GIANT GATOR GAR !!!!!!!!!

[bullbreaker]

Just wondered anybody here ever fished for or caught one of those giant alligator gars ? Espiecially you folks from The Lone Star state . Down here in Fla Everglades we have good sized ones but not those monsters. Lets hear true stories (no fish tales). Pic's maybe ..............

Boone

Alligator Gar

 

[tallyho8]

The largest one I ever caught was 4 feet in Lake Ponchartrain. Never saw one as big as in that photo.

 

[blueriver]

Nothing that big around here ... Atoka Lake we've seen some caught that were about 18-24" ... My wife or I have never got one. I suppose if there is 18-24" one's there must be bigger ones??

 

[blueriver]

I also see ...looking closer that picture is captioned Broken Bow Lake Oklahoma !!

 

[bullbreaker]

I also see ...looking closer that picture is captioned Broken Bow Lake Oklahoma !!

Dang good eyesite(or glasses) I didn't even notice .

:thumbsup:

Boone

 

[creekbend]

I have caught pretty good size freshwater Gar in the Holston River in Tennessee. When they are in the area, all the other species of fish would quit biting. I suppose this is because of the predatory tenancies of the Garfish. You could hit the Gar with an Axe and the Axe would just bounce off the scales. I have never caught a large Alligator Gar while I lived in Florida. I think the needle fish is related to the Garfish. They have a mouth full of needle pointed teeth, are very slimy, and wreak havoc on your bait when using a poping cork. They are usually more active during the summer months and are pesky critters.

 

[Jimbrown]

There used to be lots of really big ones 4 to 6 ft in the Brazos and LaVaca rivers. But they have mostly dissappeared. We really tried not to catch them.

Best story I have on one was that Myself and three of my cousins were on the laVaca in a john boat just fooling around. We were all about 14 or so. Floating down the river with our.22's and ran into about a 4 ft one that must have been asleep. It jumped up out of the water and landed in the boat. It got real exciting and I think we shot about ten holes in the bottom of the boat.

 

[tallyho8]

I caught my 4' one from land under the Causeway Bridge on Lake Ponchartrain can fishing. We would bait a few hooks on lines with fresh mullet and toss them out in the water and then wrap the line around a beer can with a few pebbles in it that would rattle when something got the line.

We had leaders on the lines because we were shark fishing when we got him.

We skinned it and my mother baked it in a red gravy and it was pretty good.:licking:

This was in 1967 so I am not sure if there are still any gars left in that area.

 

[blueriver]

Dang good eyesite(or glasses) I didn't even notice .

:thumbsup:

Boone

Glasses !!!!

 

[RobertBrown]

I caught one many years ago around 36". I got him in the boat and the dog took one look and jumped overboard and started swimming for home.
I guess he figured he liked his chances in the water better than in the boat with all those teeth.
I've heard that in Texas they cook them up and have a GAR-B-QUE.

 

[WM75Guy]

I remembered that photo from the Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center here in Athens that had a display about it. The gar was shot by the 2 guys bowfishing for a video at Sam Rayborn Reservoir in Texas. It weighed in at 244.5 pounds and was 8'2" long. It was not a record in Texas as it was not caught by rod and reel. The Broken Bow Lake caption was used by someone as a hoax about people disappearing at Broken Bow Lake.

Giant Alligator Gar Photographs

 

[sldva00]

Shot a 7 footer with a bow about 15 years ago in one of our local "Resecas". Resacas are dried up river beds that the irrigation district fills up with water from the Rio Grande for irrigation purposes... been going on since the early 1900's.

The link is not of me, but of another gar caught in the same resaca I shot mine from.

OH-MY-GAR! | San Benito News

 

[foreman Etexas]

Biggest one we ever caught on the trinty river was almost 6ft and 145lbs

 

[Bird]

I caught my 4' one from land under the Causeway Bridge on Lake Ponchartrain can fishing. We would bait a few hooks on lines with fresh mullet and toss them out in the water and then wrap the line around a beer can with a few pebbles in it that would rattle when something got the line.

We had leaders on the lines because we were shark fishing when we got him.

We skinned it and my mother baked it in a red gravy and it was pretty good.:licking:

This was in 1967 so I am not sure if there are still any gars left in that area.

I think 5' or so was the biggest my Dad brought home when I was a kid and the last time I caught and ate any was a couple of 2 footers from Lake Texoma about 50 years ago. They aren't easy to "skin"; more like "shelling" but very good meat.

 

[Tractor Seabee]

Back in 1946 when I was a kid I went fishing with my Grandpa and uncles on the Saline River in MO, not too far up river from where it dumps into the Mississippi. That was back before all the regulations and they were meat fisherman. A weekend would net a couple hundred pounds of fish, mostly channel cat. They would set out 200 hooks in 1/4 mile of river using meat bait of what ever we had or scrap fish we caught. Caught Gars regular, 6-10 every night. Most 3-4' long. Chopped up with axes and used for bait. My granddad talked about catching the big ones but said they were all fished out years earlier during the war when everyone was desperate for protien you did not need ration stamps to get. How they caught them then would have you in jail today. Favorite means was carbide, a little water in a sealed can or jug. Big explosion concussion wave brought everything near to the surface. Dynamite was in short supply during the war for domestic use even though no licensce was needed back then.

Ron

 

[Bird]

Ron, it was probably about that same time; late 1940s anyway when my Dad used to go with a group of men, including a game warden, to seine a river in Oklahoma (I think it was the South Canadian River, but don't remember for sure). They were allowed to take out all the "rough" fish, which back then included the gar, carp, and even catfish over a certain size. So Dad brought home some pretty big gar and carp, both of which are quite good eating if caught in clean water.

 

[MossRoad]

A lot of folks confuse alligator gar with other gar species. Some other gar species regularly get over 3ft. Longnose can get over 6'.

Here's a distribution map of the typical range of the alligator gar.

Compare that to the typical range of the longnose gar.

Here's a pretty nice website dedicated to gar. :thumbsup:
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