Lake Lanier Gar Has Three Mouths Of Razor Sharp Teeth

Evan DiMaggio, 9, of Flowery Branch, caught this weird three-billed gar while fishing with his dad, Pat, near their home on Lake Lanier. The 48-inch fish was caught July 10, 2011.

Evan DiMaggio, 9, of Flowery Branch, lives on Lake Lanier. He fishes a lot, but he has never caught anything like the three-billed gar he caught July 10, 2011. Not many people have.

Evan and his dad, Pat, were out in their jonboat in the Burton Mill Park Cove, which is near their Lake Lanier home. Evan was catching spotted bass on a brown plastic worm, fished weightless on his spinning tackle spooled with 12-lb. mono.

Pat said Evan catches spots and catfish all the time, but recently he has been targeting gar, a pursuit he is beginning to figure out. But Evan wasn’t specifically targeting gar the day he caught the weird fish.

Evan spotted the fish cruising the shallows in clear water at about 7 p.m. Because of the third bill, he thought the fish had something in its mouth.

“He spotted it and thought it had another fish in its mouth,” said Pat. “He cast across it, and the line hooked the top jaw and got stuck in there.”

It wasn’t until they got the fish in the boat that they realized they had something very out of the ordinary. The fish had three bills. The two bottom bills were attached to the mouth and throat, like a normal gar’s would be. And the fish appeared to be thriving, having reached a length of 48 inches with a healthy girth.

Pat said the third bill, on top, looked to be a horn-like protrusion, except that it was formed just like a shorter bill, with teeth and everything.

Fisheries biologist Greg Grimes has said a fish with two mouths is a very rare anomaly either caused by a genetic mutation or an injury to the fish’s mouth at a young age. Greg reported to GON a bass with a similar deformity that was caught in a Cobb County pond in September of 2010.

Pat said the third bill didn’t bother him. He made gar patties out of Evan’s fish, but they haven’t eaten them yet.

The Lake Lanier Page