In East Texas and Western Louisiana we now fishem, 300# test line on the compound bow reel. Same arrows and line you use for actual alligators which with a tag and season you can bowfish them too, pretty easy finding gators in East Texas now. Both species have rebounded well. Yes Rayburn is known for its monster sized gars so is all of the Neches river basin, same for the lower Trinity too huge gar and much gators in both.
Gar is not bad eating once you get the bones out and sawzall it into chunks it cooks like firm white meat like gator tail meat. we grillem or deep fry it or smoke it a Cajun cooker aka the R2D2 or the East Texas boys use the 55 gal drum smoker horizontal or vertical drum don’t matter both get the job done. It’s always a tuff choice between R2D2, the barrels or the Weber kettle have all 4 in the back each get used at least a couple times per season. The cinder block pit with diamond grate gets all the feral hog loving which has no closed season here. We hate ferals it’s shoot on sight, using the one hand no nuts method for eaters. That’s if you can pick it up with one hand at arms length and see it don’t got nuts that’s a eater hog.
You can shoot gar year round gator season ended Sept 30th for core areas and won’t open for the other area’s till April 1st hoping for a gator this year. Stupid legislator passed a law banning rifles and bows from public river beds against our Texas constitution at that it hasn’t made it to the state supreme court yet. At least it exempts bowfishing from a boat or bank. Some rich land owner’s lobbied to keep the public off “their” rover banks uh no crapbrains river’s ,lakes and inundated swamplands are the people’s lands grrrr they can’t keep you from access public lands,nor fishing ,nor shotguns for birds, small game or deer in season or hogs for that matter.
I’m glad to hear people eat them. I saw so many people just kill them and throw them back in the water or on the shore when I was in Texas.
We live in ETX and have a place on the Ouchita North of Monroe LA.