under torchlight unfortunately.
2015/16 Fisting Victoria Species comp total: 289cm
Brown Trout: 37cm
Flathead: 51cm; Squid: 36cm; Australian Salmon: 51cm; Snapper 46cm; Silver Trevally 23cm; KGW: 45cm
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Re: Tell me about fishing for gars

Post by denis barden » Wed Jan 29, 2020 11:41 pm

Try the Indented Heads boat ramp area late at night-looking at the ramp the left hand side,wade around with a light and dip net.One guy that does this comes all the way from Dandenong.Look out for stingers with nasty barbs
Very early in morning try the entrance to the harbour at St Leonards-near the 5 knot advice post ,best when tide moving or bit windy,Ive caught more on a windy morning than a still one -moves the float up and down
Old bay trout or silverfish as bait-Big silverfish at Mortimers service station at Drysdale -Cut up into small pieces
Ive tried all sorts of hooks probably best is size 10 long shank.
Ive tried heaps of ideas with berley-One im mucking around with now is old icecream contaner with water and tuna oil frozen,take 4 of these with you -one at a time put in net and float out back of boat -last about 15 minutes each

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Re: Tell me about fishing for gars

Post by Robbie1950 » Thu Jan 30, 2020 5:14 am

Good topic litres, I posted a similar topic not long ago. I would also love to get on them as a love eating them.

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Re: Tell me about fishing for gars

Post by AE092 » Thu Jan 30, 2020 8:15 am

Try using silverfish, you can buy them in blocks at most Asian fish mongers and they work a treat if defrosted.

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Kenle
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Re: Tell me about fishing for gars

Post by Kenle » Thu Jan 30, 2020 8:21 am

Nice fat juicey gars mate, and decent flatty too as bonus. Small gars my favourite bait for snappers but I usually just scoop them at night in weedy shallows like some already mentioned. I'm landbase so not sure how they go during the day but I know best bait for them are silverfish, maggots or even Flathead meat. I was on a charter once and we stumbled across a big school of gars and we just flicked unweighted bits of Flathead meat on a size 8 long shank out and was pulling them out every second. Ended up with over 100 big gars. This was over 10 years ago and it wasn't even in the shallows or near weeds, just out in the open waters. Cheers for sharing mate :tu:

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Re: Tell me about fishing for gars

Post by Seniorfisho » Thu Jan 30, 2020 8:35 am

I've found that Gars can be a bit timid at times even if they are around you they might not bite. Cloudy days fish better for me than sunny days but it still might not matter. The best advice I can give is to use maggots for bait, they can't seem to resist them. They will take a slowly moving bait at times if you slowly reel line in, It's been an observation of mine that they don't like a lot of current, right inside corio harbour near all the little jetties is full of them, you can see all the weed right along there

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Re: Tell me about fishing for gars

Post by cheaterparts » Thu Jan 30, 2020 9:27 am

AE092 wrote:
Thu Jan 30, 2020 8:15 am
Try using silverfish, you can buy them in blocks at most Asian fish mongers and they work a treat if defrosted.
As above or very small pieces of prawn on you no 10 or 12 long shank hook Weight your feather float so only 25 mm of the top of the float is above the water. And my go to burley bread crumbs and sardine oil

By a cheap can of sardine in oil. Crack the tin open and poor the oil into a small container. Add some cheap no name bread crumbs and mix it up. You won’t it to be quite dry just damp enough to hold together if you pinch it between your fingers

Then to burley you just take a pinch and drop it in the water it will seperate into a fine burley that will pull gars up. Hope that is some help
My kayak PBs
Gummy shark 128 Cm - Elephant fish 85 Cm - Snapper 91 Cm - KG Whiting 49 Cm - Flathead 55 Cm - Garfish 47 Cm - Silver Trevally 40 Cm - Long Tail Tuna 86 Cm - snook 64 Cm - Couta 71 Cm - Sth Calamari 44 Cm hood - Cobia 117 cm


Cheater

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Re: Tell me about fishing for gars

Post by AE092 » Thu Jan 30, 2020 11:49 am

cheaterparts wrote:
Thu Jan 30, 2020 9:27 am
By a cheap can of sardine in oil. Crack the tin open and poor the oil into a small container. Add some cheap no name bread crumbs and mix it up. You won’t it to be quite dry just damp enough to hold together if you pinch it between your fingers

Then to burley you just take a pinch and drop it in the water it will seperate into a fine burley that will pull gars up. Hope that is some help
That's a pretty good idea, bread is cheap too so I might give this a go next time

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