DOGWOOD CITY, Texas — An East Texas angler recently landed a record Spotted Gar on Lake Palestine.
Caleb Pierce and his fiancé Brittany Chandler were out on Lake Palestine bow fishing while David Pierce, Caleb's dad, was directing the flat bottom boat as they trolled around the islands hunting Carp and Gar.
“So we were doing what we normally do just trolling around these islands, and we were shooting Gar nothing out of the ordinary and then we just see this monster and just took a shot at it and ended up hitting it thankfully," Caleb Pierce said.
It was an unusually large Spotted Gar but Caleb admits he wasn't thinking about it being a state or lake record, until Brittany remembered reading about the record Spotted Gar being roughly three feet long.
“I remember seeing the old record was around three feet and we have a three-foot bucket and they put the Gar in there and he’s just curled up and I’m like wait last year I looked it up and it was three feet, and this one can’t even fit in the bucket," Chandler recalled.
The fishing trip ended abruptly as the trio spent the rest of the night trying to find a place to weigh and measure the fish. It would take two more days to get official measurements and submit pictures of the distinctive spots on the fins and the characteristic long snout and rows of sharp teeth. David Pierce was surprised but proud of his son's catch.
“You fish your whole life and never expect to get a lake or state record," David Pierce said.
It took a couple of months, but Caleb now holds the Lake Palestine and state of Texas Bow Fishing record for largest Spotted Gar harvested. Officially, it weighed almost 15 pounds (14.80) and just under 41 inches long (40.75”).