John Paul Morris, the son of Bass Pro Shops CEO Johnny Morris, sizes up the jaws of the 8-foot-3-inch long alligator gar he caught on a bow fishing trip.Posted on 06/30/2009 8:19:30 AM PDT by BGHater
Texans Kill Crafty Critters With Crossbows; Fishing Limits Are the Order of the Day
CROCKETT, Texas -- The sadly misunderstood alligator gar, reviled for its frighteningly huge and prehistoric appearance and rows of razor-sharp teeth, has been hunted for centuries.
Fishermen despise the gar because they believe the fish devour prized bass and crappie. Swimmers and boaters fear the gar's alligator-shaped jaws could take a chunk out of them in the water.
But in recent times, alligator gar have experienced a kind of trash-to-trophy renaissance as sportsmen discovered the thrill of hunting the beasts, which can weigh up to 300 pounds and reach 8 feet in length. Gar hunting, with rod-and-reel as well as crossbow, has spawned a booming market for guides who charge as much as $750 a day to lead their clients deep into the muddy backwaters of Texas where the monster fish thrive.
In the rural South, the prospect of bagging a trophy gator gar inspires a special brand of enthusiasm. "I don't consider myself a redneck, but sometimes I do redneck stuff," says Mark Malfa, a gar guide in central Texas.
Paula Boudra, an athletic 32-year-old, drove nearly six hours from Sheridan, Ark., one night earlier this month for the chance to kill her first alligator gar with a crossbow. Armed with stainless-steel, prong-tipped arrows that can pierce the gar's thick scales, her guides, Sam Lovell and Steve Barclay, steered their flat-bottom boat into the brambly creeks of East Texas's Trinity River.
John Paul Morris, the son of Bass Pro Shops CEO Johnny Morris, sizes up the jaws of the 8-foot-3-inch long alligator gar he caught on a bow fishing trip.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Go Gators!
That’s one ugly fish.
Years ago I was fishing for Bass in Kincaid Lake in Louisianna and caught a four footer Gar. It was quite a fighter. I thought I was Roland Martin until the paper came out the next day and there was a picture of a 14 year old who had caught a six footer the same day in the same lake.
Y’all don’t worry none - them Gummn’t scientists gonna fix everything.
I don't know why she did that.
They got 'em in Arkansas too.
I always wondered what Helen Thomas looked like without makeup!
When I was about 7 or 8 on fishing trip with my father and his friends and their kids on the Mississippi River, we put the boats in on a sandbar to fish the still waters next to the bank. I saw a big fish jump in the river and cast out to where it jumped and hooked it. I yelled to everyone I had a big one, they turned and looked in time to see me being dragged toward the river. My father came running and cut the line with his pocket knife. He told me nice cast, good fishing, but never go after a fish bigger than you, until you grow up.
I grew up seeing these on the Tennessee river...not that big but 3 and 4 footers. Tradition was, back then, to pull it in the boat and beat it to death with a paddle and throw it overbard to float down the river for all to see as a warning that the river did contain these gar. Rumor had it back then they would attack persons dangling their feet over the dock or water skiers who had fallen or persons wading. I personally know of no such attacks. I searched on the internet and the stories of the attacks seem to be extremely rare or not credible. I believe the biggest reason for killing these fish was most likely fear of their perceived potential to attack rather than fact.
One of the species of this genus is Aractosteus spatula, known also as alligator gar. The image you see here, identified by the words "Alligator Gar. Moon Lake, Mississippi. March 1910," is used by special permission: Neg. No. 117075, Photographer D. Franklin, Courtesy Dept. of Library Services, American Museum of Natural History. This fish was about ten feet long.
On page 75 of his book named above, Rafinesque writes,
This is a formidable fish living in the Mississippi, principally in the lower parts, also in Lake Pontchartrain, the Mobile, Red River, &c. It has been seen sometimes in the lower parts of the Ohio. It reaches the length of eight to twelve feet, and preys upon all other fishes, even Gars and Alligators. Mr. John D. Clifford told me that he saw one of them fight with an alligator five feet long and succeed in devouring him, after cutting him in two in its powerful jaws.
In the mid-seventies near St. Louis, we would see 4 footers jump out of the water when we were water skiing. We were always careful to pick up a dropped skier as quickly as possible, as the word was once the water got quiet, skiers weren’t safe,
Sure enough, we neglected to keep our eye out once, and by the time we got back to our dropped skier, he needed med attention and spent some time on crutches after being bitten in the calf (messy) by what we assume was a Gar.
Never seen a Gar that big but I have lost many expensive Rapala lures to those monsters.
$6 buck a piece and you just cut the line. No sense in tangling with something that has that many teeth.
Never seen a Gar that big but I have lost many expensive Rapala lures to those monsters.
$6 buck a piece and you just cut the line. No sense in tangling with something that has that many teeth.
Ok to ward off starvation but better used in the bottom of a hole you dug to plant a tree.
I've never seen the alligator gar on the Tennessee, but I've seen a bunch of the needle nose variety. My fishing buddy caught one about 3-1/2 feet long - It broke the line, fell into the boat, and bit him in the leg. Just a passing bite, but we pulled the needle sharp teeth out of his leg for several minutes. They don't make it into the boat anymore........lol
I come from the Wichita Falls Tx area and when in the Boy Scouts we put in at Lake Diversion for our 50 mile afoot afloat badge.........zillions of canoes and scouts and a week to get her done
..on the 2nd day we say a gar stuck on a sandbar that measured 4ft 7 inches and paddle beat it dead.....
..later that night camped on the river bank the mosquitos
we eatin us up......Our scout master got up ,dragged that dead fish just upwind............sliced it from tail to neck and those skeeters left us alone and devoured that fish
Noodling not recommended.
Forty years ago, as kids, we’d fish for these in the bayous along the Mississippi Gulf Coast. We’d throw them in the back of the truck to take home as trophies. If I remember right, they’d live for hours out of the water. My Grandfather said the only way to kill ‘em was to drag ‘em home behind the truck and skin ‘em with an ax when you got home. He also said you had to be careful though cause they’d dull your ax and draw sparks on a glancing blow!
I can attest to the part about Lake Pontchartrain. My grandfather had a fishing camp on the south shore (the far north-east corner of New Orleans) in the late '50s through early '70s. My dad and uncles had fashioned long, harpoon-like spears that had detachable heads with rope eyelets.
In the evening, those huge garfish would come up into the shallows to feed on smaller fish hiding in the marsh grass - I remember seeing them swim by right below my feet as I stood on the pier. Dad would wait for one to swim underneath, then spear it. All Hell would break loose as that fish began thrashing in the shallow water. Several hundred feet of rope connected that barbed spearhead to the pier and the fish usually ran it all the way out.
Sometimes it took quite a long time for the gar to tire out or die - most of them still had some fight left in 'em when hauled out of the lake... friggin' prehistoric beasts. Back then, Dad said they were only doing that to help protect the more edible species in the lake... but they clearly got a kick out of a successful gar-gigging.
Some old fellow at a nearby camp used to come and take the gars that they killed - don't even want to think about someone *eating* those things. Blech.
There was a story (a tall tale, I've always suspected) about one of my uncles getting fed up with one huge gar that refused to quit fighting. He supposedly tied off the pier end of the rope to a hunk of driftwood and snagged that on the caboose railing of a city-bound freight train that passed by (the Southern Railway tracks run along the outside of the lake levee). Nowadays, that'd get videotaped and uploaded to YouTube. ;-)
Great stories, all. Thanks FReepers.
I never get to even reel the gar in....unless I am using a wire leader the gar will have the lure because nylon is no match for those teeth.
Well I fished on Lake Ten Killer in Oklahoma and we never realed them in either.
We would see them and while were cutting the line scream “I hope that fancy lure of mine rusts in your mouth and you get tangled up in the line and die. You bastard! Damnit!”
Dad was 54 when I was born. He had been crippled in his 20s, so by the time I was old enough, he was too old for us to do much of his beloved fishing and hunting together. Oh, but the stories the old man had. I remember him telling about hooking a gar once (he said it was about 4 feet long). He told about the mighty fight getting it reeled in and almost into the boat before he saw what it was. His response was the same as your dad’s. As soon as he recognized it, he cut the line and was happy to have not had to deal with that monster in the boat with him. And that was dad’s way of answering my question about what “cut bait” meant. Keeping a knife at the ready must be one of those lessons that fishermen learn.
Does anyone know of anyone trying to eat one of these? Lots of meat if they are edible.
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