Don Henson, of Southaven, Mississippi, was hoping for a monster catfish when he went fishing in northern Mississippi’s Sardis Lake Spillway in September. What he caught instead was a huge longnose gar that was recently recognized by the Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame as a world record.
Longnose gar are the most widely spread of all the gar species. They inhabit fresh and brackish water systems across the eastern half of the United States. Henson caught his 48-pound, 1-ounce longnose gar drifting a shad in the current of the spillway. It measured 60 inches in length and took about 15 minutes to land.
Mississippi Wildlife Fisheries and Parks certified the fish as a new state record, which easily beat out the old record of 40 pounds.
The International Game Fish Association (IGFA) recognizes a slightly larger fish as its official all-tackle world record. According to IGFA lists, Townsend Miller caught a 50-pound longnose gar from the Trinity River in Texas way back in 1958.
So what does one do with a 5-foot-long, nearly 50-pound gar? According to Mississippi’s Clarion-Ledger, Henson decided it was too big to hang on the wall. Instead he cut it into fillets, which he handed out to his friends.