8 foot 2 inch gar caught in Houston area bayou

[GarGuy]

I’m just curious but about how old would a gar that big be?

I was directly involved in the sawed otolith study done by tpwd. I have also raised a bunch of them. They grow crazy fast. Females reaching 6 ft in 3 to 4 years. After that, growth in length really slows so guessing age based on length is a crap shoot. Like asking ,"how old us a 6ft man?".

We saved otoliths from a 7ft gar that aged 16 and another that aged 38. There is also some data that indicates otolith aging over states age.

No doubt alligator gar can live to be very old as they gave no natural predators after one year old. They get big fast.

[Briar Friar]

Impressive catch.

http://youtu.be/DOpwlo7Lmjo

Great fish. Great hunter. Great video. At one point I cried laughing at his real exprerience.

300 or not. Fart in the wind of time.

Well done MrFisherman.
Good push OP.

[RMW]

Saw it on the news last night, looked closer to 200lb

[mudkat]

yeah when TP&W started talking about gator gar restrictions the were throwing out these crazy number like a 6’ fish was 100 years old and want to do all these restriction with zero hard numbers about the gar.
and you can bet before long they will back off on the strict rules on the trinity river when the white bass and catfish guys will figure out all these gar in the river is eating all their fish lol

[rebelbow]

Yea, guys like him push to have them delisted for bow hunting but they have no problem gut hooking them.

x2

[marshman]

I was directly involved in the sawed otolith study done by tpwd. I have also raised a bunch of them. They grow crazy fast. Females reaching 6 ft in 3 to 4 years. After that, growth in length really slows so guessing age based on length is a crap shoot. Like asking ,"how old us a 6ft man?".

We saved otoliths from a 7ft gar that aged 16 and another that aged 38. There is also some data that indicates otolith aging over states age.

No doubt alligator gar can live to be very old as they gave no natural predators after one year old. They get big fast.

Interesting. I had no idea. Thanks for the info.

[Lights Out]

Awesome!