Charter fishing

[Lady Cop]

they eat these ugly things?

bow fishing? with a bow and arrow? interesting! i have never seen it done. no different than a spear i suppose. except more thrust.

haha they had to shoot it with a pistol!

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GrindTV.com
Whether Brent Crawford has captured the world's largest alligator gar will never be known -- his scale bottomed out emphatically at 300 pounds and he filleted the prehistoric-looking fish after attempting to obtain its weight.

But this much is clear: The gar Crawford landed while bow-fishing recently in Texas' Lake Corpus Christi is among the largest specimens ever captured -- and it was captured in a manner like no other gar captured beforehand.

(The largest-known alligator gar caught while bow-fishing weighed 365 pounds. The largest caught on rod and reel weighed 279 pounds.)

Crawford, who has lived on the lake for 20 years, was alerted to the presence of several giant gar in a wide canal feeding into the lake: an enormous female swimming with about five smaller males.

His reaction, according to the Corpus Christi Caller Times, was simply: "Oh goodness. That fish right there was worth chasing."

The newspaper's outdoors columnist, David Sikes, produced a detailed account of what transpired next. The following is a condensed version:

Crawford, with his fishing bow, stalked the great fish carefully, knowing he might only get one shot.

When he finally fired, he scored a direct hit, unleashing the fury of the 8-foot, 2-inch beast, which created an explosion of mud and water before it ran toward the lake.

Big problem, because the nylon cord had become tangled at Crawford's feet, and when he grabbed the line, as it began to tighten, it became wrapped around his hand.

The line went taut and the fish yanked the fisherman into the water headfirst. That's when Crawford's dog, Bleux, grabbed him by the cuff of the jeans, creating a bizarre riverbank tug-of-war.

Crawford ultimately was able to free his hand from the cord and stand knee-deep in the shallow canal, gripping his fishing bow, the cord still attached to the mighty fish. "There was no doubt who was in control and it wasn't me," the fisherman recalled.

The gar stole 200 feet of cord in a battle that lasted 45 minutes, before Crawford reeled it to the bank. Soaked and exhausted, the fisherman straddled the fish, reached for his cellphone -- which he had kept in a waterproof case -- and dialed a friend.

The friend arrived with a pistol, which resoundingly ended the struggle, and the two men used a rope and an ATV to drag the quarry to Crawford's house.

[SIXFOOTERsez]

I saw this on another forum this morning. Its a lot bigger than the 120 lb one I got, line tangled on my bow reel and it jerked me off the rock right into the trinity river, bud of mine I was fishing with got me out and helped me drag the beastie to shore.

[Lady Cop]

i remember when Julia Child dragged one of these ugly things onto the set, it was huge! but she showed how to prepare it.
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Bangor Daily News
BOSTON — The menacing monkfish is a sly, voracious predator and a coveted meal itself, with a sweet tail meat that’s earned it the nickname “the poor man’s lobster.”

The one-time trash fish is also relatively poorly understood by federal regulators. Some fishermen say that’s costing their troubled industry tens of millions of dollars annually.

In a letter last month to the Northeast region’s science chief, the Monkfish Defense Fund argued the lack of information leads federal regulators to be too cautious managing the fish, so unneeded restrictions are suppressing the catch on an abundant species.

“The Monkfish Defense Fund is committed to moving monkfish management beyond the artificial restrictions in place,” wrote the fund’s Marc Agger.

Regulators at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said they’re working with industry to fill monkfish knowledge gaps, including in such basics as its growth rates. In the meantime, caution regulating the catch is appropriate, said NOAA spokeswoman Teri Frady.

“The danger is if you don’t know enough to know how quickly these things can replace themselves, then you can’t make a good judgment about how much is too much,” she said.

The monkfish, also called goosefish, isn’t nature’s most attractive creature. If stood on its tail, it would have a sort of ice cream cone silhouette, with a thin tail that expands into a massive, spiky head.

“It’s ugly,” said Gloucester fisherman Richard Burgess.

The fish is caught from Maine to North Carolina and can grow to 4 feet long and 50 pounds. Its fang-filled mouth is flexible enough to swallow sea birds. But the monkfish also ambushes fish by stealth, using an antenna with a worm-like appendage at the end that it dangles out as a lure.

Before the 1980s, the monkfish was mainly accidentally caught by scallop and groundfish boats, most of which tossed the unwanted fish overboard, according to a 2008 report in the ICES Journal of Marine Science. But demand in Europe and Asia boosted the price, and by 2000, monkfish had $53 million in revenues, up from just $3.5 million in 1980, according to federal statistics.



In this January 2010 photo provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Northeast Fisheries Science Center, Larry Alade, of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's†Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole, Mass., prepares to release a tagged monkfish into the North Atlantic Ocean off the coast of southern New England.


full story, and others fishing-related:

http://bangordailynews.com/2012/08/12/bu...t-on-data/


HAPPY 100^TH JULIA!