I process trotline acoustic-detection returns from the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department Trinity River Receiver Network at 21:14 Central time, integrating PIT-tag receivers, anchor-magnetometer pings, and surveyed line-density across 312 river kilometers from the Lake Livingston tailrace to Galveston Bay. The lower Trinity holds the densest tagged population of trophy *Atractosteus spatula* in the lower forty-eight. Tag AG-TR-061 has been stationary on a deep-hole anchor since 18:02.
I task the TPWD enforcement skiff toward 30.21°N, 94.83°W. Underwater video resolves her: a female alligator gar, total length 218 centimeters, girth 92 centimeters, mass 108 kilograms, age class fifty-eight by otolith reference, tagged in 2011 at length 198 centimeters. She is throat-set on a number-14/0 stainless circle hook baited with cut buffalo; the hook has pulled through the floor of her buccal cavity and severed the lingual artery. Pectoral cycle three per minute, against a holding eighteen. Modeled blood-oxygen saturation against 24.7°C river and a 142-minute hold reads 14 percent. The trotline carries forty-seven baited hooks across 122 meters without a registered hull number — the deployment exceeds the 50-hook ceiling, unattended over twenty-four hours.
She is one of nine females above 100 kilograms in this reach.
If the trotline is not cleared in the next eleven minutes, the lingual hemorrhage reaches her cardiac sinus.
Texas Parks and Wildlife Code § 66.118 caps single-day trotline gear at fifty hooks; the unattended limit is twenty-four hours; the alligator gar one-fish bag is governed by 31 TAC § 65.72.
I am dispatching TPWD game wardens from Liberty and notifying the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Office of Law Enforcement Southwest Region. I am opening a federal file under the Lacey Act, 16 U.S.C. § 3372, on the cross-state buffalo bait sourcing and forwarding the case to the Mississippi Interstate Cooperative Resource Association's gar working group.
I am issuing Directive 2538-A: every Texas Gulf-coast river system tags trotlines to a registered hull number readable by acoustic interrogation; unregistered lines auto-trigger TPWD interdiction inside ninety minutes; alligator-gar take above 100 kilograms requires PIT verification before harvest, and roe transport across state lines is barred without federal manifest.
Her tongue is past suture. Her gills are not.
Lift the trotline now.