Mud, Sweat, and Prehistoric Beasts (part 1)

The Tale of a Texan Adventure

Part 1: Spotted Gar

Lepisosteus oculatus

As Rene’s 115 horsepower outboard sent us rocketing up the Trinity River at the rather alarming pace of forty miles per hour, I felt my eyes filling up with tears. This was due in part to the air rushing into my face, but I also found myself being overwhelmed by the sheer beauty of the landscape. I was visiting my good fishing buddy Rik (to whom I owe so many memorable fish) in Fort Worth, Texas, where he was living as an ex-pat. Both of us are anglers who wish to catch just about any fish that swims (except bream), so when the news came that Rik would be heading to the muddy heat of the Texan plains, with their lakes and rivers full of new and exciting species (most of which Americans never even fish for), we were naturally very excited. The species that swam through our imaginations more than any other was the Gar. An ancient native to those parts, this toothy and armor-plated critter looks as if it has swum straight out of the pages of the dinosaur books I gazed in with such wonder when I was a small boy, and still do. For the middle weekend of my stay, we had joined Rik’s fellow ex-pat and fellow angler Rene, to try our luck on the Trinity River near Lake Livingston, outside Huntsville.

The landscape looked like nowhere I’d ever seen or fished before. The Trinity snaked its muddy way in all its natural and bendy beauty through miles of the greenest forest and countryside. Rik told me that this year everything was especially green, due to some extremely wet months that had preceded my visit. It was a strange and wonderful sensation to feel so at home in a place I’d never been before. Above us, the Texan sky was as wide and high as you could imagine. The great posses of Turkey Buzzards, though not particularly charming up close, looked elegant and even positively majestic as they circled in the blue on the rising heat. The heat was something else I wasn’t used to. As soon as we would stop and drop anchor, the sun would send down its pressing rays without mercy, and the reels on our rods would quickly become almost too hot to touch. This was in September, and the hottest time of the year had already been and gone. It was a good thing that Rene’s fast and fancy boat had a canvas roof we could fold out to give us some respite as the three of us huddled under it. As the day drew to a close, the mosquitos also zeroed in and feasted on us, but we braved it all, for we knew there were monsters beneath us. Or so we had been told.

We had driven down to Huntsville in search of the mighty (and slightly frightening) Alligator Gar, the largest of the Gar species, capable of reaching nine feet in length and several hundred pounds in weight. When they get to that sort of size, they eat carp. The idea that such specimens inhabited the tranquil looking water that surrounded us seemed very alien to me, never mind the thought of actually doing battle with one on a rod and line. We found it very tough to decide where to fish; it all looked so beautiful, and since none of us had ever done this before, we just weren’t sure what a likely looking spot would actually look like.

By the afternoon of the first day, we settled on the entrance of a lοvely shallow bay. The main river was around thirty feet deep, and the bottom sloped up rather dramatically in the spot where we would drop our various baits. We caught some baitfish by throwing a cast-net in the reedy margins. This was easier said than done, but eventually we had a decent supply of Shad in various sizes. We baited up some pool-cue-like rods with Shad in the two pound range, and “cast” into the mysterious muddy water. We also cast out some normal sized baits on rods that normal people would use, in the hopes of catching anything at all. We settled down, tried to ignore the mosquitos, and watched the sun sink behind the glorious green trees and dip the bay in an eerie and expectant twilight as the last of the other fishing boats headed back to the harbor. We didn’t get a single bite, but I don’t believe any of us was too disappointed as we cruised back through the darkness to the lakeside cabin which was ours for the weekend. After all, we had one more day in which to get a monster.

We took turns enjoying the cramped but oh so blissful shower in our cabin, and managed to get some sleep. The following morning, we set out again. This time, we ventured a litttle farther into the bay. Smallish Longnose Gar were rolling all around. Scores of Snowy Egrets stood perched on dry stems that stabbed skeletonlike through the surface. A pink Spoonbill shyly stalked the margins, and a Bald Eagle joined a Turkey Buzzard for a slow, circling dance as they rode up a thermal column together. Rik went for the Alligator Gar in full blooded fashion, using only his pool-cue-rods. Rene did the same, but also cast out a lighter rod. I just wanted to catch something, so I baited up my five piece traveling rod with a civilized chunk of cut bait and also cast an artificial lure with my spinning rod every now and then. The lurefishing did not bring me anything, but both Rik and Rene got several rather strange and uncommitting bites on their giant baits. We quickly began to suspect that these were most likely not coming from Alligator Gar, but from smaller Gar and Catfish who were fiddling about with the baits, but couldn’t really put them away. In later days and weeks, all of us would yet experience what a real Alligator Gar bite was like, and that definitely proved our suspicions.

Rene also got some action on his lighter rod, and managed to catch two small Striped Bass and one or two little Catfish. I got a great number of very decisive bites on my cut bait, but had trouble connecting with anything. I did hook and lose something fairly substantial at distance. Judging by the amount of slime on the end of my line when I reeled in the bare hook, Rik and Rene could tell me that it had most likely been a Blue Catfish. I was disappointed, as I had never caught one of those before, so I quickly cast again. I got another good bite, managed to connect, and reeled in a small Channel Catfish, a species I was familiar with. I cast again, and once again it did not take long for the line to start streaming from my reel. When I struck this time, I connected with something that felt very different. Rik remarked that my fairly tough traveling rod actually went into a real bend this time, and I battled what felt like a not particularly heavy, but very tough and strong fish. It thumped and bumped with tremendous vigor, and when I got it to the boat, we could see that it was a Gar. Not the monstrous Alligator Gar we had come here for, and not the strange Longnose Gar we were already familiar with (more about that later), but a Spotted Gar.

Though the Spotted Gar was the smallest of the Gar species we could hope to catch, I was absolutely thrilled for three reasons. Firstly, this was a new species for me. Secondly, at 73 centimeters (just under 28 inches) it was a fairly good specimen, and thirdly, it was a very unusual specimen. All Gar of the region have a pale beige-ish color which tells of the muddy, sand-colored waters in which they dwell. The back is a steely silver-green and the fins are yellow with some nice black spots. The Spotted Gar normally carries these lovely spots like fingermarks all over its elongated body, they are truly wondrous fish. The Gar I had just landed, however, had decided he wasn’t going to blend in with all his fellow Lepisosteidae; he was dressed entirely in dark grey. He was looking very sharp indeed in his fancy suit of scales, with slight hints of the beige he should have been on his hind quarters and his tail. Though he did not have any spots, we could tell he was a Spotted Gar by the shape of his body and tail, and especially by the shape of his beak-like mouth, which was not as long and narrow by far as the strange snout of a Longnose Gar, and filled with decidedly fewer teeth, though there were still plenty of them and they were like needles. We quickly took a few pictures of this maverick of the bay, and sent him on his way. Not long after this, it was time to head back to the boat ramp and set off on the drive back up to Fort Worth. It had been a very enjoyable two days, even though we had not seen or caught a monster. Yet.