Posted on 04/20/2025 1:55:21 PM PDT by Red Badger
Perhaps it's considered to be a "monster" at Lake Livingston, but yeah... it's puny by Louisiana standards, certainly. My grandfather had a fishing camp on Lake Pontchartrain in New Orleans. Seeing alligator gar 10' long swim into the shallows there was common.
Captain Kirk Kirkland, of the starship Costco.
Yall didn’t hit the “lizard brain”/amygdala.
They are animals. Everything is black and white. Even your cats and dogs.
The friggan guy hauled that thing on board in a fit of excitement and shot it!
We was laughing sooooo hard.
That dam thing streched across quite a bit of the tailgate on his truck.
And your tackle box story. Yup, ive heard of that happening to different guys.
Up in northern Wi, they have reports of muskie attacks every so often. Somebody on a dock dangling their feet in the water.
I’d love to see a picture if you have one. Fish of a million casts.
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At the base of the Smith Mountain Lake dam in Virginia I saw catfish as big as a man.
Pretty big fish. I never fished for them, only largemouth and hybrid striped bass.
But I saw some folks pull some big catfish out of there.
I dont know if i got one yet or not.
I know i had one. This happened back in the mid 70s.
I wish i had a video of that all going down the way it did.
And your right. Go out 200 times and never get a bite. Them two assholes go out with us and they get one.
I used to know an indian who would get at least one a week. How in the hell he did it i will never know. Used to piss me off.
Gotta tell ya this one. Buddy of mine went over by Hayward Wi one time with his nephew to fish for Muskie. Anyway, they didnt even get a follow up that day and at the dock a couple guys come in with a pretty nice one.
The one guy said “You wont believe what he caught it on!”
The guy had made a lure. Just a busted chunk of pine branch and put an eye on it with three treble hooks. No paint, no nothing. Just an piece of a busted pine branch.
Go figure.
Holy moly! 😮
He didn’t have a head left. Multiple shots.
Alligator Gars are pretty tame. Hooking one is like getting hung up on a submerged log...................
Sturgeon.
That’s unnecessarily cruel. Gars are harmless creatures............
A friend’s family story of the upper Columbia in Washington is that they would take the wagon down to the shore with a team of 2 horses, tie the rope to the wagon axel, tie a gaff hook on the other end, bait it with a whole roast chicken, and haul huge sturgeon out with the horse team.
Until one day, a sturgeon ripped the axel off and swam away.
“the fish of 10,000 casts due to the challenge of catching them.”
Very rare catch. When I was in Alaska with the military we were going to a place up the Ruby River called Grayling Creek and we were fly fishing 20 inch grayling on mayflies. I couldn’t keep my fly in the water as three of us limited in about an hour. I think they are great eating and the bears near us thought so to so we gave them away when they determine it.
My big catch came near La Paz, Mexico years ago when I hooked a 7 foot plus Rooster Fish that weighed in at right at 135 pounds. But that was years ago before the Baja was fished out a lot by the trollers and the fish are smaller now. Would love to do that again. Roosterfish now average over 1.6 m (5 ft 3 in) in length and over 50 kg (110 lb) in weight. Smaller now but they are a good sport fish.
Did tarpon in Florida and those beasts are hard to catch and almost impossible barbless. Got a few but I lost more than I landed.
wy69
I thought the headline said: Man catches 153# gator in his garage..
Thank you. :)
Haha - an old fisherman’s joke.
I’ve cleaned and eaten gar (but “only” a ~5 lb. fish). Taste grilled over a fire was fine, but:
Big ones - ie., over 15 lbs. or so tend to be high in mercury due to being piscivores at the top of the food chain. (Just like big bass, blue or flathead catfish, etc.)
Gar are damned hard to clean. Might as well get out a chain saw. For me, it’s not worth the effort, and, a 5 lb. catfish out of good water is better eating. The best I’ve had were 3-5 lb. blues or flatties caught in the mid-Buffalo River in Arkansas.
(A few years back, surplus channel catfish were stocked in Devils Kitchen Lake in Southern IL. Most were caught while still in the 2 lb. range, and they were right up there with the fish from the Buffalo River, taste wise. DKL is a very clean lake, tho’ a bit high in mercury - natural sources, mainly - itself. I suppose a few of those channel cats might still be in there, at ~10 lbs. now, but I’d not likely harvest any if caught, due to the mercury concern. But if I make it to age 80, I’ll likely just say “screw it” and not worry about mercury any more!)
I hooked what I think was a 60-70 lb. gar one night, bank fishing a creek right where it flowed into the Ohio River. I was using almost new 20 lb. line and tried to keep the fish from getting out into the main current, where I was sure I’d lose the beastie. That didn’t work. The fish ran out my line and snapped it like it was nothing.
THIS fish (pictured) on a 2# line? “Possible”, but only with a good leader, and being able to “follow” the fish so it never exerts even 5% of its full strength against that line.
Haha - that fish I described in my post (#59) fit that to a tee - at first. It was night, I was fishing with a minnow maybe 2” long(!), and I initially thought I’d hooked a log floating down the creek — until a couple seconds later I realized this “log” was moving upstream. Then I thought I must have hooked a huge alligator snapping turtle. I was still thinking that when it reversed and started to come back downstream, toward the mouth of the creek (into the river). Thinking that, I was totally unprepared when Mr. Fish made a tremendous splash right in front of me, about 20 ft. away. The “look” I got was not good, but size and coloration said alligator gar, or a new record longnose gar. The fish continued into the mouth of the creek, with me and my Zebco 808 “bigwater” rig unable to slow the fish at all.
It was after that incident that I nabbed a big saltwater baitcasting reel on eBay, and put it on a Muskie rod I bought from a guy on a fishing forum. But, I’ve never again hooked a fish so powerful.
As an aside, I keep meaning to take that hefty combo to my local park, which has a large “put and take” trout and catfish pond, encircled by a busy walking path. Slap a hefty sinker on the end, then a 4 lb. leader, a #8 hook and a worm. I can pretty much guarantee a few people walking by will stop and be wondering what the heck I think I am trying to catch! The funny thing is, I may well land a trout or catfish or two, as often they self-hook themselves.
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