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When Kirk Kirkland was a teenager in East Texas in the 1980s, alligator gar were trash fish. Anglers used the dismissive term to refer to species that ate the fish they were interested in catching. But in the mid-1990s, Kirkland, who was by then working with his dad selling fish, started getting calls from Dutch anglers who wanted to come to Texas in search of alligator gar. To the Dutch, the ferocious-looking gar with their gnarly teeth were an exotic trophy fish. One of the biggest fish in North America, the species can reach more than two hundred pounds and eight feet in length. It was bigger than anything the Dutch could catch at home.Kirkland and his dad sold mostly catfish, but they caught alligator…

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