Posted By: Dawson Hefner
Alligator Gar Fishing 7-15 - 07/17/12 02:22 AM
I had Roger and Curt from Wisconsin here yesterday to do some alligator gar fishing. We got off to early start around 6:45 a.m. before the heat got up good. River is pretty low, but there were not any issues getting to some productive gar waters. My wife Kayla went along to help with pictures and whatever else was needed, lots of thanks to her for that. Now to the good stuff! We took off for one of my favorite spots first thing, and within about 15 minutes of getting set up we started getting runs. Missed a few fish before we got the first one of the day and Roger’s first alligator gar, a fish of about 4’. We also caught a couple soft shell turtles out of this spot, an all too common occurrence when river fishing. After a while we moved on to a different spot where there were several larger fish surfacing. Before we could get three rods out the first rod that we had set got a run on it, but unfortunately the line popped on the hook set worse still it there was no question it was a big fish, the rod fully loaded up and the fish didn’t move at all. We were all bummed about that, but the bites kept coming. We were using pretty large baits so we missed several smaller fish between hooking them up and the boat. Around 10:30 a.m. we got a slow run on one of the big baits we had out, while this fish was running another rod took off. At this point we were in the boat with 2 rods with active runs. Suddenly Curt’s fish rolled, we could see our bait in its mouth and at the same time Roger set the hook on is fish, there were now two nice sized fish on and hooked up at the exact same time! Pandemonium ensued! We soon realized that Curt’s fish was only hair lipped and had to get it landed first, hooks pulled but not soon enough for the fish, I already had it snared when they did. Roger’s fish was nice enough to calm down a little while I got Curt’s in the boat, and in short order we had two nice alligator gar in the boat! Roger’s fish went 60” and Curt’s was 68”, nice sized fish by most standards. Weights around 50# and 80# for these two. We got a few more runs as the day went, but by about 1:00 the activity slowed and although we continued to work at it no more fish were landed.
