Went to the river with the wife ( Louann ) and the nephew as crew on Saturday morning looking for gators. Figured as there are darn few good ones in the stretch we had permits for that we'd take the first thing that came along.
And to make things mordifficultlt the wind was blowing up the river so only the south sides of the bigger coves were were calm enough to hunt. Set up in the back of one and waited. Shortly a small gator, maybe 6-7 feet, came out of the swamp about 300 yards away and we headed for him. Never got close enough to get a cast. Once he bolted we went back to looking.
About 20 minutes later we see another one pop up not to far off so we make our way to where he was only to find that he had been right in the midst of 5 MANATEES that were just messing about in a small area. They were blowing bubbles ( I say they were farting! ) and kicking up mud.
With the manatees in the way we did not feel it was a good idea to cast blind so we set about sitting again......and enjoyed the manatee show.
Of course having seen a gator in the area I never put the rod down, just as you'd stay ready for schooling fish...... And the reward was that he came up 30 yards or so from us.
He only stayed up long enough to get a look about and to be honest we did not get a good enough look at him to be sure how big he was, just knew he was big enough. As he dove the cast landed a foot or so over him and to his front.....essentially he set the hook himself.
Followed him a while, got a big rod in him, and then a second big rod after which we managed to haul him to the surface for the harpoon. All of which sounds easy except for the fact that the shoulder surgery is not healed good yet, meaning that the nephew and Louann had to do the lifting on the big rods.
Once we got the second harpoon in I broke out the bangstick along with some "gator loads" a friend had put together for me. We've been using this guys reloads ( The last 10 years he's used 7.5 of Unique behind a 180 grain bullet in a .357 case )for 15 years with no real problems. This time though he had been short .357 brass and as a stopgap measure loaded 5 or 6 up with the same powder/bullet combination in .38 Spcl Brass. Both he and I knew what they were for and that they'd be DANGERIOUS in any .38 Spl but figured that in the bangstick, which is a .357, it would be inconsequential.
So I hit the gator with one of them but failed to get the proper placement resulting in the need for a second one. But when I went to reload I could not beat the empty out of the chamber! Being something of a Boyscout I usually have at least one extra everything so I unscrewed the head, replaced it, loaded it with a standard .38 Spl ( I keep a few of these for the small stuff ) and finished the gator off.
And then it was time to get him in........
What with me being old and skinny, and having a bad shoulder, the combination of the wife, the nephew and me was not enough a$$ to haul him into the boat. So, as you can see from the pictures, we put the trolling motor down, hauled him to a sand bar and shoved Louann over. She lifted the tail while we pulled like heck which eventually had the desired results.
He was 11' 4".............
