For all you fisherpersons:
Angler snares ‘Garzilla,’ state record
By MARK DAVIS

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Monday, September 22, 2008

Chad Leonard went looking for catfish in the Alapaha River. Instead, he caught a net full of teeth and temper, a state-record longnose gar.

The record did not come easy. Leonard fought the fish for an hour, shot it twice, then drove around with the creature for hours before weighing it. When he did, the Nashville resident discovered he’s the new Georgia title holder for catching a Lepisosteus osseus.

The state Department of Natural Resources last week proclaimed the 30-pound, 4-ounce fish a state record. It beats by two pounds the previous record fish, yanked from the Flint River 13 years ago.

“He was ugly as hell,” said Leonard, 29. “He was all teeth.”

He was all Leonard could see in the water on Sept. 5, when he and buddy Chad Troupe used night crawler worms to fish the depths of the Alapaha near Willacoochee. The Atkinson County town is about 170 miles south of Atlanta, in the flatland where the Alapaha’s dark waters hold secrets.

It gave one up about 4 p.m., when Leonard’s line got snagged — or so he thought.

“Next thing I know, there was a big ol’ fish head coming out of the water,” Leonard said.

Leonard held a fishing rod outfitted with 15-pound line, which the gar could easily have snapped if the angler rushed things. So Leonard fought the fish for about an hour, letting it dive, reeling it in, then letting the fish run some more.

Finally, he dragged the fish to shore. “I was whooped,” said Leonard. “My arms were sore.”

But not too sore to pick up a .380 handgun. Bang! Bang! The gar lay still.

Leonard dragged the fish up the hill, leaving it near some train tracks. He went back to fishing until the night crawlers were gone.

He returned to the gar and tossed it in the bed of Troupe’s F-250 pickup. The guys stared at the 56-inch fish, then decided that someone surely would buy something that big. They could use the profits to buy more night crawlers.

They drove around Willacoochee, asking: Anyone want to buy a really big fish? Folks looked at it and said no.

Then, at a gas station, a guy pulled Leonard aside and suggested he weigh that thing. The pickup truck headed to a nearby game warden’s house. There, the game warden did a double-take. “You boys better get it weighed,” the warden said.

Suddenly, the fish wasn’t quite so ugly.

Leonard hustled the fish home and put it in a 55-gallon drum. The next day, he took it to a store with a state-accredited scale and learned that he had a record on his hands.

And, soon, on his wall. In spite of his girlfriend’s protests, he’s getting it mounted.

Postscript: This isn’t the first monster critter to come out of the region. Remember the giant feral pig ‘Hogzilla?’ He came from Alapaha, just a few miles up the road and across the river from Willacoochee. Now, he has a playmate — ‘Garzilla.’