IDO Web Extra – Trinity River, Texas Alligator Gar

Well the alligator gar has a check mark next to its name on my bucket list! Last week Jakob Hals and I made the drive to the Trinity River in Texas to chase what has to be one the coolest fish in fresh water! Here’s a short video from our time chasing Mr. Garfish! All fingers and toes are accounted for although after watching the video and seeing how inexperienced we were, mostly me, with handling a big gar… we’re awful lucky to come away from the experience whole.

Wow,that was cool!
BB2

That water is just as muddy as I remember it!

Dang those fish are pretty!

Brian Klawitter wrote:

That water is just as muddy as I remember it!

Dang those fish are pretty!

Right now the plan is to go back down this coming fall to film a show for TV. I have a burning desire to tangle with a 200 lb gar! If we do go back down I’m bringing a reciprocating saw to chunk the carp!

You got to cross one off your list, and now after watching, I get to add this one to mine! What a cool experience.

Lucky Dog!

Did you guys have any trouble getting a hook set into those jaws? I’ve read about guys fly fishing for the kind of Gar we have up here, and conventional wisdom is that you have a hard time getting hooks. So they use a “streamer fly” fashioned out of a frayed-out piece of rope. The idea is that the fibers of the rope get tangled in all those nasty teeth. I had a Gar on once, on the St. Croix. He hit a conventional streamer and threw the hook the moment there was the tiniest amount of slack, obviously my hook never had any penetration in that jaw.

These videos are a lot more fun when James becomes un-glued. Great fish!

SR

So what part of the Trinity river did you guys fish? Driving down to Austin last winter we must of crossed the Trinity a half dozen times. Seems like that river snakes all over the state and much of it does not look very big. In Fort Worth I stopped to watch a few guys fish it and My 1st thought was there is no way a 100#, let alone a 200# fish lives in this river. Still wanted to find out for sure.

at 9:21 james flips the bird! hahaha…. awesome web extra video. more please!

I would not swim in that river…

Very cool video. Those things look Jurassic indeed!! Probably the shakiest ive seen James get on a fish, heck I would think anyone would shake themselves right out the boat after seeing those things surface

I saw you had posted this on YouTube just before I crossed the Trinity river this afternoon. It definitely made me wish I had the boat with. The word was that they were catching a few gar on Falcon lake when I was down there Tues.

I wasn’t real clear why you had to wait so long for him to take it before setting the hook? Great video and thanks for sharing.

James looks so darn excited I thought he was gonna jump in a wrastle’ wit dat gator!
Jakob was cool calm and collective before sticking that bill dance hookset into her.

Mike W wrote:

So what part of the Trinity river did you guys fish? Driving down to Austin last winter we must of crossed the Trinity a half dozen times. Seems like that river snakes all over the state and much of it does not look very big. In Fort Worth I stopped to watch a few guys fish it and My 1st thought was there is no way a 100#, let alone a 200# fish lives in this river. Still wanted to find out for sure.

We were right near Trinity Texas below Lake Livingstone.

kwp wrote:

I wasn’t real clear why you had to wait so long for him to take it before setting the hook? Great video and thanks for sharing.

We were fishing fairly huge pieces of carp, in the case of the fish in this video it snacked on a whole carp head, and the gar run with the baits for a long time before actually taking the whole bait into its mouth to swallow it. We waited an honest 10+ minutes and that gar was hooked right in the corner of the mouth. Some of the guides told us they wait for as long as 30 minutes before setting the hook.

katmando wrote:

James looks so darn excited I thought he was gonna jump in a wrastle’ wit dat gator!
Jakob was cool calm and collective before sticking that bill dance hookset into her.

I was completely jacked up to get my hands on that fish.

Don’t let Jakob fool you, he was shaking like a leaf the entire time. He couldn’t even form complete sentences once we had the fish lassoed! Ya’ gotta’ love a fish that can do THAT to a guy!

I was told buy Kirk Kirkland a AG guide the gar pick up the bait and run with it, possibly to get away from other gar that would love to steal it from them.

After they run, they’ll stop and start to swallow the bait. This is one of the reasons for the float, to see when the fish stops.

Seldom will there be a hook up like the one in the video. Normally the hook sticks into the softer back of the throat because like any gar it’s very hard to stick them in that bony beak.

The hook would be left in the fish. Both the TX DNR and Kirk agreed they rust out fast.

Don’t let Jakob fool you, he was shaking like a leaf the entire time. He couldn’t even form complete sentences once we had the fish lassoed!

This has been named. It’s called Gar Shock and few people, no matter how prepared won’t have it.