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Longnose Florida Gar
Longnose Florida Gar are olive-brown or deep green along the back and upper sides, with silver-white bellies. There are a few irregular, large dark spots on the body. The young display scattered spots over both sides, the upper and lower jaws and on their ventral fins. The longnose is generally distinguished from other gars by its longer, more slender body, and especially by its longer, narrower snout. The snout is twice the length of the rest of the head.
They inhabit sluggish, sometimes poorly oxygenated water, backwaters and oxbows of medium-to-large rivers and lakes. Longnose gars as well as other gar species are able to tolerate poor water quality by breathing air through its air bladder. They usually are found near vegetation and occasionally in brackish waters.
Spawning occurs between December and March in Florida. Adhesive eggs are scattered in shallow water over vegetation or other structure and hatch between six and eight days later. The larvae attaches themselves to the substrate shortly after hatching by means of a disk-like organ on the tip of the snout while the fish continues to develop. The attachment organ subsequently is lost as the fish develops into an adult.
Young fish mainly feed on zooplankton while larger ones feed on small fishes, frogs and crustaceans. They feed by stalking their prey or lying in wait for it to come within striking distance.
Females grow faster, bigger, and live longer than males and can attain lengths in excess of five feet.
World Record - 50.31 pounds, caught in Trinity River, Texas, in 1954. Spotted gars are almost identical to Florida gars. Both species are the only two gars that have dark spots on the top of the head as well as over the entire body and on all the fins. They can be distinguished by the distance between the front of the eye and the rear edge of the gill cover. If the distance is more than two-thirds the length of the snout, it is a spotted gar. If the distance is less than two-thirds the length of the snout, it is a Florida gar. Spotted gars have a single row of teeth in each jaw and has a much broader snout than that of the longnose gar. The coloration generally is darker than that of Florida gars, some fish being almost black, depending on the color of the water. The World Record spotted gar was 8.75 pounds, caught in the Tennessee River, Alabama, in 1987.
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