C.J. Chivers

The Life Ahead: C.J. Chivers Teaches His Children to Fish

colinkearns — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 13:14:41 -0400

The transformation began in a matter of hours.

It started beside a rack of low-priced rods and a display of lures in a sporting-goods store. The selection was skimpy. But to my sons, Jack, 6, and Mick, 4, this was a portal to a secret world. For two years they had been stuck in a city. Now their fishing lives were about to begin. They wanted to know everything.

What is this? A swimming plug. And this? A jig. What do you catch on jigs?

The History of the Kalashnikov

fieldandstream-editor — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 19:00:00 -0500

The designer ofthe most successful rifle ever made sat at a table in a quiet corner of theKremlin. He was nearly 86 years old, but he retained the upright posture of thegeneral he is. His pale blue gaze was firm and clear.

Virtually everyonein the world has seen the firearm that bears his name, the AK-47. AK stands for"the automatic by Kalashnikov," the one-time Red Army sergeant whocreated its prototype at the opening of the Cold War. The number signifies1947, the year the Soviet army accepted the prototype for mass production. Withits short barrel, stock stained a brownish orange, and distinctive banana clip,the AK-47 and its derivatives long ago transcended their medium. They are notmerely the world's most widely recognized firearms. They are among the world'smost widely recognized things.

Now nearly 60years and perhaps 100 million rifles later, Mikhail Kalashnikov is both ageneral in semiretirement and Moscow's unofficial firearms ambassador to theworld. He agreed to share with FIELD & STREAM his observations as adesigner and as a lifelong student of firearms, and to discuss his experiencesas a hunter and shooter.

On this day alimited-edition series of decorative daggers had been released for public sale,each bearing Kalashnikov's signature and the unmistakable silhouette of therifles he designed. The daggers, each of which would be offered for pricesrunning into the thousands of dollars, seemed to have been created as much toboost profits for the Russian firm that makes them as to salute the general.And so when a craftsman presented him with the first dagger in the series, Gen.Kalashnikov seemed to recognize the incongruity of it all. He abruptly reachedinto the decorative box, withdrew the diamond-studded weapon, and thrust andswung it a few times through the air. It was a reminder of just what a daggerdoes.

The gesture wasplayful, but its message was implicit: Tools are supposed to be used. Thingsare only as good as they work.

Of the many thingsthat the name Kalashnikov has come to symbolize, for better or for worse, oneis undeniable: functionality. Kalashnikov's series of rifles, now ubiquitous,achieved global circulation in part because of two reasons central to theirdesign. They are simple to use. And they almost never fail. In an industryoften enamored with the new, his rifles remain riffs on simplicity. They haveundergone only modest modifications in more than five decades.

Things are only asgood as they work. This is Kalashnikov, man and gun. "Some people think asimple weapon means that it is a slapdash job," he says. "They arewrong. To make something simple is a thousand times more difficult than to makesomething complex."

I have met withthe general several times in the last two years, visiting him at his dacha andin Izhevsk, a formerly secret city tucked deep in the forests of the Ural rangewhere Kalashnikov rifles are made, and now here at the Kremlin. He is a smalland spry man, with an often beguiling mix of Russian hospitality and militaryformality.

He is also a massof paradoxes. He mixes nostalgia for the Soviet Union with an appreciation thathis once-closed world has been opened. He is gentle and unfailingly polite butalso impassioned and eager to refute his critics. He seems to wear the worldlightly, but after spending years helping to arm the Soviet army and havingseen his firearms end up in the hands of terrorists, he admits to ponderingquestions of the soul.

His mind islargely decided. He designed firearms, he said, to defend the rodina—themotherland. When he set out to fulfill that task, parts of his homeland wereunder Nazi occupation. He does not rue his choices. "I am a gunsmith,"he wrote in his 1997 memoir. "That explains everything."

A Gun Born ofNecessity

Born in 1919, twoyears after the Bolshevik Revolution brought the Communists to power, he livedhis early years in poverty on the Altai steppe, one of 19 children his motherbore in a peasant home. The privations of Russian rural life in the early 20thcentury were such that of those 19 children only eight would survive. And thehardships of the steppe were soon exacerbated by the state-ordered miseries tocome. Stalin sought to bring the peasants under the socialist yoke, seizingtheir land, crops, and livestock and forcing them onto collectivized farms.

The Kalashnikovfamily would not be spared. Before Kalashnikov was a teenager, his family wasblacklisted and shipped to Siberia, where his father died trying to scratch outa living in a new land. The young Mikhail eventually fled exile and took up anillegal life in Kazakhstan—a daring move and a secret he would hide fordecades.

By the timeKalashnikov reached conscription age and entered the Red Army, the Sovietpolice state had reduced his country to near paralytic terror. But the rise ofAdolf Hitler and the threat of German invasion served as a unifying force for anation that had turned on itself. With war approaching, Kalashnikov thrived inthe army, finding in this social leveler a sense of purpose and an outlet forhis energies. It was at this point that he showed the first hints of his designsense. The fugitive farm boy, with little formal training, invented asuccessful tachometer that could be installed in his unit's tanks.

Germany invadedthe Soviet Union in June 1941. Kalashnikov, by then a sergeant, was injuredwithin months when a shell stopped his T-34 tank and sent shrapnel through hisshoulder. As Soviet history tells it, while Sgt. Kalashnikov recuperated, hebegan tinkering with infantry weapons, eventually setting his mind on designinga lightweight automatic assault rifle that would expel the better-armed Nazisfrom Russian soil.

Soviet infantryfought World War II with two basic small arms: one was the badly outdatedMosin-Nagant Model 1891 bolt-action rifle. The other was the PPSh series ofsubmachine guns, reliable arms that were effective but only at short range.Something better was needed, and that something was in the hands of the NaziWehrmacht.

It was called theMP44 Sturmgewehr (assault rifle), and it could fire in full or semiautomaticmode. Chambered for a revolutionary new cartridge, a short 7.92mm round thatwas less powerful than a full-size rifle cartridge, yet far more powerful thanthe pistol cartridges for which submachine guns were chambered, the Sturmgewehrmade a deep impression on the Soviets who faced it.

Borrowing,Brilliantly

"I worked forour soldiers," Kalashnikov said. "I knew that our soldiers did notstudy in academies. What they needed had to be simple and reliable."

His first rifle,made in a Kazakh rail yard while he was on convalescent leave, was flawed. Butthe fact that he had made it without advanced training or specialized tools,and on his own initiative, so impressed the Soviet officers who examined itthat Kalashnikov was transferred to a military design bureau.

As Kalashnikovworked, the Wehrmacht crested, withdrew, and collapsed. When the war ended, theRed Army sponsored a contest among firearms designers to create a new line ofrifles that would fire the 7.62x39, a "short rifle" round that wassimilar to the German cartridge. Kalashnikov was credited with developing therifle that won, the AK-47, which became the standard infantry rifle for theSoviet army.

What Kalashnikov'sdesign team did was not only to invent but to borrow and improve, oftenbrilliantly. As is common in firearms evolution, the automatic Kalashnikovbears distinct traces of previous infantry weapons. From the Sturmgewehr MP44,the AK-47 assumed its silhouette: pistol grip; short barrel; high front sight;and long, slightly curved magazine. Also as with the MP44, the weapon's gastube, which operates the action, is located above the barrel. This helps keeprecoil in a straight line and reduces the rifle's climb during automaticfire.

Its bore andchamber were chrome-lined (as had been done with the Japanese Arisaka rifle).This reduces corrosion when the rifle is not cleaned. The action and triggermechanism owe much to the American M1 Garand rifle. One element that made therecombination so successful was the spareness with which it was done. Therewere few parts in this weapon, and very few moving parts. And they were allsimple, strong, and relatively easy to assemble.

Kalashnikov alsobuilt considerable "slop" into the gun. Its tolerances, by Americandesign standards, were huge. As Kalashnikov explains:

"Mr. Tokarev[Fedor V. Tokarev, a noted Soviet arms designer] used to say that all partsshould be put together as tightly as possible, so that not a fleck of dustcould get in between. I, on the contrary, was always saying that it must bedesigned so that even a handful of sand wouldn't stop the mechanismworking."

And it won't. Norwill mud, dust, rust, ice, powder fouling, and neglect—it makes no difference.The AK almost always keeps on firing.

Soviet designersnever bought into the concept of precision fire for the average infantryman,and so the AK-47 is inaccurate by our standards, and the low velocity of itscartridge (2300 fps) limits its effective range to 300 yards or less. Butwithin those limits, it is remarkably effective. As it happens, almost allcombat occurs within these ranges, making the Kalashnikov a tool that isactually matched to its task and not to chalkboard standards that rarely existin use.

The UniversalRifle

No one knows forcertain how many Kalashnikovs exist, but one point is beyond dispute: They arethe most abundant firearms on earth. Since the Red Army accepted the AK-47prototype, licensed variants of that design have been made in at least 19countries, including Poland, Cuba, North Korea, East Germany, Bulgaria, Egypt,China, Russia, Romania, and Iraq. Knockoff versions, or weapons incorporatingmain elements of the Kalashnikov operating systems, were developed in Finland,South Africa, Israel, and Sweden. A single comparison provides a sense of thescope of the Kalashnikov's spread. The second most abundant rifle on earth isthe American M16; roughly 8 or 10 million have been made. Serious estimates putthe number of Kalashnikovs and its derivatives as high as 100 million.

This vastcirculation has given rise to one of the enduring myths about the general—thathe has not enjoyed any material reward for the product made in his name. It'strue that he did not become a wealthy man, but he himself rejects wealth as theonly measure:

"I am toldsometimes, 'If you had lived in the West, you would have been a millionairelong ago.' Well, they value everything in that green stuff. But there are othervalues. Why don't they see these values?"

He went on to listsome of them: two museums built in his honor, 30 years in the Supreme Soviet, ahuge bronze bust in the hometown from which his family was once exiled. Most ofall he seems to value his reputation for selfless labor, a Soviet ideal hestill holds dear.

A KALASH IN YOURFUTURE? These days the path of the Russian firearms industry that is entwined with hisname is less clear. With the Soviet Union long past and the remnants of itsfirearms industry struggling, Izhmash, the factory in Izhevsk where Gen.Kalashnikov worked, is now partially privatized. Although it seems likely tocontinue providing rifles domestically, its future as an internationalheavyweight is uncertain, in part because it must compete with its previoussuccess. (Markets are already flooded with its durable guns, making it cheapertoday to buy a batch of excess AKMs, the successor to the AK-47, in a bazaaralong the Pakistan border than to purchase a similar quantity fromRosoboronexport, the Russian arms trading agency.)

In recent years,Izhmash has tried a new approach to complement its past: manufacturing andmarketing sporting firearms based on the Kalashnikov design system, includingshotguns that it markets to upland bird and waterfowl hunters. It also makesbolt-action rifles for hunters and biathletes, all with solid wooden stocksreplacing the laminated plywood furniture of the familiar military line. Thesesporting arms—including the Saiga semiautomatic shotgun and the Saigasemiautomatic rifles—have found a market in Russia and have started to turn upin the United States.

The generalexpects that they will succeed, although it is too early to tell. "I thinkwith time American hunters shall hunt with guns designed by the man sitting infront of you," he told me. Such a notion would have been unimaginable notso many years ago. And the guns may not take. But when the general speaks, hedoes so with the knowledge that for half a century, everywhere Kalashnikovshave gone, they have found their followers and made their mark.

Anatomy of anAK-47

THIS IS ACROSS-SECTION OF AN AK-47 ADAPTED FOR MECHANIZED INFANTRY BY REPLACING THE WOODBUTTSTOCK WITH A PIVOTING METAL ONE.

Receiver The receiver and bolt have plenty of play in them, as do all the movingparts.

Fire Selector The rifle adjusts for semi- or full-auto fire via this selector lever on theright side of the receiver.

Magazine One of the trademarks of the Kalashnikov is the reddish plastic magazine. Itholds 30 rounds.

Gas Cylinder Its placement above the barrel lowers the line of recoil and makes the riflemore manageable.

Barrel The small powder charge of the 7.62x39 cartridge allows the use of ashort(16.34-inch) barrel.

Q + A WITHKALASHNIKOV

Given hisexperience at the center of the largest firearms enterprise on earth, F&Sasked Gen. Kalashnikov to discuss a variety of topics. Here is a selection ofhis answers, a window into his world.

On the differencesbetween a sporting and military rifle. A sportsman, unlike a soldier, does not have to run, jump, crawl, throw thegun, dive in the water, and so forth. Sporting guns are handled with more care.Also, the quality of the bore of a sporting gun is higher to ensure betteraccuracy. The weight of a sport gun is not of great importance. Some sportrifles are very heavy, hard to lift, but the accuracy is perfect. But for asoldier weight is very important. He has to carry so much himself, all hisammunition and so on.

On what he seeksin a sporting rifle. A hunting weapon should also work in any condition: when it is raining,snowing, when it is cold. The animal will not forgive your mistake if yourcarbine misfires or if the animal is wounded. So the hunting weapon must be asreliable as the military weapon.

On the differencebetween Russian and American sporting arms. They are very similar because approaches to sport shooting are similar all overthe world. I don't find any significant difference.

On the type ofhunting he prefers. The kind of hunting you choose depends on your age. There was a time when Iliked hunting waterfowl and upland fowl, hare, and big, hoofed animals. But oneneeds stamina to hunt this kind of game. To get a hare you must really run andjump a lot. At my age I cannot do it anymore. Or take a wood grouse. It is noteasy to hunt grouse at my age: You need good hearing because you can move onlywhen the dog bells. When it stops belling, you must stop moving. Now I have"professional deafness," and I only scare the bird.

These days I huntonce a year for big game, the moose. I go with a team of hunters. We've workedtogether and known each other for a long time. I tell you what: I am alwaysupset if we kill the game from the first attempt in a first drive. I would liketo stay in the forest longer to extend the communion with nature. And when westay there long, make two, three, four, up to five drives, it is moreinteresting, there is something to talk about afterward, let alone thecommunication with other hunters, communion with the forest and nature.

On teaching, orimproving, marksmanship. Lecturing on the subject is of no use. Of course, it is necessary to know basicrules, but only shooting helps to get the feel of it. One should get accustomedto the sound of a shot. Even trigger pulling needs practicing, especially ifthe hunter is not accustomed to the sound and is all tense expecting it.Shooting and more shooting! This is my answer to this question.

On what to expectof new firearm design. Firearms development will depend on the appearance of a new cartridge. It isthe common practice here and in the United States and any other country. We doour work on the basis of a new cartridge. When a new type of ammunition isdeveloped, we start working on a new model. We designers are the second stageof the process: first the cartridge, then it is our turn.

On whether smallarms design is a mature field. Small arms were first to appear and will be last to die.

For a huntingstory Kalashnikov shared with the author, go tofieldandstream.com/kalashnikov

[See Caption Above.]

The Father of 100 Million Rifles

fieldandstream-editor — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 04:25:00 -0500

The designer of the most successful rifle ever made sat at a table in a quiet corner of the Kremlin. He was nearly 86 years old, but he retained the upright posture of the general he is. His pale blue gaze was firm and clear.

Virtually everyone in the world has seen the firearm that bears his name, the AK-47. AK stands for "the automatic by Kalashnikov," the one-time Red Army sergeant who created its prototype at the opening of the Cold War. The number signifies 1947, the year the Soviet army accepted the prototype for mass production. With its short barrel, stock stained a brownish orange, and distinctive banana clip, the AK-47 and its derivatives long ago transcended their medium. They are not merely the world's most widely recognized firearms. They are among the world's most widely recognized things.

Now nearly 60 years and perhaps 100 million rifles later, Mikhail Kalashnikov is both a general in semiretirement and Moscow's unofficial firearms ambassador to the world. He agreed to share with FIELD & STREAM his observations as a designer and as a lifelong student of firearms, and to discuss his experiences as a hunter and shooter.

On this day a limited-edition series of decorative daggers had been released for public sale, each bearing Kalashnikov's signature and the unmistakable silhouette of the rifles he designed. The daggers, each of which would be offered for prices running into the thousands of dollars, seemed to have been created as much to boost profits for the Russian firm that makes them as to salute the general. And so when a craftsman presented him with the first dagger in the series, Gen. Kalashnikov seemed to recognize the incongruity of it all. He abruptly reached into the decorative box, withdrew the diamond-studded weapon, and thrust and swung it a few times through the air. It was a reminder of just what a dagger does.

The gesture was playful, but its message was implicit: Tools are supposed to be used. Things are only as good as they work.

Of the many things that the name Kalashnikov has come to symbolize, for better or for worse, one is undeniable: functionality. Kalashnikov's series of rifles, now ubiquitous, achieved global circulation in part because of two reasons central to their design. They are simple to use. And they almost never fail. In an industry often enamored with the new, his rifles remain riffs on simplicity. They have undergone only modest modifications in more than five decades.

Things are only as good as they work. This is Kalashnikov, man and gun. "Some people think a simple weapon means that it is a slapdash job," he says. "They are wrong. To make something simple is a thousand times more difficult than to make something complex."

I have met with the general several times in the last two years, visiting him at his dacha and in Izhevsk, a formerly secret city tucked deep in the forests of the Ural range where Kalashnikov rifles are made, and now here at the Kremlin. He is a small and spry man, with an often beguiling mix of Russian hospitality and military formality.

He is also a mass of paradoxes. He mixes nostalgia for the Soviet Union with an appreciation that his once-closed world has been opened. He is gentle and unfailingly polite but also impassioned and eager to refute his critics. He seems to wear the world lightly, but after spending years helping to arm the Soviet army and having seen his firearms end up in the hands of terrorists, he admits to pondering questions of the soul.

His mind is largely decided. He designed firearms, he said, to defend the rodina--the motherland. When he set out to fulfill that task, parts of his homeland were under Nazi occupation. He does not rue his choices. "I am a gunsmith," he wrote in his 1997 memoir. "That explains everything." [NEXT "A Gun Born of Necessity"]

A Gun Born of Necessity
Born in 1919, two years after the Bolshevik Revolion brought the Communists to power, he lived his early years in poverty on the Altai steppe, one of 19 children his mother bore in a peasant home. The privations of Russian rural life in the early 20th century were such that of those 19 children only eight would survive. And the hardships of the steppe were soon exacerbated by the state-ordered miseries to come. Stalin sought to bring the peasants under the socialist yoke, seizing their land, crops, and livestock and forcing them onto collectivized farms.

The Kalashnikov family would not be spared. Before Kalashnikov was a teenager, his family was blacklisted and shipped to Siberia, where his father died trying to scratch out a living in a new land. The young Mikhail eventually fled exile and took up an illegal life in Kazakhstan--a daring move and a secret he would hide for decades.

By the time Kalashnikov reached conscription age and entered the Red Army, the Soviet police state had reduced his country to near paralytic terror. But the rise of Adolf Hitler and the threat of German invasion served as a unifying force for a nation that had turned on itself. With war approaching, Kalashnikov thrived in the army, finding in this social leveler a sense of purpose and an outlet for his energies. It was at this point that he showed the first hints of his design sense. The fugitive farm boy, with little formal training, invented a successful tachometer that could be installed in his unit's tanks.

Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941. Kalashnikov, by then a sergeant, was injured within months when a shell stopped his T-34 tank and sent shrapnel through his shoulder. As Soviet history tells it, while Sgt. Kalashnikov recuperated, he began tinkering with infantry weapons, eventually setting his mind on designing a lightweight automatic assault rifle that would expel the better-armed Nazis from Russian soil.

Soviet infantry fought World War II with two basic small arms: one was the badly outdated Mosin-Nagant Model 1891 bolt-action rifle. The other was the PPSh series of submachine guns, reliable arms that were effective but only at short range. Something better was needed, and that something was in the hands of the Nazi Wehrmacht.

It was called the MP44 Sturmgewehr (assault rifle), and it could fire in full or semiautomatic mode. Chambered for a revolutionary new cartridge, a short 7.92mm round that was less powerful than a full-size rifle cartridge, yet far more powerful than the pistol cartridges for which submachine guns were chambered, the Sturmgewehr made a deep impression on the Soviets who faced it. [NEXT "Borrowing, Brilliantly"]

Borrowing, Brilliantly
"I worked for our soldiers," Kalashnikov said. "I knew that our soldiers did not study in academies. What they needed had to be simple and reliable."

His first rifle, made in a Kazakh rail yard while he was on convalescent leave, was flawed. But the fact that he had made it without advanced training or specialized tools, and on his own initiative, so impressed the Soviet officers who examined it that Kalashnikov was transferred to a military design bureau.

As Kalashnikov worked, the Wehrmacht crested, withdrew, and collapsed. When the war ended, the Red Army sponsored a contest among firearms designers to create a new line of rifles that would fire the 7.62x39, a "short rifle" round that was similar to the German cartridge. Kalashnikov was credited with developing the rifle that won, the AK-47, which became the standard infantry rifle for the Soviet army.

What Kalashnikov's design team did was not only to invent but to borrow and improve, often brilliantly. As is common in firearms evolution, the automatic Kalashnikov bears distinct traces of previous infantry weapons. From the Sturmgewehr MP44, the AK-47 assumed its silhouette: pistol grip; short barrel; high front sight; and long, slightly curved magazine. Also as with the MP44, the weapon's gas tube, which operates the action, is located above the barrel. This helps keep recoil in a straight line and reduces the rifle's climb during automatic fire.

Its bore and chamber were chrome-lined (as had been done with the Japanese Arisaka rifle). This reduces corrosion when the rifle is not cleaned. The action and trigger mechanism owe much to the American M1 Garand rifle. One element that made the recombination so successful was the spareness with which it was done. There were few parts in this weapon, and very few moving parts. And they were all simple, strong, and relatively easy to assemble.

Kalashnikov also built considerable "slop" into the gun. Its tolerances, by American design standards, were huge. As Kalashnikov explains:

"Mr. Tokarev (Fedor V. Tokarev, a noted Soviet arms designer) used to say that all parts should be put together as tightly as possible, so that not a fleck of dust could get in between. I, on the contrary, was always saying that it must be designed so that even a handful of sand wouldn't stop the mechanism working."

And it won't. Nor will mud, dust, rust, ice, powder fouling, and neglect--it makes no difference. The AK almost always keeps on firing.

Soviet designers never bought into the concept of precision fire for the average infantryman, and so the AK-47 is inaccurate by our standards, and the low velocity of its cartridge (2300 fps) limits its effective range to 300 yards or less. But within those limits, it is remarkably effective. As it happens, almost all combat occurs within these ranges, making the Kalashnikov a tool that is actually matched to its task and not to chalkboard standards that rarely exist in use. [NEXT "The Universal Rifle"]

The Universal Rifle
No one knows for certain how many Kalashnikovs exist, but one point is beyond dispute: They are the most abundant firearms on earth. Since the Red Army accepted the AK-47 prototype, licensed variants of that design have been made in at least 19 countries, including Poland, Cuba, North Korea, East Germany, Bulgaria, Egypt, China, Russia, Romania, and Iraq. Knockoff versions, or weapons incorporating main elements of the Kalashnikov operating systems, were developed in Finland, South Africa, Israel, and Sweden. A single comparison provides a sense of the scope of the Kalashnikov's spread. The second most abundant rifle on earth is the American M16; roughly 8 or 10 million have been made. Serious estimates put the number of Kalashnikovs and its derivatives as high as 100 million.

This vast circulation has given rise to one of the enduring myths about the general--that he has not enjoyed any material reward for the product made in his name. It's true that he did not become a wealthy man, but he himself rejects wealth as the only measure:

"I am told sometimes, 'If youith the MP44, the weapon's gas tube, which operates the action, is located above the barrel. This helps keep recoil in a straight line and reduces the rifle's climb during automatic fire.

Its bore and chamber were chrome-lined (as had been done with the Japanese Arisaka rifle). This reduces corrosion when the rifle is not cleaned. The action and trigger mechanism owe much to the American M1 Garand rifle. One element that made the recombination so successful was the spareness with which it was done. There were few parts in this weapon, and very few moving parts. And they were all simple, strong, and relatively easy to assemble.

Kalashnikov also built considerable "slop" into the gun. Its tolerances, by American design standards, were huge. As Kalashnikov explains:

And it won't. Nor will mud, dust, rust, ice, powder fouling, and neglect--it makes no difference. The AK almost always keeps on firing.

Soviet designers never bought into the concept of precision fire for the average infantryman, and so the AK-47 is inaccurate by our standards, and the low velocity of its cartridge (2300 fps) limits its effective range to 300 yards or less. But within those limits, it is remarkably effective. As it happens, almost all combat occurs within these ranges, making the Kalashnikov a tool that is actually matched to its task and not to chalkboard standards that rarely exist in use. [NEXT "The Universal Rifle"]

"I am told sometimes, 'If you

Fishing for Dinosaurs

fieldandstream-editor — Mon, 18 Jul 2005 13:20:00 -0400

They call it big lake, but that is not really its name. it has no official name. it is not even a lake. It is a trench filled with greenish-brown water in the east Texas forest, set between two prisons near the Trinity River. From the air it looks like an enormous chile pepper, long and thin, slightly crooked and a few hundred yards wide. Its secrets are bound to the Trinity's flow. When heavy rains fall, the river jumps its banks and swirls through the oak and pine, and fish ride with the rising water, swimming through timber and vine to the quietude of this place.

I had come here to see the converted and the fish that time forgot. It was noon on a Friday in late spring. The temperature had climbed with the sun. Big Lake exhaled the fresh smell of wet earth. Before me stood the converts, Curt Parker and Gary Satterfield, wandering the shore in ball caps, endlessly checking six neatly arranged rods they had baited with chunks of chopped drum and cast into the murk. Now and then something dimpled the surface out in the trench, a disturbance followed by swirls and glimpses of olive-green hide. Sometimes the swirls were as large as the wake left by a canoe.

The Trinity's fish were here. They had grown very, very big.

After more than an hour of waiting, as the fish oil from the cut bait spread its slick under the surface, one of the reels began to click. Then another. The men lunged for the rods and held them while the line on each reel played out in a long, fast whir. Around them was an odd mix of heavy equipment: a long steel bar, leather gloves, a stretcherlike frame that looked as if it could cradle a beached dolphin, a buck scale that went to 300 pounds. "Here we go," Satterfield said, readying for the bedlam ahead.

Parker nodded, stepped back, and slammed upward on the rod; Satterfield did the same. Splashing began out in the trench. The men had driven hooks into a pair of fish that are among the largest fish-eating creatures in the United States, alligator gar, a massive and primeval fish, a rough contemporary of the Stegosaurus and the Tyrannosaurus rex.

Near the bank, Parker's alligator thrashed about. Satterfield's was running away. He couldn't stop it. Sweat beaded his brow. The fish bore down in a long, straight run, making his reel wind as if he had hooked something offshore.

"Somebody give me a glove!" he shouted. "I'm burning up my thumb!"

[NEXT "Story Continued.."] Of all the lesser-known animals in north america, none is more impressive than the alligator gar, a prehistoric predator that seems unbound by the normal constraints on freshwater fish. Built like an armored slab of telephone pole with a rounded tail, a triangular snout, and small, primitive eyes, it is the grandest representative of a family that reaches back to the Cretaceous, having a life span that can exceed 50 years and sometimes growing past 9 feet and 300 pounds.

Its mouth is a hinged maw of daggers, with teeth more than an inch long and arranged in double rows. It defies comparison.

Alligator gar occupy a resonant place in the psyche of American fisheries. Creatures that dodged whatever killed off the dinosaurs, savvy masters of the ambush, giants, they do not merely fascinate. They inspire loathing. Among anglers who prefer the familiar lines and habits of trout and bass, alligator gar often fulfill the role of villains. To their name is attributed a rap sheet of dark water crimes: ruining populations of gamefish, tearing apart nets, smashing small craft, preying upon man.

Though legends of attacks by them upon children and swimmers are deeply suspect, and the few studies that have been conducted of their diet suggest they forage far more on unwanted fish than on species sought for game, alligator gar remain among the perennially accused. Their real offense seems to be combining ugliness with great size, and for this they haveeen punished like few fish.

Over the years the species has been shot, snagged, speared, and electrocuted, often to vigorous cheering. FIELD & STREAM was once part of the pile-on, reporting the catch of a 78-inch fish in 1952 by noting that "another net-wrecking fish destroyer was removed from the White River." The attitude persists. To this day, when fishermen catch alligator gar by accident, they often leave them flopping on the bank or break their snouts and toss them back. Either way the result is the same. The gar die.

Absurdities cling to the alligator gar's name almost as persistently as scorn, and when it has not been pilloried it has been parodied-nicknamed "Cajun barracuda" or "Arkansas tuna" and described as reaching lengths of 20 feet, which would put it roughly in the weight class of a great white shark. And they are a mystery. For all the attention they have attracted, only a basic sketch of their life and habits is known: They can tolerate brackish water. They spawn in spring. They feed principally on fish but also on crustaceans, waterfowl, amphibians, reptiles, and mammals. Their eggs are said to be poisonous. Their swim bladder is laced with a network of fine blood vessels, which allows it to double as a lung and explains why alligator gar often rise to the surface to gulp air.

And they are in decline. A century ago alligator gar occurred in much of the central basin of the United States, roaming the Mississippi into the Missouri and Ohio Rivers, reaching Illinois. Today, after decades of persecution and dam building, they are largely restricted to the Deep South. No one knows how many are left, and estimates are grim. "They've probably been extirpated from 60 or 70 percent of their range," says Kerry Graves, manager of the Tishomingo National Fish Hatchery in Oklahoma, which has been trying to cultivate the species in captivity. Like everyone who has spent time around alligator gar, Graves has his stories. One is about what sometimes happens to gar surfacing on the Red River, where Graves caught his brood stock. "People sit on the cliff and shoot them with rifles," he says. "On sight."

How then, did two men become devoted to them? What would these men know?

[NEXT "Story Continued.."] We arrived at Big Lake in the morning, passing by one of the prisons, turning onto a dirt track, driving past a mucky woodlot and a row of deer hunters' cabins, and at last coming to the shore. There is a small band of dedicated gar fishermen in this country, and during the winter, on a referral from the Gar Anglers' Sporting Society, one of the groups that celebrate gar on the Internet, I had tracked down Parker and Satterfield. The summer before they had come across the bottled-up population of the big gar and had planned on fishing them in the spring, once the temperature rose and the fish began to move. They were in the rare position of considering whether to start a business guiding for alligator gar.

Now the water was warming, and Parker and Satterfield were unloading gear, producing 6-foot 6-inch saltwater baitcasting rods, all very stout. Satterfield tightened down a big reel spooled with 50-pound mono, passed the line through the guides and then through a 3-ounce egg sinker, and tied it off on a 3-foot leader made from galvanized braided wire. The wire tested at 2,000 pounds. Its end was crimped around a 5/0 treble hook sharpened so fine that when I ran it across my fingernail, it grabbed.

The pair worked with the practiced care of the crew on a shark boat, knowing that their tackle had to be just right and their equipment at the ready if they were going to beat big fish in close. As Satterfield prepared the rods, Parker put the rod holders on the bank, then reached into the cooler and lifted the bait-a freshwater drum, which he cut into wallet-size chunks, skin and fins on. He slid a few greasy pieces onto the treble and gave the first rod back to Satterfield, who sampled its weight, inhaled, exhaled, inhaled again, and then abruptly swung his shoulders back as he crow-hopped toward the water. The rod snapped forward, and the bait soared out and fell to the surface with a hearty splash, an experience about like shot-putting with a line attached.

Soon the rest of their methodology emerged. Each rod took its place in a numbered holder. Heavy work gloves were set on the bank nearby. After depositing the baits in a fan-shaped array in front of the boat ramp, Satterfield carefully arranged the large cradle he had designed and built, spreading it in the shallows beneath the spot where he hoped to beach one of Big Lake's beasts. Beside it he placed a long piece of rebar, bent at its end: the hook punch. He strung the buck scale to a shoreside tree and hung from it a rope. Then he contented himself to wait.

Parker and Satterfield did not start out this way. The two men work together at the nearby Coca-Cola plant and had fished together during the last few years. But it was almost always for bass. And Satterfield, who had lived his entire life in east Texas, already had his outdoor habits: small-game hunting, deer hunting in these same woods, bass, crappies. But fishing for alligator gar? Well, he was busy doing what he already loved.

It all changed on the Fourth of July in 2003, when Parker was visiting a friend in Waco who showed him some heavy tackle and suggested that they drive over to the Brazos River and try for alligator gar. Parker was incredulous. "I thought, 'Gar fishing? I'm a bass fisherman.'" But as he looked over the heavy tackle his friend offered him, he understood that alligator gar were enormous. Soon he was wading chest-deep in the Brazos, casting a big chunk of dead fish.

[NEXT "Story Continued.."] An hour or so later something lifted the bait. Parker let the fish run and slammed back. The rod bent hard. The fish didn't move. "It was like setting the hook into a brick wall," he recalled. Then it started to run, almost yanking the rod from his hands and stripping off about 80 yards before he could slow it down. Several minutes later, the alligator gar swam through the shallows, glimpsed Parker, and kicked off in an explosion of frothy water. It swam all the way across the river again. After 15 minutes of tug-of-war, Parker slid the big thing up on the bank. It was 6 feet long, green, mottled in a timeless camouflage, and very toothy. Six feet! His conversion had begun.

Back at work Parker's mind would sometimes drift. Where else can I catch alligator gar? He told the story of the 6-footer to Satterfield, who picked up on the enthusiasm and said he knew of a trench on deer-lease land where his cousin Wayne had shot a huge alligator gar with an arrow a few years ago. The trench had a nickname: Big Lake.

A season of experimrod back to Satterfield, who sampled its weight, inhaled, exhaled, inhaled again, and then abruptly swung his shoulders back as he crow-hopped toward the water. The rod snapped forward, and the bait soared out and fell to the surface with a hearty splash, an experience about like shot-putting with a line attached.

Soon the rest of their methodology emerged. Each rod took its place in a numbered holder. Heavy work gloves were set on the bank nearby. After depositing the baits in a fan-shaped array in front of the boat ramp, Satterfield carefully arranged the large cradle he had designed and built, spreading it in the shallows beneath the spot where he hoped to beach one of Big Lake's beasts. Beside it he placed a long piece of rebar, bent at its end: the hook punch. He strung the buck scale to a shoreside tree and hung from it a rope. Then he contented himself to wait.

Parker and Satterfield did not start out this way. The two men work together at the nearby Coca-Cola plant and had fished together during the last few years. But it was almost always for bass. And Satterfield, who had lived his entire life in east Texas, already had his outdoor habits: small-game hunting, deer hunting in these same woods, bass, crappies. But fishing for alligator gar? Well, he was busy doing what he already loved.

It all changed on the Fourth of July in 2003, when Parker was visiting a friend in Waco who showed him some heavy tackle and suggested that they drive over to the Brazos River and try for alligator gar. Parker was incredulous. "I thought, 'Gar fishing? I'm a bass fisherman.'" But as he looked over the heavy tackle his friend offered him, he understood that alligator gar were enormous. Soon he was wading chest-deep in the Brazos, casting a big chunk of dead fish.

[NEXT "Story Continued.."] An hour or so later something lifted the bait. Parker let the fish run and slammed back. The rod bent hard. The fish didn't move. "It was like setting the hook into a brick wall," he recalled. Then it started to run, almost yanking the rod from his hands and stripping off about 80 yards before he could slow it down. Several minutes later, the alligator gar swam through the shallows, glimpsed Parker, and kicked off in an explosion of frothy water. It swam all the way across the river again. After 15 minutes of tug-of-war, Parker slid the big thing up on the bank. It was 6 feet long, green, mottled in a timeless camouflage, and very toothy. Six feet! His conversion had begun.

Back at work Parker's mind would sometimes drift. Where else can I catch alligator gar? He told the story of the 6-footer to Satterfield, who picked up on the enthusiasm and said he knew of a trench on deer-lease land where his cousin Wayne had shot a huge alligator gar with an arrow a few years ago. The trench had a nickname: Big Lake.

A season of experim