Everyone else posts their stories...so what the heck...

Several friends and myself decided to have a guys night out. One of them has access to a cabin on a river. We went out last Friday night for steaks, booze and firearms in true redneck style. Specifically, one of the guys brought his .22 pistol to shoot garr. For those of you that don't know, garr are really "God's mistake" as one friend put it. They eat the babies of "good" fish.

After dinner we were all sitting around the campfire when one of the guys said he'd sure like to shoot some garr, but he didn't have a light. I had brought a few lights (Inova XO3, Fenix L1P, and my Arc (modded with a Lux1)). The guys were really amazed with the lights. I handed over the Inova and Fenix and those guys used them to spot garr underwater. They worked great.

In fact, the guy using the Fenix was so impressed he's getting one for himself. He said it would make a great camping light--and I agree. The guy using the XO3 said it was the nicest flashlight he'd ever seen in his life.

Hmmm, drunken shooting under artificial light into water?? I think I'll stay home

I'll bet the fish were impressed!

Does one eat garr or not, maybe it doesn't taste too good!!

Fishing and Firing and Flashlights!!! Shouldn't there be four F's?? Frying?

Firkleing?

Long may your nights be, and moonless...

Sorry for the tangent, but is the beverage in the animated .gif of your avatar a Shiner Bock?

Sorry for the tangent, but is the beverage in the animated .gif of your avatar a Shiner Bock?

Haha. The man knows his beer! :rock:

As for the 4 Fs...it was all guys...so...I'll keep it to 3.

And I don't think it was unsafe. The guy with the gun had only had 1 drink. I had been sipping Woodford Reserve for a few hours, but I was only carrying a light. I need to get a Thor for next time. We could just blind the garr instead of shooting them. And no, you don't eat garr. They are all bones and nastiness. Check out this photo below. They have some nasty teeth too!

Picture wont show for me, pitty, wouldnt of minded seein what garr are, never heard of them before!


Craig.

Gar Pix on Google

-LT

I have had gar before and its pretty good. Wrap the meet up in tin foil and cook it on the grill. We mixed in some canned crab meat and it was great.

Gar are actually pretty good eating. The meat is very white and since they have such a tough skin, they have few bones. You have to be careful of the teeth though...one ripped my dad's hand up pretty bad once.


The most difficult thing is cleaning one! I remember my dad and I caught a pretty big one once and ended up using a hand saw to cut through the skin/scales!

Since I am formerly from central Texas, I feel qualified to share the following recipe for gar:

4 lb. gar cleaned, scaled, with head off
1 brick
3 onions
4 cloves garlic
2 tomatoes
1 quart of water
salt and pepper to taste
2 Tbs Louisiana hot sauce

put all ingredients in large pot and cook for 1 hour. Inspect cooking progress with Inova X03.

After cooking is finished, throw away gar and eat the brick.

Cheers!

Some of my coworkers tell me they're not bad to eat. They cut the fish into steaks, then cut the little strips of meat out. The only thing I've ever used gar for is trot line bait. I imagine I've eaten gar and didn't know it. My grandfather kept everything he caught, and I ate a lot of fish when he was still alive at his house.

I hooked a gar about two weeks ago with a rooster tail. He rolled in the line. I got him close to the boat, saw the mess, and let him keep the rooster tail.

Recipe for Survival Gar, also sometimes called Gar on the half shell.

Take one whole Gar (any size) and toss into very hot embers of burned down campfire. Use any old stick to roll Gar around every couple minutes in the hot embers for about 10 minutes (longer for a big fish). Remove Gar from fire with aforementioned stick. Use any available tool, the aforementioned stick will work fine, to break open thick burned scales and skin. Eat meat with fingers. When you are hungry this is very good eating. If you are too hungry to wait for the campfire to burn down to embers you can use a newly stared fire but you need to suspend and turn the Gar in the hot part of the flames.
jc