What do alligator gars eat

The largest of seven known gar species, this megafish has a torpedo-shaped body in olive brown and comes armored with glistening scales. It can grow up to 10 feet long, and historical reports suggest it may grow to weigh nearly pounds. This makes it the largest fish species in North America that spends almost all its time in freshwater. The prehistoric relatives of the species first appeared million years ago and inhabited many parts of the world.

Today, however, gars live only in North and Central America. Alligator gars were historically found throughout the Mississippi River Valley and may have even existed as far north as Iowa and as far west as Kansas and Nebraska. Today alligator gars are known only to live in the lower Mississippi River Valley, from Oklahoma to the west, Arkansas to the north, Texas and portions of Mexico to the south, and east to Florida. Alligator gars are able to tolerate brackish and even salt water, but they prefer the sluggish pools and backwaters of large rivers, swamps, bayous, and lakes.

It may obtain as much as 70 percent of the oxygen it needs from the atmosphere. Although they may look ferocious, alligator gars pose no threat to humans and there are no known attacks on people. The toxicity of gar eggs serves as a defense mechanism against predators such as crustaceans.

Alligator gars have few natural predators, though alligators have been known to attack them, and young fish are preyed upon by other species. Adult alligator gars primarily prey on fish , but they are opportunistic feeders who also eat blue crabs, small turtles, waterfowl or other birds, and small mammals.

Their ancestors have been found in Permian deposits as fossils from million years ago, making them not only one of the most ancient fishes, but also truly native Texans. They are the largest and longest-lived freshwater species in our state, with recent catches of fish more than 8 feet long and 60 years old.

A fossil ancestor of alligator gar at the Field Museum of Natural History. The reason many people do not eat alligator gar is that it is very labor-intensive to remove the scales. The dark meat of the alligator gar has a very gamey taste, but the light meat is mild in flavor, somewhat like lobster, and has a texture that resembles chicken. If you do not care for fish that have a strong flavor, you can marinate the flesh in saltwater overnight, which will pull out much of the gamey taste.

Anglers prepare the alligator gar for cooking in a variety of ways. Some fry up the flesh as fillets, while others grind the flesh and make alligator gar patties. You can even cut up the filets into chunks and freeze them in water to be thawed and used in a stir fry later.

When he saw that bottle get ripped under the water—and felt the power of that first gar fish—Hefner, now 30, fell in love with alligator gar fishing. Last September, I got my own first taste of gator gars. With every foot of pound Dacron line that peeled off the free-spooling reel, instinct told me to lock up and swing.

I glanced at Hefner, who was guiding my buddy Mike Sudal and me. He was sitting at the back of his dirty johnboat, on a cooler slathered in dried carp guts, wearing a wide smirk. Swimming away with the carp steak on the end of my line was one of the most misunderstood fish in the country. From alleged human attacks by giant alligator gars to accusations of decimating gamefish populations, gator gar have garnered their share of hatred—so much so that in the s, the Texas Game and Fish Commission set out to eradicate them with a boat called the Electrical Gar Destroyer, which sent volts into the water.

Still not convinced? Before you dismiss the gator gar as a menace or a pest, consider the facts. My first alligator gar—all 6 feet, plus pounds of it—pulled like a semi truck. Now, as it tranquilly lay on the surface next to the boat, Hefner slipped a homemade snare over its head.

But when he tightened the cable loop behind its pectoral fins, the gar went berserk, spinning and banging its hard snout against the gunwale. The occasional bites that get reported turn out to be from actual alligators, not gar. These fish care only about eating what they can swallow, which is smaller forage.