Over 300-pound alligator gar called ‘throwback to the past’
Payton Moore uses gear most anglers consider overkill for freshwater fishing.
His 80-pound-test line, ended with wire and a short length of 100-pound-test monofilament, is more than enough to land large examples of most freshwater fish in North America. Alligator gar, however, are an entirely different beast, and specimens like the monster Moore caught earlier this month have more in common with dinosaurs than most of the things you see in a seafood aisle these days.
“They’re a throwback to the past,” Moore says. “They’re very particular in how they behave and it sets them apart.”
A professional Youtuber and angler living in the Houston suburb of Sugar Land, Moore has been explaining the peculiarities and threatened status of alligator gars to reporters ever since posting footage Saturday of his latest catch: a 300-plus-pound, 8-foot-2inch alligator gar caught in a strong back eddy of a Texas bayou he declines to name publicly. These fish come up to breathe, Moore explains, thanks to a modified swim bladder that allows them to gulp atmospheric air.
It was one such surfacing that led to the emotional and thrilling 15-minute-plus adventure Moore uploaded to his Youtube channel, WILD LIFE, in which the 32-year-old lands and releases one of the largest and most misunderstood freshwater fish species Americans can encounter.
The video begins with clips of Moore in mid-fight before cutting back to the moments before the battle. He warns of an incoming storm, and shortly thereafter, sets a circle hook into the jaw of the most mammoth fish he’s ever wrangled. The hook Moore uses to land the giant is one of the easiest hooks to free from a fish’s mouth, and one most anglers would prefer not to use when trying to land a fish that feels like “walking a T-rex.”
“When you make a living filming your catch, the temptation is always to go the easiest route,” Moore says. “Using a treble hook would be easier. But the easiest route usually isn’t good for the fish.”
A conservationist and former member of the Houston Zoo’s education team, Moore says his use of circle hooks and catch-and-release tactics are some of the ways he tries to subtly incorporate conservationism into videos most Youtube viewers consume as Look-atthis-big-fish content.
As for this particular river monster, Moore unofficially estimated the fish to be in league with the largest alligator gar ever caught—an 8-foot-5-inch, 327-pound monstrosity caught by a commercial fisherman in Mississippi’s Lake Chotard in 2011.
The species is considered by some anglers to be “trash fish” unfit for human consumption, but they have weathered a number of state-sponsored culling campaigns over the past century that included the use of electric currents to purge garfish from Texas waterways. While a number of states have made moves in recent years to protect them, populations of the ecologically vital species have struggled to bounce back to levels conducive to the survival of large, fully developed specimens such as the one caught by Moore. Texas currently allows anglers to catch one alligator gar per day.
Moore described wrangling one of the last remaining full-size examples of this Cretaceous-era fish as a “bittersweet” experience.
“On one side it’s thrilling, catching one of the largest specimens,” Moore says. “But why is that the case?”
Officials rescue 10½-foot alligator
South Texas officials recently rescued a 10½-foot male American alligator that was found stuck in a drainage ditch behind a private residence in Bayview, which is not far from South Padre Island.
The South Padre Island
Birding Nature & Alligator Sanctuary posted about the rescue mission on its Facebook page last weekend. The nonprofit organization noted how the Cameron County Texas Parks and Wildlife Department game wardens helped with the relocation of the alligator.
According to the post, May is the peak breeding season for the American alligators. The reptiles will wander as they look for mates, but also as dominant males start to expel rivals from territories, according to the nonprofit.
“Sometimes these roaming gators can get into trouble as they can end up in odd places and may become problematic for landowners,” the post said.
Since the alligator didn’t show any signs of being harmful to people, the game wardens relocated and released it into the wild on the edge of a vast wetland deep in the Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge.
The American alligator was once very common in rivers, creeks and backwater sloughs of East and South Texas. Unregulated market hunting and habitat alteration resulted in near extirpation of the species in Texas by the 1950s, according to TPWD. Legal protection, enhanced habitat conditions and new water impoundment projects have resulted in a rapid repopulation of alligators in Texas during the past 20 years.