Teens land ‘monster’ alligator gar after thinking it was a turtle

Two 18-year-olds caught probably the biggest fish to come out of the Buffalo Bayou in Houston in the past 10 years.

Two 18-year-olds with experience fishing the Buffalo Bayou in Houston hooked into what they first thought might be an alligator snapping turtle, but it ended up being a huge alligator gar.

When he got a bite while fishing Sunday, Charlie Oliver set the hook and handed the rod to Evan Adams, thinking it was a turtle, as reported by the Houston Chronicle.

“We catch really big alligator snapping turtles on accident all the time, so I thought that’s what it was,” Oliver told the Chronicle. “The turtles kind of stick to the bottom and just feel really heavy on the line, but a little bit into the fight, we realized it was a monster fish.”

Fifteen minutes later, they had landed an alligator gar measuring 6 feet, 10 inches. They guessed its weight at around 140 pounds. After measuring it and taking a photo, they released the fish, knowing it wasn’t a record.

The Texas record for an alligator gar on rod and reel is 279 pounds caught in the Rio Grande by Bill Valverde on Jan. 1, 1951. It also happens to be the all-tackle world record, as documented by the International Game Fish Association.

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But the biggest alligator gar on record weighed 327 pounds and measured 8 feet, 5 1/8 inches, and was caught in the net of a commercial fisherman out of Mississippi’s Chotard Lake in February 2011.

Though theirs wasn’t a record, Oliver and Adams were told it was probably the biggest fish to come out of the Houston bayou in the past 10 years.