A Texas angler who was fishing for bass received the surprise of a lifetime recently after the fish that attacked his lure turned out to be a 58-inch longnose gar.
Callan Frazier, 16, was casting crankbaits with his father, Bryan, at Sam Rayburn Reservoir when the toothy gar struck. Callan fought the gar for 10 minutes, thinking he had hooked an enormous largemouth bass.
“We were so surprised,” Bryan Frazier told My San Antonio. “They are so rare to come by, and we weren’t even fishing for them.”
The Texas length record for gar is 58 inches. That fish, caught last year on the Brazos River, weighed 30.3 pounds. Callan and his father teamed to release Callan’s gar rather than keep the fish for the sake of a possible record.
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“Gars are kind of hard to hold because from the gills up it’s just solid teeth,” Bryan told My San Antonio. “So we went ahead and put it back in the water. We know it was trophy class but, at that moment, it was good to let it go and watch it swim away.”
The catch occurred April 17, Easter Sunday. On April 25 the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department congratulated Callan via Facebook.
“Whoa, what a gar!” the agency wrote. “ This longnose gar was caught and released at Lake Sam Rayburn by 16-year-old Callan Frazier. Measuring about 58 inches, it rivals the official state record longnose gar caught from the Brazos River in 2021.”
–Images courtesy of Bryan Frazier