In 2009, Jeremy Wade traveled to Texas for the River Monsters Season 1 episode titled "Alligator Gar" — chasing a creature so rare and so feared that locals called it a ghost. Decades of overfishing, habitat destruction, and bounty hunting had made true giants almost impossible to find.
Wade started on the standard Texas waterways. They produced nothing. He began piecing together the biology: unlike any other fish, the alligator gar can breathe air — surviving in stagnant, low-oxygen water where every other species suffocates. That meant the biggest fish weren't hiding in the pristine lakes. They were in the places no one else dared to go.
"To find a true monster, I had to leave the pristine lakes behind and go deep into the treacherous, snag-filled Trinity River. And to survive it, I needed the one man who knows these waters better than anyone alive."
— Jeremy Wade, River Monsters S1 · "Alligator Gar" · 2009That man was Bubba Bedre. On screen, Jeremy Wade introduces him to millions of viewers worldwide as an "alligator gar specialist" — the go-to guide who knows the dangerous, debris-heavy Trinity River inside and out, whose obsession with the species goes all the way back to childhood.
Bubba brought the critical local knowledge and heavy-duty steel tackle the fish demand. He taught Wade the grueling reality of Trinity River gar fishing: hours of waiting in stifling Texas heat, listening for the distinct hiss of a gar breaking the surface to gulp air, and mastering the delicate art of letting the fish run before setting a hook into its bone-hard jaw. Multiple times the reel screamed. Multiple times the hook didn't hold.
Then it happened. The fish took, turned, and the line went tight. A brutal, exhausting tug-of-war — the gar repeatedly threatening to wrap the line around submerged logs and snap the steel leaders. With Bubba maneuvering the boat and managing the landing, they brought it to the shallows: a magnificent 7-foot, 130-plus-pound alligator gar.
But the true climax wasn't the catch. It was what came after. As Jeremy Wade sat in the shallows cradling the massive fish — looking past the rows of teeth and diamond-hard ganoid scales — the narrative shifted completely. He revealed a beautiful, docile creature unchanged since the Cretaceous period. They released it. The conservation message reached a global audience of tens of millions. The episode didn't just introduce a river monster — it helped save a prehistoric treasure from extinction.
That was 2009. The guide Jeremy Wade trusted is still on the Trinity River — with 41 IGFA World Records earned in the years since.
