Odd Fish

WHEN DAN DAUGHERTY SAW THE NETS BOBBING, HE GUNNED THE OUTBOARD MOTOR, SWINGING THE BOAT around in the current and bringing it up alongside the disturbance. His coworker Travis Waldrep hurriedly cleared gear away from the bow, knelt and plunged his hands in the brown waters of the Brazos River. For a moment he grappled with something beneath the surface. The fish arched in the net as Waldrep pulled it up, its spotted fins flaring in panic. “Gar,” he called to Dan over his shoulder. “Looks like an alligator.”

“Who would have thought the lowly alligator gar would have ever spawned such interest?”

It did look something like an alligator: torpedo-shaped, armor-plated and glistening, with broad, toothy jaws clamped on the offending net fibers. At 4 1/2 feet, it was at the smaller end for an alligator gar, yet still longer than any other species in the river. Its powerful thrashing rang like a fist against the metal hull.

“This is why we’ve got the gloves,” Daugherty said. Waldrep crouched beside him, cutting the netting away. “I got whacked yesterday in the shin; he got whacked in the knee. Everything on them is either sharp or bony, so if you’re not paying attention there’s a high likelihood you’ll get hit, cut or poked. But they’re not going for you. It’s just a byproduct of handling them.”

Daugherty handles a lot of gar these days. A research biologist with Texas Parks and Wildlife’s Heart of the