Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Can't beleive what I found swimming in my pond ???

Well first of all, a Happy July 4th to all.

I have 3 ponds: 2 acres, 1 acre and 3/4 acre. The latter is where I keep my catfish. I was going to feed them one day and saw what turned out to be an alligator gar [spotted Florida variety from my research]. It was about 2 ft long...now that I ponder this, I have seen its head while on top yrs ago, but I thought is was the head of a softshell turtle. Never had a close look until I saw it in the water this time.

A lot of vegetation in the pond; lily pads, other...what is the best means to get rid of this ASAP?

Finally, how did it get in my pond? Transported by a bird-leg?? Prevention ????

Anyway, I am looking forward to reporting back to you all that it is toast, and I will provide pic's too.

Again, be safe on the 4th and keep the rains coming...

Get out the bow fishing gear...

.22 rifle, but be careful if shooting at a low angle trajectory on water, the bullet will skip off the surface...

Another vote for bowfishing if it's visible on occasion.

I have a rugar .22. but no bow...and yes, I would only shoot at an angle conducive to the bullet going straight down into the water...really have to watch and make sure a 20lb blue cat is not nearby...

Also, w the water refraction, if I need to hedge a bit, it would be aim a bit lower, correct?

Yep, aim low...The problem with the .22 is you won't know for sure unless it surfaces after the shot..

Alligator gar, or Florida gar. Different species. I would love either in my pond. If it is a Florida, it is about full grown. Alligator, you have a long way to go.

The bullet from a 22 will only travel inches tops into the water before it'd only have enough velocity to bounce off that gar.. actually almost all bullets lose almost everything very quickly once penerating water . Bow is the way to go..

Edit... Just read a armor piercing 50 Cal comes completely apart at 5 ft underwater and will do no harm to ballistic gel past that..

It's amazing what gets into ponds. I'm about done pumping out the small pond in front of the house to clean it out and get rid of Bullheads. I have no idea how the bullheads got in it. Today the water is down to about 1 foot deep and I see large mussels, probably a dozen or so, and 2 empty open shells. There is no way fish or mussels got into the pond from another body of water upstream or downstream. I dug the pond 20 years ago in what was a mown lawn.

I used to do a lot of snorkel spearfishing and RARELY saw gar in the day. At night we would rig lights on a pontoon and knock the snot of em. Try to get a buddy to walk the pond with you and a powerful portable spotlight. Good luck.

Only way I'll go out in my pond with a spotlight is if my son carries it I can't handle the friggin bugs..

Bugs, Gar or recruit Gar King.

Can't you just fish for it? I've heard of people catching them on a fishing line.

An arrow has a lot of kinetic energy (force) and works well penetrating water. When I used to bow shoot carp and to compensate for deflection, if the fish was near the surface shoot at the bottom of the belly and water, if the fish was a foot under the surface I shot about 6 inches below the belly if you are standing on shore. Standing on a bridge looking at a sharp angle downward you shoot almost directly at the fish.

Damn, I did not know a bullet loses its velocity in such shallow water.

There is limited visual access due to vegetation growth, so it's going to be hit and miss in seeing it swimming near the shore. When I first saw it, it looked like a thin speckled trout w a bad nose job...the coloring is really cool, but I know it is honking down on my bait fish, sm bass and any small cats.

I was told they really move right after sunset, night and early morning. I get the drill on night fishing w a bow, but as stated, the bugs would be prolific.

Anyway, unless I can get a bow hunter out, I going w the .22 at close range. When I first saw its body, it was about 8-10ft away and 3-5" deep...crystal clear view...its snout and teeth were hideous looking. If I am able to pop it and retrieve it, my wife doesn't know it yet, but she's "gonna-be-getting" a gar cocktail purse for Christmas...lol Too bad I didn't get it a month ago bc her b-day was yesterday and I could have saved a bundle...

One way off species get in ponds is in the initial stocking of fish. I ordered 200 RES from a fish truck. When got home with them in 4 plastic bags hand sorted every single fish. Hated to stress the fish more, because they had already been on the truck 5 days, but these were going in a forage pond that was to have only FHM and RES in it. Had over 50 fish that were off species. A couple species minnows with mostly FHM (maybe a few bluntnose but not that confident in my ability to properly identify) GSF and/or hybrids that had a lot of GSF in them and a few shiners of some variety. Had I just dumped them in the pond, I would have had species in there I did not want.

Not saying that is your case, but buyer beware when buying stocking fish. Not all fish sellers are very particular about what they sell you. This was a very large, well known fish farm in Oklahoma that I pre-ordered the fish and the truck delivered them to a local delivery point.

I saw a ball of bullhead fry swimming in my old pond a few days ago (bullheads and GSF from a puddle left from not killing the water when I cleaned the pond out)and netted a few to put into an aquarium. These were only about a quarter inch long (looked like a ball of little black gnats in the water). Water from a fish truck that is infested with even smaller ones than these would be very easy to miss in the water when dumping the targeted species in the pond. And who knows what else in the way of other types of critters.