Texas Angler Snags Record-Breaking 153-Pound Monster on Whisper-Thin Line
Art Weston And Kirk Kirkland, World Record-Chasing Anglers
Art Weston’s previous accomplishments speak for themselves. He is the only angler in IGFA history to accomplish a clean sweep of a single species, and he’s already netted every line-class record and the all-tackle world record for alligator gar.
Last year, Weston set the all-tackle world record for an alligator gar that weighed in at 283 pounds — but he used a six-pound test line for that catch. With this new challenge, Weston’s goal was to use a two-pound line, with which he needed to catch a fish weighing at least 111 pounds to break the current record (his own).
Art WestonCaptain Kirk Kirkland measuring the gar’s length: seven feet and three inches.
“That was kind of our goal — to get into a fish that was above 110 pounds, but not too big,” Weston told Outdoor Life. “[Kirkland] didn’t want to fight anything bigger than we had to. The two-pound record that I had previously, we caught it on Choke Canyon, and that was a brutal fight. It was well over two and a half hours, and both of us remember not liking it.”
Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, Weston and Kirkland did hook a bigger fish — but that only meant an even more brutal fight to reel it in. In a Facebook post, Weston called it the “most challenging catch of my life.”
But it was worth it.
A Four-Hour Battle To Reel In The 153-Pound Alligator Gar
Around 1 p.m. on April 8, Weston got a bite. However, he and Kirkland wouldn’t pull their record-breaking catch onto the boat for another four hours.
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