I Caught A Dinosaur![Photos]

Okay, maybe it isn't a dinosaur, but the Alligator Gar surely could pass as something from Jurassic Park!

It was a great day to fish, for 2 reasons:  1) the weather was perfect; and 2) there were no people!  Just me and Shannon and Tucker and Violet!

We had a nice day, and as you can see, the dogs are "salty dogs", I guess!  They both love being out on the water, and are very accustomed to traveling in the boat.

We got to the weir just after noon, when most of the crabbers had already gone for the day (and obviously had taken all of the crabs with them.

I started to throw the cast net and was coming up with a few shrimp, so I thought I would concentrate on that, since the crabs weren't biting.

On the way out, we had stopped at my dad's, and he let me borrow his fishing pole.  I had grown up using this salt-water rig, something he had gotten from a neighbor back in the mid-1960s.

I set up a leader, snap-swivel and a medium hook, baited it with shrimp, and within minutes had a few catfish (hardheads, so they were thrown back), a few small redfish, and even a small speckled trout.

I decided to try for something bigger, so I put a live mullet on my hook, threw the line in, and went back to throwing the cast net.  I noticed my pole move once, then the line slacked, so I thought that I had missed a fish.

When I started to reel in, and the fish felt the resistance, she started to fight like crazy!

Shannon had never seen an Alligator Gar, so she got a little 'picture happy' with the catch.

It was a fun day, and we ended up with a whole lot of garfish meat, and about 3 pounds of shrimp (after they were headed and peeled)!

As they say, a bad day of fishing beats a good day of work any day, especially when you can end it with this: