Who needs sharks?

The 7-footer was one of five big gar Frank and his longtime buddy Johnny Pantoja shot with their bows and arrows during a midday "hunt" in a section of the Trinity where Frank has taken numerous monster gar in the past. The other gar they shot that day measured 6-3, 6-1, 5-9 and 5-8.

With most excellently weird picture!

I actually have a gar-related fish story... Back when I was a teenager, oh, say, about 13 or 14, dad took us down below the navigational dam near our house to fish. It's mostly "trash" fish down there... drum, carp, and the like, but it's easy fishing and it's fun. The tricky part was that (again as I recall) Jeff and I were both over the age where we would be covered by his fishing license, and he hadn't gotten around to getting us one yet.

"There's game wardens all over the place at the dam," he said to us as we drove out to the place, "so if any show up I want you two to shut the hell up and let me do the talking. No ratting your brother out, Jeff, and no trying to come up with some damned fool story, Scott. Understand? I do the talking, you two be quiet."

So we clambered down the gigantic sun-hot gray rocks the Corps of Engineers scattered on the lower banks like multi-ton packing popcorn and started casting. Sure enough, couldn't have been more than half an hour before two tall, smiling gentleman in olive-drab uniforms came up to have a chat with us. At that precise moment, almost as if on cue, my rod nearly bent double as something big latched onto it.

Now, the rule at our house was that mom's commands were a framework for negotiation, while dad's were dictation from on high. "Thou shalt not mess with me while talking to the law" was what I heard, and I knew better than to test it. So I slowly started to reel in what felt like a small nuclear submarine without so much as a peep. Jeff finally noticed the drag tracks appearing behind my shoes (I think I weighed 75, 85 pounds at that point) and came over, but again not a word was said to the grownups a few feet up the bank.

"What do you think it is?!?" Jeff whispered.

"Dont. Know." I hissed back through clenched teeth, "Big. Gar?"

Gar were cool. They looked like scaly torpedoes and had teeth like a picket fence from hell.

"It's not moving much... I think you've caught a log!" Which would be a major embarassment, which explained the gleeful tone in my brother's voice. And it wasn't moving... if it was my "Jr. Sportsman" reel would have come apart faster than a Kerry campaign idea.

Around about this time three things happened almost at once. One of the game wardens said, "hey there, I think your boy has something big.", dad came over and touched the rod to help me pull, and what was probably a five foot (memory says six, but I was only about 5'2 at the time) gar decided the funny poking thing he'd grabbed was not actually going to lead him to a big catfish. He snapped the line like it was spider silk and departed with a whooshing splash that soaked myself and my dad.

"Ha-ha! You're in trouble! Mom said if you got your new shoes wet you're dead!"