Four to five footers are just average down here in the Lake Charles area. The biochemist at McNeese, Dr. Mark Merchant, does a lot of research on aintibiotic properties of cationic peptides found in the serum of the blood of alligators. Most of the alligators Mark catches get a little blood taken from them and are released. If you want to see Mark and some of his group with a few alligators go to http://www.faculty.mcneese.edu/mmerchan/ there is another pic with a bigger gator (maybe a six footer) on the Research Interests page. Mark is still working on his website, so not all the links are working yet. For those of you in Canada, you might have seen Mark - he was in a segment for Discovery Channel-Canada this summer. the segment is supposed to air in the US sometime this fall, but no word as to when yet.
Requisite fishing content: Biggest and onlygator I've hooked was a six footer while bass fishing with a friend who wasn't comfortable with me fly casting in his boat - hooked the gator on a black plastic lizard - and it took me a long time to get the gator off because I couldn't easily break the line since the gator managed to crimp the small lead sinker onto the line and the eye of the hook. The gator finaly turned around and i was able to pop the hook out of its mouth. All my friend said during this commotion (while he was catching a nice 4 lb largemouth and laughing at me) was "That thing ain't comin' in the boat!"
Mark Delaney
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
A State of Louisiana Conservation officer was being interviewed on the radio today about the problem of people moving into Aligator Country and having problems with the gators, ie finding them under their cars, in their swimming pools, and the irrigation canals going through many of the coastal towns. He was an advocate of hunting the beasts since the meat is quite good and the hide tans into a fine leather. He did say that the price on Aligator is down, however, as the market was weak. His choice method for capturing these beasts was with a heavy Fly Rod and a large treble hook. He snags the gator and after a tussle brings the gator up to his boat for a quick kill with a gun. Then tapes the jaws and brings it into the boat. Most of the gators he snags are in the 4-5 foot class. He also mentioned that he thought it was a "fair" fight since many times the gator usually gives the hunter/flyfisherman a puncture or two. Anyway, after hearing this report, I started to imagine a Dave Whitlock article in one of the flyfishing mags on how he switched from flyfishing for carp or gar to 'Gator but that he practices "C&R".
Steve Schalla
So much water, so little time!
Website: http://chemprof.tripod.com/fishing.html
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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