Longnose Gar and Gar Flies
I have been getting a lot of questions about fly fishing for gar, so i thought i would start by posting a few Canyon Lake gar videos and photos and some of the flies I use to catch them. I’ll follow up with some tutorials soon.
The flies shown here hook the gar, rather than entangle them like rope-style flies. The key is using a large high-quality circle hook mounted as a trailer on a tube fly, or as a single hook on a short-bodied streamer. Typically when a gar strikes the fly, a slow steady hook-set will cause the hook to seat firmly around the the gar’s lower jaw. Hookup percentages are not stellar, but are pretty good. Certainly they are a vast improvement over standard flies and better than any other hooking methods I have tried.
Circle hooks are used on all my gar flies. Tube flies with a circle hook trailer are especially effective.
caseysmartt.com 
8 Responses to “Longnose Gar and Gar Flies”
Nice bro
John Carpenter Maverick Restoration & Waterproofing LLC 15255 Gulf Freeway # E-101 Houston, TX. 77034 O. 832-486-9685 P. 281-222-6611 Fax 1+409-925-3215 john@mavrestoration.com http://www.mavrestoration.com
Great !! I really like the flies and circle hook concept. Those are some serious gar, Casey !!
Thanks!
Are you actually hooking the fish or are their teeth tangled in the fly material?
Hello Michael.
These flies hook the fish. I don’t use any flies that tangle in the gar’s teeth.
Casey
[…] gar fisherman Casey Smartt has some incredible ropeless flies on his blog that i hope to evolve to soon. […]
I live in South Texas, the Rio Grand Valley to be exact & we have some serious gars swimming around our local channels. I HAVE to tie one of these flies on and give it a try. The circle hook is a nice choice for a trailer. Great looking flies. I will post an RGV Gar caught on a fly per your design as soon as I can.
Hello Danny.
The circle hook flies were really designed for Longnose gar. Let me know if they work on those alligator gar. I would guess a big fly tied on a tarpon hook would work better for alligator gar, because they are a bit more fleshy.
Let me know how it works out!
Casey
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