Gar cleaning, and another newbie

[carptracker]

My son and I took my nephew/his cousin out on Perche Creek in Missouri for a short trip in the heat of the afternoon, and the boys had a great time on the day after their graduation from high school shooting up the shortnose gar. It was relatively fast action, even though they didn't put much of a dent in the population. They were having a blast at it, and some fish were reasonably good sized for shortnose.

I spotted one really large grass carp near the edge and my son popped him with a great shot, but I don't think the arrow penetrated, or if it did the fish came off before he even got the line tight. It was pretty far away and I think maybe our recurves are not high enough poundage for that kind of work. That grassy went wild when he popped it, and even jumped out on the bank momentarily, so we got a good look at it, and my nephew got to see something big, even if it was not in the boat.

Then I came back and googled "how to clean gar" and I got who else but my good friend Christine! Thanks for the lesson - worked great and I put up some filets.

[Bulzeye]

Congrats to the boys on their graduation and a nice celebratory outing.
It was nice of dear old Dad/Uncle Duane to take them out.
It's always good to put a few in the boat, see a big one or two, and even better if something you shoot is edible.

[Fishhunter]

I got a different way to clean them that doesn't require tin snips. Cut the scales off in rings about 4 inches wide by slipping a knife up between a row, then slipping the knife all the way around the fish, separating the skin from the flesh. These rings then slip down off the fish. Passed on a bunch Sunday, but decided to put one 17# in the boat (I needed the scales). Going to crab boil the meat this week.

[carptracker]

Let me know about that crab boil. How do you do that? Actually boil the meat with crab boil in the water? What is the end result like?

[Fishhunter]

cut all the gray and red meat off, then cut in strips. I use Zataran's crab boil and boil about 4 minutes, then turn the heat off and let soak about 20 minutes. Drain, chill, and serve with coktail sause. Tastes like crawdad.

[HNI_Christine]

Yep, it's a lot like crawfish. I use the meat in stirfrys too. It holds together well. IParticularly like it with curry, garlic, butter, scallionsand ***anese noodles. Mmmm....

[carptracker]

Thanks, guys. I hope to give the boil a try soon. We eat stir fry a lot here, too, so we'll have to try gar. I need to get some more though, first. You don't boil it first for that, right? I assume you just treat it like anything else you are going to stirfry, like chicken or firm fish.

[HNI_Christine]

Yep, no boiling needed. Over cooked gar gets rubbery. When I'm stir frying it, I cut it into small shrimp sized pieces so it cooks very, very quickly.