“Teeth”!
“That is next movie they need to make. We’ve got one about a killer shark but they need to make one about a killer gar,” said my Dad.
“Wouldn’t that be cool?” he asked as we sat on the side of the road between Bridge City and Port Arthur, TX fishing for alligator garfish.
At eight-years-of age I thought that would be epic to say the least and if any of the producers of such high art as “Sharktopus” are reading this blog, it very well could become the next SyFy Original.
Just sign those royalty checks to “Chester Moore” please.
Dad always liked to make me laugh and that certainly did but there certainly are not a bunch of garfish attacks to report.
There is however something quite interesting.
While “Jaws” is on the minds of beachgoers in Texas (our variety-bulls, lemons, blacktips) “Teeth” is soaking up some of the same salty waters.
Angler Marcus Heflin caught a sizable alligator garfish while fishing the surf at Sea Rim State Park at Sabine Pass along the Texas-Louisiana border.
This was the first gar I have heard of on the beach anywhere along the Gulf Coast although I have long suspected they are there.
As a child I had a collection of Texas Parks & Wildlife magazines and one of them had a profile of Sea Rim State Park-where Heflin caught the gar pictured above.
It had fishing hotspots and there were several marked for garfish in the surf.
Garfish are considered a freshwater species but do well along the Gulf Coast. I grew up fishing for them in Sabine Lake and surrounding waters, a bay that at its southern end is only seven miles from the surf.
Mobile Bay in Alabama is a hotbed of alligator garfish activity and they are present in numerous salt marshes along the Louisiana coast.
Still, you can find almost no references to garfish in the surf.
The question is just how common they are in Gulf waters and how far out do they go?
These are very mysterious fish with little known about their life cycles or habits in comparison to America fish for comparable size.
So, if you’r ever at the beach and see something that looks kind of like a mutated alligator swim beside you don’t worry.
You just have had an encounter with “Teeth”.
There is no danger to be concerned with except in my eight-year-old imagination where a ravaging gar seemed like an intriguing proposition.
And to be perfectly honest it still does.
Chester Moore, Jr.