Rare Golden Gar

I’ve been reading up on gar fishing for my trip to Georgia this weekend. I saw so many of these unusual fish and had no luck enticing one to bite. For my next visit to Thurmond Lake I will be armed with knowledge and some new nylon lures. If I’m lucky I’ll catch a few, if I’m really luck maybe I’ll come across one of these golden gar. How bout one of these beauties for your aquarium Mark?

via Gar Anglers Sporting Society

Categories: Alligator Gar, Fishing, Freshwater, Freshwater Species, Incredible, Interesting, Oddities

Tuesday June 3rd, 2008 @ 10:59 PM | Clive Mathias | 1 Comment

Fishing At Strom Thumond Lake

On we weekend we made a trip out to a huge man made lake - the second biggest man made lake east of the Mississippi with 71,000 acres of water! One of the reasons I wanted to visit the lake, other then fishing of course, was to see the massive dam that was built back in the 1950’s. The Strom Thurmond Dam towers 200 feet above the Savanah River below and was a great place to visit and photograph. Local legends say there are catfish as big as Volkswagens below the damn, but I decided to fish above the dam in search of largemouth bass.

I went back to the lake at 5:00am on Tuesday morning and once again fished with the sunrise. There was lots of action in the water, and I could hear splashes nearby in the darkness. Once the sun was up I got a good look at what was causing the disturbance - gar pike and alligator gar! There were dozens of them right near shore, ranging in size from 3-4 feet. I had a couple hits at my lure, but was unable to get my hooks into anything. I wasn’t able to catch one, but I found a small dead alligator gar near the shore so I snapped a few photos. Later I had a good size bass smash a shallow diving crankbait, but once again I missed a hookset. I packed it in after a couple of hours, and rushed back to the hotel to change for work, avoiding being late by a few seconds.

Categories: Adventures, Alligator Gar, Fishing, Freshwater, Freshwater Species, Photography, Reports

Wednesday May 21st, 2008 @ 8:24 AM | Clive Mathias | 4 Comments

Bill Valverde’s World Record Alligator Gar

I posted about the world record alligator gar sometime ago, but was unable to locate a photo of the enormous fish. Luckily one of our readers knew just were to find one

Without further ado, here is a photo of the late, great Bill Valverde’s world record 279 pound alligator gar caught in 1951.

My uncle is Bill Valverde and we have an old pic of him and my grandfather with the gar. I’ll get it scanned and emailed to you if you would like. I’m kinda shocked no one in the family has contributed the photo anywhere on the to be seen on the net.

Dan

Thanks Dan!

Categories: Alligator Gar, Fishing, Freshwater, United States, World Records

Tuesday May 20th, 2008 @ 7:39 PM | Clive Mathias | 2 Comments

World Record Alligator Gar

There are a handful of fish I really want to catch before I die. To be added to this list, the fish have to either look really amazing, fight really well, or are just be incredibly large. The alligator is all of the above. These mean loooking fish are found in the south eastern United States and can grow up to 12 feet long. These fish have been known to attack alligators and humans in rare cases. The rod and reel world record has stood since 1951, caught by Bill Valverde, weighing in at 279lbs and was caught in the Rio Grande, Texas. I wasnt able to find pictures of the fish but I thought I would share these photos of what looks to be an alligator gar well over 200lbs, one site has it listed as 244lbs. This gar was caught bow fishing and is the biggest one I could find a picture of.

Watch the video of the catch on YouTube.

Categories: Alligator Gar, Fishing, Freshwater, Freshwater Species, Incredible, Interesting, News, Oddities, United States, World Records

Saturday November 17th, 2007 @ 11:18 PM | Clive Mathias | 6 Comments