Alligator Gar

Outdoor Professsor's Tips

Alligator Gar

Hello, I'm the OUTDOOR PROFESSOR from DiscoveringTheOutdoors.com/ Here's your outdoor tip on alligator gar—frequently called the misunderstood big daddy of freshwater fish.

I’m not getting in that water! One of those gar might take my arm off! People are often weary of the toothy-snouted fish called the alligator gar. The prehistoric looking fish does have a mouth full of teeth, but there are no publicized cases of a gar attacking a person.

Of the seven species of gar, the alligator gar is the largest. These monsters can grow almost to 10 feet in length and reach over 300 pounds. They are an olive green or yellow with a heavily scaled body. Its mouth is filled with teeth and its snout is wide and long like an alligator’s thus giving it its name. It is believed that this species with a prehistoric appearance has remained largely unchanged since the dinosaur—they might even be called living fossils. They have a fierce look, but there are no recorded attacks against people. An important fact, however, is that their eggs are poisonous if eaten by humans.

The prehistoric ancestors of this giant fish used to live throughout the world, but today gar inhabit only North and Central America. You will find them in much of the southeast coastal United States. They inhabit waters from Texas and Oklahoma then as far north as the Mississippi and the lower Ohio/Missouri rivers--in addition to Mexico. The alligator gar’s reputation as a “trash fish” is changing slightly with television shows like the Animal Planet’s River-Monsters .showing the gar as a sought-after fish by Texas citizens and visitors to the state.

They are moving the fish from nuisance species to a species to be conserved. Texas is an important player in conservation of the alligator gar as it is one state that still has a healthy population that it hopes to maintain with a one-per-day bag limit. Biologists hope that future research will provide ideas of how to further preserve the species. Alligator gar have few predators in the wild, however alligators have been known to go after them and large fish will attack their young. You can label them as opportunistic feeders and they have been known to eat waterfowl, small turtles, and carrion. Gar do not eat substantial numbers of gamefish such as black bass as many people think. Studies show them consuming carp and shad as an important part of their diets with game fish being less than 10% of what they eat. This has been confirmed in Texas in popular bass lakes such as Falcon, Choke Canyon, Sam Rayburn and Toledo Bend that also have robust alligator gar populations. The real problem is for the gar that take about 10 years to reach reproductive age. This makes it difficult for an overfished population of gar to recover. A 7 foot fish might be 40 years old and it could take a gar almost 100 years to reach a record size of 300+ pounds. Short-lived white bass and crappie can lose one-third of their populations and recover, but the slow maturing gar cannot recover from overfishing.

Alligator gar inhabit rivers with their tributaries, reservoirs and backwaters. Brackish and salt water do not seem to bother them so you will also find them in coastal bays and estuaries. These toothy critters prefer large, slow-moving rivers with wide floodplains with shallow water for their hatchlings. Unfortunately, flood-control measures such as dams and dikes have changed their riverine ecosystems and have done much to eliminate their preferred spawning habitats. This has caused significant population declines across the gar’s habitat. Also, they have been victims of commercial and sport fisheries that have often overfished them. Alligator gar need to protection and support from the people who fish for them.

There is still much to be learned about this ancient fish and additional research should help preserve this species. People have little to fear from the alligator gar.

This is the OUTDOOR PROFESSOR from DiscoveringTheOutdoors.com/ Additional outdoor tips can be received by subscribing to the Outdoor Professor Tips on iTunes or Stitcher. If you enjoy outdoor tips, you’ll also find an e-book at Amazon.com with a collection of the Outdoor Professor Tips.

References-Additional Reading

Nature Quotient. eBook @Amazon.com

Outdoor Professor’s Tips: Exploring the Wonders of Nature eBook @Amazon.com

Gar-Gantuan http://www.tpwmagazine.com/archive/2015/mar/ed_3_gar/index.phtml

Alligator Gar http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/freshwater/alligator-gar/

Alligator Gar, Atractosteus spatula http://www.fws.gov/warmsprings/FishHatchery/species/alligatorgar.html