A Texas man claims to have caught the biggest fish you’ve ever seen… and the cast of Jaws aside, he’s probably right.
Payton Moore shared incredible footage on YouTube on Saturday showing the epic ten-minute battle it took to land the monstrosity — which measured a whopping 8′ 2″, and weighed at least 300lbs.
The beast, an alligator gar, is believed to be among the largest ever caught on the entire continent.
In the video, the Sugar Land native is fishing in a Houston Area bayou, sharing a new trick he’s learned; frustrated at seeing “monster 100lb gar” surfacing a distance away from where he has cast his line, he brought a second pole: one to leave in the water, the other to have baited and ready to drop wherever he spotted a giant moving.
As it turned out, he didn’t even need the second pole, as the first one snagged “the biggest fish I have ever caught in my life.”
“I thought we were stuck in a tree — but we are not,” he gasps. “I can barely hang onto him… it’s like walking a T-Rex.”
After fighting against the behemoth for a full 10 minutes, needing a lasso to finally drag it to shore, it turned out his guess of T-Rex wasn’t that far off… the fish looked like something prehistoric, and could have passed for an ichthyosaur.
Measuring the monster with a tape measure, it quickly became clear the fish by far out-measured the angler who had landed him.
“You gotta be f**king kidding me,” he exclaims. “8 feet and 2 inches… we are about three inches shy of the world record with this.”
Bringing the camera for a closer look, he opens the maw of the beast — the feature that gives it its name — to reveal a jaw lined with huge sharp teeth.
“What a magnificent animal,” Moore admires. “Very few fish like this even still exist.”
Despite their ferocious appearance, alligator gar are actually quite docile; there has never been a recorded attack on a human — although those teeth, powerful tail and sheer size and weight can cause injury to anglers taking them on.
In fact alligator gar are quite cautious about what food they eat, and will drop bait if they sense something is amiss — making Moore’s catch all the more impressive.
After a few awe-filled minutes in its presence, Moore ultimately released the giant — believed to be close to 100 years old — which drew lots of respect from commentators on his YouTube channel.
The biggest gar ever landed was a 8′ 5″, 327-pounder, caught on a Mississippi lake in 2011.
While Moore may have broken the state record of 302lbs, we will never know because to count, it would have to be weighed on a state-certified scale, according to the Houston Chronicle — something Moore wouldn’t have wanted to do anyway, as it can harm or even kill the fish.
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