| Huge alligator gar is headed to the classroom |
 CONWAY
- More than one legend or remarkable incident has popped up around the
Toad Suck area of the Arkansas River west of Conway. There is a new one.Jonathan Atkinson of Houston (Perry County) and Johnny Thomas of Conway brought in a 7-foot alligator gar that weighed an estimated 175 pounds from a bowfishing outing. It was not a record, but the huge fish is headed for classroom use. . "This is every bowfisherman's dream," Atkinson told Tammy Keith of the Conway Log Cabin Democrat as he looked at the 175-pound fish in the back of Thomas' pickup. Landing an alligator gar was the pair's goal, and they had been bowfishing the previous three weekends to the Arkansas River, and had shot and missed another alligator gar. The cousins work at the University of Central Arkansas - Atkinson in the physical plant and Thomas in housing. The two launched their 14-foot flat-bottom boat at Toad Suck Ferry Lock and Dam. Atkinson shot the big gar at 10 a.m. Sunday on the river, "and got him in the boat at 11:30," he said. Thomas said it has been so hot that there isn't enough oxygen in the water, so the alligator gar "come up to porpoise, and when they come up, that's your two-second opportunity." Thomas said the fish came to the surface, and they missed. "We shot it a second time, and it pulled all the slack out of the reel on my bow." The fish "took off" and Thomas ran out of slack. "The power of the fish kicked the bow back into my eye," and he has a black eye for his efforts. Atkinson then "aimed low" in the water where he thought the gar was and hit it. "That second shot was crucial," he said. "It liked to ripped my finger off" from the string pulling through his fingers, Atkinson told Keith. A third shot by Thomas "is when I about lost my finger," Thomas said. "I was trying to feed the line out of my reel and he pulled the loop tight on my finger." The fish took off, and the battered and bruised men sat for a minute "to gain our composure," and then went up the river looking for the float attached to the line, Thomas said. He said they were ready to give up and went within 20 yards of the place where the alligator gar had been shot, "and the float popped up right in front of the boat." Thomas and Atkinson donated the fish to the UCA Biology Department "and the biologists are going to do research to see how old it is. They were thrilled about it," Thomas said. Dr. Reid Adams, assistant professor of biology at UCA, said, "We have a freezer it's in right now. It's a species that's declining throughout its range. It's still holding on, it looks like, in Arkansas and Louisiana. It's a species of special concern in the state of Arkansas. It's one of these big, impressive, long-lived fishes. We're going to try to get it mounted and have it for use in courses like general biology classes and vertebrate biology and ichthyology." Alligator gars grow to huge sizes in Arkansas and a few other states. Arkansas' record is 215 pounds, a fish caught in 1964 by Alvin Bonds of Clarksville. It came from the Arkansas River, like the 175-pound alligator gar bagged Sunday near Toad Suck. World record is a Texas fish, 279 pounds, and it came from the Trinity River. Alligator gars traditionally have been most numerous in the major rivers of east and south Arkansas - Arkansas River, White River, St. Francis River, Mississippi River. But they live farther upstream on the Arkansas as the Bonds fish and the recent one at Toad Suck illustrate. Once, alligator gar were big game in Arkansas. Sportsmen traveled to the state expressly for a chance at catching one. A few enterprising Arkansans worked as "gator gar guides," booking clients in seasons outside duck hunting time. So well known were alligator gars in Arkansas of the past that the popular gathering spot in the old Marion Hotel in downtown Little Rock, the lounge where politicians and business moguls met and planned and, allegedly, schemed, was named the Gar Hole. |
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