Two of my friends decided to go cat fishing one night below the Meldahl dam on the Ohio River. The names have been changed to protect the innocent! One of my friends has a 15ft 70’s style bass boat about 5ft wide. The trip started innocent enough with the two of them launching without incident, motoring up to the dams tailrace and actually catching a few decent cats. Suddenly G feels a heavy surge on his fish pole:

“I have a big fish on” he says to S.

The fight is on. G was well armed with 50lb test on a short stout boat rod, he fought the fish for nearly 10 minutes before the fish came close enough for either to see. The one thing they forgot was a hand held flashlight, but they both had those little hats with flashlights on them like miners hats but with very low lighting. Now G is standing up in the boat, pumping and reeling the fish up near the middle of the boat, S has the net and is peering into the dark waters to get a look at this fish. All of a sudden the fish comes bursting out of the water right at S who lets out a terrified shriek:

“S-S-S-N-NAKE!!!” and falls backwards on his butt. G says

“That’s no snake it’s a giant Gar, net him“.

Now the net they have is about 3ft around and S says:

“ I don’t think it will fit in the net.”

G tells S to try to get the net under the tail when he pulls the head out of the water and lift it into the boat.

“OK, Ill try.” says a slightly hesitant S.

G starts to pump and reel this fish up to the boat. The fish surges again right next to the boat, but this time G swings the fish halfway into the boat and S unfortunately succeeds in getting the net under the fish, to this day I do not know how. Flop, into the boat comes a 6+ ft long gar and it's madder than a wet Rooster at being there. S is screaming for his life trying to get away from the gar as it thrashes this way and that and appears to be chasing him toward the front of the boat. Meanwhile rods, tackle boxes, coolers, etc. are being knocked about the boat, some stay inside the boat some go out of the boat. G has found refuge from the havoc in the bottom of the boat by standing on top of one of the seats leaving S alone to battle the big fish inside the boat.

“Get that @%*&#^?! fish out of the boat!!!!” Shouts G.

Meanwhile, on the bottom of the boat, S is screaming while crawling on his hands and knees in a desperate attempt to escape the giant Gar that is apparently trying to chase him down in the boat. However, S is quickly running out of room on the floor of the boat to escape this thrashing 6ft long prehistoric creature from the dark regions of the Ohio River. Suddenly the fish is on S:

“HE'S BITING ME, HE'S BITING ME!!!!” screams S.

G now finds the courage to climb down from the seat and grabs up the net and flips the thrashing fish out of the boat rescuing S from a certain fate worse than death. As they both sigh a breath of relief, one of the rods, the one the gar was on and is still hooked to suddenly surges from the back of the boat nearly hitting G as it streaks toward the briny deep. Neither fisherman attempted to grab the rod and sacrificed it for the good of the crew.

Well, the two of them came straight to my house to tell me this fantastic story, which at first I did not believe:

“Gars don’t bite people.” I said.

Then they showed me the boat and the wreckage inside of it, still not believing S pulls up his shirt and sure enough, the shirt is shredded in two places and there are two very distinct beak like bite marks of mammoth proportions on S’s back and to this day S will cut his line if a gar gets it and becomes shaken at the site of gar even in a 20ft bass boat.

The one that SHOULD have gotten away!