Earlier this month, 28-year-old Silas Turner of Perry, Georgia landed the biggest longnose gar ever recorded in the Peach State. A professional crappie guide and lifelong angler, Turner caught the massive gar on a half-ounce jig while targeting a group of largemouth bass that were schooling beneath bait balls on Lake Blackshear.
Turner had just finished guiding clients with his C&S Guide Service on the afternoon of March 5 when he decided to return to a spot where he’d caught several big bass the day before, the fisherman tells F&S. “My jig was about seven feet below the surface when something slammed into it,” Turner says. “I knew right away it was a lot bigger than any bass I’d seen that day.”
Turner fought the fish for about a minute before it surfaced, and he realized what he had on, he says. Luckily, his baitcasting reel was spooled with 50-pound braided line. “Gar don’t roll like catfish, and they don’t jump like bass,” he says. “This one wagged its tail like a dog the whole time I was fighting it.”
After an intense, 20-minute fight, Turner finally brought the gar to the side of his boat, but he quickly realized it was too big for his net. “I grabbed her right below the gill plate and underneath the belly and flipped her up onto the deck,” he says.
The fish felt heavier than any gar he’d ever caught while bowfishing, he recalls. “I weighed it on a set of Bubba Scales, and it came in at 33.44 pounds,” he says. “I called my friend who’s been bowfishing for gar for 40 years, and he said I was looking at a state record.”
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Because the fish was too big for his livewell, Turner believes it lost multiple pounds of water weight in the three hours it took him to get to a certified scale at a nearby fish hatchery. According to the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, its final weight still came in at a whopping 31 pounds, 14 ounces, and it taped out at nearly five-feet long. The gar dethroned a 31-pound, 2 ounce longnose caught by Rachel Harrison on the Coosa River in March 2022.
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