Here’s one for you…
You may have seen the following picture in one of those spam emails that crowd your mailbox. If so, you didn’t get the Truth of the story. The Bull is going to set the record straight right now!
First off, this photo has not been tinkered with at all. The fish, an Alligator Gar, really is that big! This critter weighed in at 244.5 pounds and had an overall length of 8 feet 2 inches. That was good enough for the Texas state record books. It was taken by Robin Parks, (from Missouri), while bowfishing at the Sam Rayburn Reservoir, Texas in 2005. This fish holds the Bowfishing Association Of America World Record. The complete story of how this monster was landed can be found here.
The silly email stuffer falsely tags the fish as weighing 327 pounds and has it being caught in the Broken Bow Lake, Oklahoma. (Probably just the Oklahoma/Texas rivalry popping up. 
) At any rate, alligator gar are not responsible for the disappearance of people in Oklahoma lakes – or anywhere else! Don’t be silly! Granted, likely no freshwater species of fish looks so fierce or so deadly. It’s tendency to grow to enormous size and the massive numbers of needle sharp teeth make it a real threat – to other fish. Again, Humans are not on the menu. There have been reports of gar taking nibbles at dangling toes and fingers, but no fatalities. (It would make for a good monster movie for the SciFi Channel though.)
In an ichthyological report on the Alligator Gar for the Florida Museum of Natural History, Nathaniel Goddard writes the following:
Alligator gars have two rows of teeth. The inner row of teeth is palatine and is longer than the outer row of teeth. The teeth of the alligator gar are long, slander, and fang like, enabling these fish to pierce and hold their prey.
Alligator gars appear sluggish, however they are voracious predators. Gars are ambush predators, primarily piscivores, they lay still in the water until an unsuspecting fish swims by, and then lunging forward and lashing the head from side to side in order to capture prey. Many times gars will lay still at the top of the water for long periods of time, appearing to be merely a log. The alligator gars’ diet consists primarily of fish. However, brackish water populations of alligator gar are known to feed heavily on blue crabs in addition to fish such as the hardhead catfish. This gar is also known to prey on waterfowl and other birds, small mammals, turtles, and carrion. Alligator gars have been reported to attack duck decoys and eat injured waterfowl shot by hunters
Due to its large size and sharp teeth, the alligator gar is capable of delivering a serious bite wound to fisherman or swimmers. However, there is no documentation of attacks on man by alligator gars. The eggs are poisonous, causing illness if consumed by humans.
Mr. Goddard goes on to point out one last fact about this magnificent monster of America’s waters. It seems the Alligator Gar is becoming increasingly rare and is classified as such in Missouri. The fish is considered threatened in Illinois, and endangered in Arkansas, Kentucky, and is soon to be in Tennessee. At the moment we still seem to have a fair number here in the brackish water of the Gulf Coast and Mobile-Tensaw Delta but the numbers are definitely on the decline.
By the way: The largest recorded Alligator Gar of all time was a 350 lbs fish caught in the Saint Francis River, Arkansas back in the 1930’s.
It is sometimes shocking when one discovers what lives just beneath the surface, isn’t it? 
Bull, out!
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