Inner Tubing With The Alligator Gar In The Trinity River Is Perfectly Safe

This afternoon CatsPaw sent me a link to a Blotch entry in FW Weekly, by Jeff Prince, that she thought I might find interesting.

The Blotch entry is titled "200-Pound Gar Caught On Rod And Reel In Trinity,"

In the Blotch Jeff Prince writes about his childhood memories of encounters with Alligator Gar.

And mentions that Joseph Williams of Cleveland, Texas set a new rod and reel record for fishing in the Trinity River by catching the 7 foot 9 inch prehistoric monster you see in the picture, somewhere near Athens, Texas.

Williams' scale only weighed in 50 pound increments, weighing the Gar at 200 pounds. Williams says the fish really weighed 230.

That is big. Really big. I've never weighed 230. And currently I don't even weigh 200.

I'd be no match for an Alligator Gar in the Trinity River.

When summer comes and J.D. Granger starts having his Happy Hour Inner Tube Parties in the Trinity River, are rod and reel going to be supplied to fish for Alligator Gar?

I have only seen an Alligator Gar once in the wild, that is if you consider Village Creek in Arlington to be wild. The Gar I saw was between 2 and 3 feet.

My swimming in Texas lakes ended after I was up at Lake Grapevine, talking to a pair of girls, laying on the dock at the end of my Horseshoe Trails bike ride.

The girls told me that a friend of theirs had stepped on a Gar, right near the dock. The teeth cut up his feet badly. He had to go to a hospital.

I have never been in a Texas lake again.

Maybe a TRVB study found that Alligator Gar are deathly afraid of inner tubes and that is why the Trinity River Vision Boondoggle promotes inner tubing in the Trinity River as a safe and sane activity.

Yeah, I'm sure that is it.