Big Game ! in Oklahoma?

[Wild Bill Bucks]

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These were sent to me in the e-mail today. BEFORE everyone starts on me,
NO, I don't have a letter of authenticity, NO, I didn't see it myself, and NO, I can't tell if the pictures are fake.

Just thought you guys might want to see them.
I fish Broken Bow a little, but from now on I'm not going to be hanging my feet in the water to keep cool.

[Scorch]

Bill, I hear if you hold a worm in your hand you can get them to take it. I'll just watch, if you don't mind!

[Tom Matiska]

I smell a fish story. Previous OK record for Alligator Gar is 153 pounds, 182 unrestricted(whatever that means). 327 is quite a stretch.


http://fishingoklahoma.com/record.htm

[gunslinger1911ACP]

Seems like that might be a fish story.

http://www.kansasangler.com/4fishing...recordgar.html

"The rod and reel world record alligator gar weighed 290 lb, and the trot line, or unrestricted division record weighed 302 lb. Both were caught in the Rio Grande River back in the 1950s, and measured a little over 7-1/2 ft in length."

http://www.earthwave.org/gar2.htm

[okievarmint]

Wild Bill, refer to gar01.jpg and look at the background. As a fellow Okie, That don't look like Broken Bow Lake to me.

[FirstFreedom]

I too have received emails and such that that allie gar was shot in Broken Bow lake not too long ago. The funny thing is that that one, which was supposedly bow-shot, at well over 300 lbs, is almost twice as big as the state record line-caught one, which I think was (and is) 184 lbs. You can watch the video of that huge one there being pulled in, playing down at BassPro in OKC, by the gun counter where they have a board for posting fish & game pics, and a little VCR.

Here is the line-caught state record, so that is verified:

http://www.wildlifedepartment.com/alligatorgarrec.htm

See, this is the new state record line-caught gar, from the Red river, in march 06 (last month). At 184 lbs, it beat the old record of 180 lbs by 4 lbs, which was a 2002 gar, also from the Red river. I have no idea whether this is also a national record.

As for the supposed 327 lb bow-fished gar from broken bow, I dunno if it's real, but wherever it's from, it does indeed LOOK much bigger than the 184 lb one above. In any event, *IF* it's real, and if it is 327 lbs, then not only is it the state record in unrestricted (non-line-caught), but I believe it would have to be the world record as well, since the prior unrestricted was the 302 pounder. However, I had heard that the 302 pounder was from the Sabine river in East Tx, not the Rio Grande...hmmmm.

Also kinda interesting that other state fishing records here have been falling regularly by pretty good margins of late, such as smallmouth bass record being broken 3 times in 4 years, 35 lb channel cat in '05, 98 lb. blue cat in '04, 17 lb. brown trout in '05, 6 lb. black bass hybrid in '06, 10 lb. saugeye in '06, 12 lb walleye in '04, 72 lb. flathead cat in '04, 9 lb. redhorse in '06, etc. Must be 'something in the water', so to speak.

http://www.wildlifedepartment.com/bigfish.htm

I fish Broken Bow a little, but from now on I'm not going to be hanging my feet in the water to keep cool.

I don't blame ya!

Edit: WBB, you are right, those pines sure do look like broken bow in that one pic, but the other one looks a little too wide open for BB lake, as okievarmint pointed out. The fact that the video is playing now down at BassPro in OKC does *perhaps* give some credibility to it being real, and from OK, and recent.

Also, it might be informative to note that, although the supposed 327-lb. one does look bigger than the verified 184 lb. one, it does NOT look to me to be *as big as* this one:

http://www.earthwave.org/gar2.htm

which is presumably either the 290-pounder or the 302-pounder, either of which should look smaller, not bigger, than the supposed broken bow lake one. So that makes me wonder...

compare to:

http://www.thefiringline.com/forums/...9&d=1144166099

[Wild Bill Bucks]

I gotta admit picture #1 sure doesn't look like any part of Broken Bow I was ever on, but the picture of the gar hanging sure does.

I'm not much of an authority on pictures, cameras and such, but it looks to me like an awful lot of trouble to go through, for no more gain than they get from it. Kind of like robbing a bank with no money in it.

[banditt007]

too bad we dont have those things around here (gar) always wanted to catch one.

i dunno if this is a question i'll get flamed on but um, can you eat them!? if so are they good?

what do you catch them on a broken winged duck w/ a shark hook through its neck!!!!!!!

those guys in the pic are way to close to that monsters mouth! dam i would not be that close to its mouth w/ my head!

[banditt007]

the only thing i will say is that the chain when its hanging up does not look to be digging into it, nearly as much as i would have thought it would based on its supposed weight.

[lil_bro]

Originally Posted by okievarmint

Wild Bill, refer to gar01.jpg and look at the background. As a fellow Okie, That don't look like Broken Bow Lake to me.

I live in Okmulgee so I don't know what Broken Bow lake looks like but I do know what Okmulgee lake looks like



Michael.

[Wild Bill Bucks]

I have been told that they are good eating but are a real B--ch to clean.

They have kind of a cartlidge instead of bone so they will kind of jelly when
pressure cooked.

They also clean the meat from the skeleton and roll it in batter and deep fry it.

Meat is suppossed to be very white and delicious. Can't tell you for sure though, I have never eaten one, but my info is coming from pretty good source.

[308SORRELS]

I have a trailer down at Grand Lake (Grove area:confused) and the same pixs are at a bait shop down there and the owner was trying to BS me about his son catching it at Broken Bow . Any way before I left the store he could not keep his laughter in no longer and told me it was done with some trick photography but that it was 109 lbs . which is still big just amazing how far somethings get when they start out as a joke

[FirstFreedom]

the only thing i will say is that the chain when its hanging up does not look to be digging into it, nearly as much as i would have thought it would based on its supposed weight.

I too, considered that fact...

[jbadams66]

I found this while looking for some info. It looks like a reliable source but who knows. It says that the gar was taken in Texas at the Sam Rayburn Reservoir near Lufkin. 8ft 2in long and weighed 244.5lb. They have it on video if anyone wants to buy it.

http://www.texassafarimagazine.com/8_feet_of_gar.htm

[Trip20]

Originally Posted by Wild Bill Bucks

BEFORE everyone starts on me,
NO, I don't have a letter of authenticity, NO, I didn't see it myself, and NO, I can't tell if the pictures are fake.

Why would you expect people to jump on you? Your basically just forwarding an email and stating you have no idea what's true and what's not but that the pictures are interesting. Nothing wrong with that. I thank you for posting them -- I was reading about gar the other day actually.

It's not like you're stating your daughter found an albino fawn after the story has been circulating through the errornet for months and months. So no one is going to ask you to prove the gar is real.

[Wild Bill Bucks]

Glad you brought that up,as I had talked to the daughter, and she did not doubt what her freinds had told her, and I assumed it was her tennis shoe in the back ground.
The mis-understanding between the e-mails taught me a valuable lesson about the enternet and honesty, that is, basically, there is no honesty on the enternet.
I've only been hooked up and operating my computer for a very few months, so I was rather unaware of that fact when I first signed on. Since I don't live on the enternet, like a lot of guys, I haven't seen a whole lot on it and it is hard for me to pick out the truth from the bull ****.
After the posting made a liar out of me, I have been real picky about what I share, and bad as I hate it, I have become a real skeptic and realize that not everyone tries to be as honest as I do.
I am catching on, but will continue to add dis-claimers to what I am not positive of thank you.

[FirstFreedom]

Near as I can tell, after a little more cursory research:


A. First off, as for the fish that is the subject of this thread, as jbadams66 pointed out, IF that link he provided is to be believed:

-it one was shot in Sam Rayburn Reservoir near Lufkin, TX, in 2005, not at Broken Bow lake, in Oklahoma.
-it's a real fish, but it was 244.5 lbs, not 327 lbs, and not the world record. It *would* have been an Oklahoma state record, had it been from Oklahoma.


As for actual records....

B. First, as for Oklahoma records:

--In Oklahoma, the largest unrestricted (bow, snagline, jugline, etc.) gator gar was in fact caught this year by snagline in February 2006, at 184 lbs, 3 oz, in the Red River, Love County, Oklahoma. I suppose it's an Oklahoma fish only because it was pulled into the OK side, not the Texas side, or the angler was from OK - dunno. The article at the wildlife dept linked to above sort of implies it was line-caught, but it wasn't; it was snagged.

--In OK, the largest line-caught (rod & reel) was in the Red River, July 2002, and it was 180 lbs, 7 oz. Also could have been a Texas fish had it been pulled in to the other side - I dunno.

http://www.wildlifedepartment.com/listing2.htm
http://www.wildlifedepartment.com/listing3.htm

C. As for national/world records:

--The world record unrestricted (including bowfished) alligator gar is pretty hazy it seems - it is widely-reported as a trot-line or bowfished 302 pounder, but it's reported to have been from (1) the the Nueces River, Texas, (2) Vermillion Parish, Louisiana, or (3) Rio Grande River, Texas. The Vermillion Parish, LA, trot-line story seems to have the most traction, but in any event it's pretty nebulous & weak, seems to me. There is also reported 356 pounder from Horseshoe Lake, Arkansas, from 1931, but this seems to be considered an unverified one as well. The most widely-accepted verified unrestricted record is a 290 pounder from the Rio Grande River, Texas. Also, apparently, the great naturalist John James Audabon reported an alligator gar that weighed 400 lbs, buth this is also unverified. Then, there is also this picture:

http://faculty.evansville.edu/ck6/bstud/hugegar.html

which is captioned "Alligator Gar, Moon Lake, Mississippi, 1910", and looks to be 10 ft long, but no weight is claimed. Likely it would be over 300 lbs, however, given usual length-to-weight ratios (for example, the supposed 302 pounder from Louisiana is reported to have been 9 ft, 8").

--The official world record line-caught is unquestionably 279 lbs, 0 oz, but it's variously reported to have been either the Trinity river or the Rio Grande river, - either way, from Texas, in 1951.

http://mdc.mo.gov/conmag/2003/01/40.htm
http://www.texas-best.com/texasbest/animal.html
http://library.fws.gov/FWNews/fwnews_marapr99.pdf
http://www.schoolofflyfishing.com/re...eshrecords.htm
http://www.earthwave.org/gar2.htm
http://engraved-on-his-hands.home.at...ligatorGar.htm
http://www.clackamas.cc.or.us/clr/wo...er_garfish.htm
http://www.thejump.net/1fishphoto/gar.htm
http://myfwc.com/Fishing/Fishes/gar.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alligator_gar

The 'clackamas' link there is the most in-depth and interesting one on big gar. Who knows if it's the most factual.

The mis-understanding between the e-mails taught me a valuable lesson about the enternet and honesty, that is, basically, there is no honesty on the enternet.

Glad you learned a lesson; too bad it was the hard way. You 'old-timers', if I may call you that, are doing better than most just to *get on* the net!

[Wild Bill Bucks]

Thanks for the research FF.
I didn't figure it was real, but it was neat to look at anyway.
I guess its OK to call me Old Timer, I'm 56 this year, just don't let my wife hear you, she thinks she's still 29.

Always been intimidated by these puters, but got tired of having to have one of the kids look up stuff for me, so I decided one day to figure them out. Still not real good, but getting better.
I have figured out that I'm ambidextrous, I can mispell with my left hand as badly as I do with my right.

[FirstFreedom]

Awww, you're no old-timer then.... still, most 50-somethings aren't wired 'round here.

I have figured out that I'm ambidextrous, I can mispell with my left hand as badly as I do with my right

[Art Eatman]

56? Well, you don't need to keep wiping behind your ears, but that's still what I'd call young and healthy.

Heck, I got my first .30-'06 and started handloading for it in 1950.

, Art

[FirstFreedom]

Heck, most of Art's age-peers wouldn't even be able to turn on a computer! I'd say Art is doing pretty damn well with that post count, not to mention still shootin'!

[Wild Bill Bucks]

In 1957 when I was 7 years old, my grandad and my mother got into a really heated argument about grandad buying me a .410 shotgun.
Up till then all I had ever shot was dads .22 rifle. I was really excited about getting the .410 and was pretty happy about grandad winning the argument with mother. Right up till the first time I shot it. BOY was that an eye opener. Needless to say I was real picky about what I shot with it.
But I guess looking back on it now, it probably was the biggest contributor to my safety with a gun. All I remember about the old gun was how bad it kicked me every time I shot it, but I wanted to hunt bad enough that I just kept putting up with the recoil, until I got big enough, that it didn't bother me.
My grandad was kind of a Mans Man, if you know what I mean, so I wouldn't have complained to him about the recoil, no matter what.