Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire "World Record" gar caught in Texas?????

Just saw a picure locally (Trinity River near Livingston) of an Alligator Gar that was recently caught......claiming this was a "World Record" rod and reel catch. Article said this gar was some 8'3" long..weighing 230 pounds... and the largest "ever" caught on a rod.......not quite!

Didn't sound right to me (although it impressed the hell out of my "yankee" wife) and I did a little research. I found out the following......the "largest" gar ever caught on Rod and Reel is a 279 pound specimen pulled from the Rio Grand River in the 1950's (nore this WAS from Texas). And the largest gar caught in Texas was a 302 pound monster that was caught on a trotline.

That sounds pretty big, but hardly the biggest of all time. The "problem" with gar records is that they are generally considered "trash" fish in Texas and thus are seldom weighed and measured for "record" status. I have "personally" seen and helped weigh a gar which was 8'7" long and weighed 308 pounds (caught on a jug line) and have seen others which wre not "weighed" that were obviously larger.....estimated at 330-350 pounds.

Even this was not the "biggest" catch I've heard of. In the 1920's there was a photo of a gar caught in the Mississippi (probably migrated from Texas) of a gar which (from the pictures) was at least 10 foot long and maybe 400 pounds.

Texas has a unique status of warm water (and long growing seasons), huge food base and low fishing preasure that allows HUGE gar to grow.

What I'm wondering is this.....how big (of any spieces) ar5e the fish caught in you area??

Got a buddy that would bow fish the Trinity for gar.From some of the pictures he had average fish was 9-10 feet.

i saw one off of bob hall pier in the gulf that was over 10ft judging by the space between the pilings. and i bet close to 500#. i'd never seen one in salt water before.

They get huge in brachish bays

We only have the little four footers up here I think they are one of the coolest freshwater fish around.

All I can tell you, is I wanna catch one - a big one!
Prehistoric looking critters they are.

we can fish in the mission river 30 miles north of here, got a buddy that catches them there. or the nueces below the dam at lake corpus christi.

Sittin' on a river bank, knockin' back a cold Coke, throwin' Petey a bone, and pitchin' bait to a big gar gar sounds fine by me. Set the smoker up, and have a bite to eat while waitin' - oh yeah.

Fish 'em at night by any chance?

And prehistoric they are indeed!

The gar, IIRC, is the only fish with prehistoric ganoid scales (don't ask me to explain!).

Impecunious early settlers who couldn't buy plows used to nail gar hide to boards instead.

Tough stuff! I once watched a husky young guy show how tough it was by trying to stab a four-foot gar with a switch-blade knife as it lay on the ground outside one of my grandfather's cabins. The needle-tip blade just skidded aside.

we can fish at night. I'll talk to David to see what he recommends. gar is all he fishes for.

Ken the Karankawa Indians used the scales for arrow heads.

Farmers used to keep an old fishing rod in their pickups here to cast from the low water bridges nn summer. No hook, just a short lenght of white nylon rope frayed out, not poly, tied on a baling wire leader. Just a simple cast and retrive. Gar would get their teeth hung up in the nylon. Three to four feet would be a big one.

I once saw an outdoor TV show catching them in the Red River.

I think that folks used to gig them and eat them in the beer joints, fried like sucker, over in MO.

Thanks for that interesting tidbit!

I didn't know that about that extinct tribe of cannibalistic south Texas homosexuals.

I remember an article (In-Fisherman?) where they were using a tin snips to cut the skin so they could peel it off and then fry chunks of gar.

I guess we know why they're extinct!

Have also heard about early indians using Gar scales as arrowheads.....don't remember as how that had anything to do with cannibals or sucking dick though. Maybe you have to be obsessed with homosexual activity and eating "men" to understand!!

I do recall one researcher who was looking into "giant" gar who said that what he noticed immediately was that all the reports of such fish were occuring in Texas....so why look anywhre else for these fish!

By the way....Gar are very good to eat, as in fish balls, deep fried. The best way to harvest the meat is to use a small chain saw to open the belly and back to get at the meat! However, the eggs are considered poisonous in Texas.

The "Kronks" made a powerful impression, over six feet tall, tattoed, mostly naked and covered with oil.

Speaking of "eating men", they were NOT a people ya really wanted to cross, they were notorious for barbequing and eating severed pieces of captured enemies while those unfortunate tied-up individuals watched.

...and some degree of ritualized homosexuality too, such not actually all that uncommon among tribes, practically institutional about like the Ancient Greeks among the Illinois up in the Midwest from what I understand (why anyone would want to be known as the "Fighting Illini" is beyond me) .

There weren't ever that many Karankawas, and disease epidemcs and especially the tidal wave of incoming settlers to Texas crushed 'em almost before they could get famous, about like the Caddos, Tonkawas, Wacos and such...

Birdwatcher

I'm suprised it's 200+ pounds for a record caught on rod and reel. In most places you find gar in TX nobody goes out to catch gar via a rod and reel and those that manage to do so normally aren't equipped to get one in that weighs that much with the gear they are using. Althought I think there's a guy now on the Trinity that specializes in it and taking people out to do it.

Bowfishing on the other hand is another story.

Isn't the Trinity river both a home to Alligator Gar AND Rainbow Trout?