Gar Fish: A Photographer’s Guide to North America’s Living Fossil

Photographing gar in the Florida springs

By William Drumm, underwater photographer and ocean ambassador

A gar does not look like it belongs in the present tense. It hangs motionless in the shallows, a long cylinder of armour with a beak full of needles, and it has been doing exactly that, essentially unchanged, since before the dinosaurs died.

I photograph them in the Florida springs, where the water is clear enough to see what they actually are rather than the swamp monster they get treated as. They are among the strangest and most misunderstood fish in North America, and almost everything most people think they know about them is wrong.

What Is a Gar?

Gar are freshwater fish of the family Lepisosteidae. Seven species survive, and North America holds most of them. They have long cylindrical bodies, a dorsal fin set far back toward the tail, a beak lined with needle teeth, and a coat of hard, interlocking, enamelled scales that is closer to armour than to anything you would call a scale.

They are also the last of their line. Everything else in that family is a fossil.

The species you are likely to meet

• Alligator gar (Atractosteus spatula). The giant. Broad, blunt snout with a double row of teeth in the upper jaw, and the only gar that gets genuinely huge. Gulf states, Mississippi basin, Texas.
• Longnose gar (Lepisosteus osseus). The one most people picture. Extremely long, thin snout, more than twice the length of the head. Widespread across the east and the Mississippi drainage.
• Spotted gar (Lepisosteus oculatus). Heavy dark spotting across the body, head and fins. Shorter snout than a longnose.
• Florida gar (Lepisosteus platyrhincus). Very similar to the spotted gar and easy to confuse. The tell is the distance from the eye to the gill cover, which is shorter than the length of the snout.
• Shortnose gar (Lepisosteus platostomus). Plain, stubby snouted, mostly Mississippi basin.

Florida is unusual in having four of them in the same state, spread through the spring runs, rivers and lakes. It is one of the best places anywhere to see gar, and the clear spring water is the only reason photographs like these are possible at all.

How Big Do Gar Get?

Most gar are not monsters. Longnose and Florida gar generally run 2 to 4 feet, and a big one is an event.

Alligator gar are the exception, and they are in a different category entirely. They routinely exceed 6 feet, they can pass 8, and they are the largest fish that lives exclusively in fresh water in North America.

The current IGFA all tackle world record is a 283 pound alligator gar, caught by Art Weston with guide Kirk Kirkland on Sam Rayburn Reservoir in Texas in September 2023. He took it on 6 pound line, which is absurd. It broke a 279 pound record that had stood for 72 years. Weston also holds a 153 pound alligator gar record on 2 pound test, which is more absurd still.

Teeth, Scales and Armour

Two things make a gar difficult to kill, and both of them are ancient.

The teeth are the obvious one. A gar’s beak is a long bony trap lined with slender, sharp, backward set teeth, and it is used with a fast sideways slash rather than a forward lunge. It is built to hold a fish, not to chew one. Alligator gar carry a second row of teeth in the upper jaw that the other species do not.

The scales are the interesting one. Gar are covered in ganoid scales: rigid, diamond shaped, interlocking plates coated in a hard enamel like substance called ganoine. They do not overlap like normal fish scales. They tile, like armour. The result is so tough that Native American peoples used gar scales as arrowheads and as abrasive tools, and people still make jewellery and leather goods out of alligator gar hide today. An alligator gar is, functionally, a fish in chain mail.

Gar Breathe Air

This is the trick that explains everything else about them.

A gar’s swim bladder is connected to its throat and lined with blood vessels. It works as a primitive lung. Gar rise to the surface, gulp air, and take oxygen directly out of it. You will see them do it constantly in warm water, a slow roll and a small break at the surface.

It means a gar can live in water that would suffocate almost any other predatory fish. Warm, stagnant, low oxygen swamp and backwater, the kind of place a bass would die in, is a gar’s preferred habitat and its refuge. It is why they have no serious competition, and it is a large part of why they are still here.

A Design That Has Not Changed in 100 Million Years

Gar fossils from the Cretaceous are recognisably gar. Put one next to a fish from a Florida spring today and you would struggle to make a case that anything important had happened in between.

They lived alongside dinosaurs. They watched the dinosaurs go. Gar have one of the slowest rates of molecular evolution ever measured in a vertebrate, which is the scientific way of saying the design was finished and there was nothing left to fix. Everything about them, the armour, the lung, the patience, is a solution that kept working while the world rearranged itself around them.

Are Gar Dangerous?

No.

There is no credible record of an alligator gar killing a person. They are ambush predators of fish, they are not interested in you, and a gar in the water will simply move away. The teeth and the size and the prehistoric face have earned them a reputation they have not remotely earned in practice.

There is one genuine hazard and it has nothing to do with the mouth. Gar eggs are toxic to humans. The roe carries an ichthyotoxin that will make you badly ill, and cooking does not destroy it. It is a real toxin, not a folk tale, and it is presumably a defence for eggs laid exposed in shallow water. If you keep a gar for the table, throw the roe away.

Can You Eat Gar?

The meat, yes. It is firm and white and genuinely good, and gar has been a regional food across the Gulf states for as long as anyone has been fishing there. Gar balls are a real dish and people are serious about them.

The eggs, absolutely not. See above. This is the one thing worth knowing before anyone cooks a gar.

Gar vs Pike: How to Tell Them Apart

People mix them up constantly, and it is a reasonable mistake, because they solved the same problem in the same shape. They are not related.

• Scales. The giveaway. Gar are armoured in hard enamelled ganoid plates. Pike have ordinary soft, flexible scales.
• Snout. A gar’s is a long bony beak. A pike’s is broader and more duck billed.
• Dorsal fin. On a gar it sits far back, close to the tail. On a pike it is further forward.
• Water. Pike want cool, clear, oxygenated northern water. Gar want warm, still, low oxygen southern water. They barely overlap.
• Breathing. A gar surfaces to gulp air. A pike does not.

The Trash Fish That Was Not

For most of the twentieth century gar were treated as vermin. They were shot, dynamited, netted and destroyed on purpose, on the theory that they were eating the bass and the crappie that anglers actually wanted. Some states ran organised extermination programmes.

It was wrong. Gar are native apex predators and they do what apex predators do: they take the sick, the slow and the surplus, and they hold the whole prey community in shape. Alligator gar also eat invasive carp, which is exactly the job nobody else wants. Populations that were wrecked have been slow to come back, because a fish that takes a decade to mature does not bounce.

The perception has finally turned. Alligator gar are now managed as a trophy species in several states and actively restored in parts of their former range. It took about a century.

Photographing Gar

They are a difficult subject for a simple reason: they are long, thin, and almost always horizontal, which is the least interesting shape you can put in a frame.

What works is getting low and close with a wide lens, so the beak comes at the camera and the body falls away behind it, and using the light. The Florida springs give you sun shafts through clear water and a green weed bed to work against, and a gar hanging still in that light stops looking like a swamp fish and starts looking like what it is, which is an animal from another era.

They also let you get close. Gar do not spook the way most fish do. They hold position, they watch you, and they move off on their own schedule. It is the patience of something that has never needed to hurry.

More on the craft of this in how to become an underwater photographer. Prints are in the shop, and a portion of every sale goes to marine conservation.

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Frequently Asked Questions About Gar Fish

What is a gar fish?

Gar are freshwater fish in the family Lepisosteidae, with long cylindrical bodies, a beak full of needle teeth, and armour plated scales. Seven species survive worldwide. North America has most of them: the alligator gar, longnose gar, shortnose gar, spotted gar and Florida gar. They are the last of a lineage that goes back well over 100 million years, and they have barely changed.

How big do gar get?

It depends entirely on the species. Longnose and Florida gar are typically 2 to 4 feet. Alligator gar are a different animal: they routinely pass 6 feet and can exceed 8. The IGFA all tackle world record is a 283 pound alligator gar caught by Art Weston on Sam Rayburn Reservoir in Texas in September 2023, on 6 pound line, breaking a 279 pound record that had stood for 72 years.

Are gar fish dangerous to humans?

No. There is no credible record of an alligator gar killing a person. They have a mouth full of teeth and they look prehistoric, and that is where the reputation comes from. They are ambush predators of fish. Handle one badly on a boat and you can get cut, in the way you can get cut by any large toothy fish, but a gar in the water is no threat to a swimmer.

Can you eat gar?

Yes, the flesh is good, firm and white, and it is a genuine regional food across the Gulf states. But the roe is a different matter. Gar eggs are toxic to humans. The roe contains an ichthyotoxin that will make you seriously ill, and it is not destroyed by cooking. Eat the meat, throw the eggs away.

Are gar eggs poisonous?

Yes. Gar roe is toxic to humans and to many other mammals and birds. It is a real toxin, not a folk belief, and cooking does not neutralise it. This is thought to be a defence for the eggs, which are otherwise laid in shallow water and completely exposed. Never eat gar roe.

What is the difference between a gar and a pike?

They are not related, they just converged on the same shape. The quickest tell is the scales: gar are covered in hard, interlocking, enamel coated ganoid scales that feel like armour plating. Pike have ordinary soft fish scales. Gar have a much longer, narrower, more beak like snout, and the dorsal fin sits far back near the tail. Pike are northern hemisphere predators of cold water. Gar prefer warm, still, low oxygen water.

Can gar breathe air?

Yes, and it is their best trick. A gar’s swim bladder is connected to its throat and lined with blood vessels, so it works as a primitive lung. Gar rise to the surface, gulp air, and can survive in stagnant, warm, oxygen poor water that would kill almost any other predatory fish. That is exactly why they are still here after 100 million years.

Where do gar live?

Warm, slow, shallow fresh water and brackish water across the eastern and southern United States, down into Mexico and Central America. Rivers, oxbows, swamps, reservoirs and, in Florida, the spring runs. Florida has four gar species, which makes it one of the best places on Earth to see them.

How old are gar as a species?

The gar lineage goes back more than 100 million years, and gar fossils from the Cretaceous are recognisably gar. They lived alongside dinosaurs and outlasted them. They have one of the slowest rates of molecular evolution measured in any vertebrate, which is a technical way of saying the design was finished a very long time ago.

Why are gar covered in such hard scales?

Gar have ganoid scales: rigid, diamond shaped, interlocking plates coated in a hard enamel like layer called ganoine. The result is closer to chain mail than to fish scales. They are tough enough that Native American peoples used them as arrowheads and abrasive tools, and they are still made into jewellery and leather goods today.

How do you catch a gar?

With difficulty, because that bony beak is almost impossible to set a hook into. Most gar anglers use a rope lure, a frayed nylon rope with no hook at all, which tangles in the teeth. Others use small live or cut bait fished slowly, or bowfish for them in the shallows. Gar are also famously slow to commit, so patience matters more than tackle.

Are gar good for the ecosystem?

Yes, and this is a reversal. Gar were culled for decades as trash fish and as competitors to sport fish. That was wrong. They are native apex predators that keep prey fish populations balanced, they eat invasive species including Asian carp, and alligator gar are now being actively restored in parts of their former range.