06-12-2003, 07:20 PM
[cool]I've taken a couple just over a hundred, with a bow and big game fishing tackle. I KNOW I would not want to try to handle one with standard fishing gear...especially without help. Alligator gars are definitely not a fish for the genteel art of solitary fishing. That is one of several species I would also not want to encounter while in a float tube.
For anyone who has never seen a gar, up close and personal, they have armor plated scales that repel knives, spears, arrows and even bullets...if not hit in a vulnerable spot between two overlapping scales. The native Americans of the southeast used to use the diamond shaped scales from large gars for arrow points.
There is a "supposedly true" story of a fishing camp operator along the lower Red River...between Texas and Louisiana...that loved to play a cruel joke on bass anglers. He would wait for someone to come in with a trophy bass, and would just sneer at it. When the happy fisherman reacted, the camp operator would claim that he had a pet bass that lived under the docks that could eat the trophy on the fisherman's stringer. Of course a friendly wager soon ensued and the angler would dip the bass...as instructed...into the water. The camp operator would bang on one of the boards on the dock and a huge 'gator gar would swirl up and snatch the bass from the terrified fisherman.
TubeDude
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For anyone who has never seen a gar, up close and personal, they have armor plated scales that repel knives, spears, arrows and even bullets...if not hit in a vulnerable spot between two overlapping scales. The native Americans of the southeast used to use the diamond shaped scales from large gars for arrow points.
There is a "supposedly true" story of a fishing camp operator along the lower Red River...between Texas and Louisiana...that loved to play a cruel joke on bass anglers. He would wait for someone to come in with a trophy bass, and would just sneer at it. When the happy fisherman reacted, the camp operator would claim that he had a pet bass that lived under the docks that could eat the trophy on the fisherman's stringer. Of course a friendly wager soon ensued and the angler would dip the bass...as instructed...into the water. The camp operator would bang on one of the boards on the dock and a huge 'gator gar would swirl up and snatch the bass from the terrified fisherman.
TubeDude
[signature]