id like to give a little info on the north american billy gar. i live in illinois close to the mississippi. and have lived on a smaller river for a good part of my life and love to fish, so i have a good knowledge of the fish that are in the waters around me. alligator gars are huge but where i live, we have a smaller cousin of the alligator gar called the billy gar. they have been said to reach 6 foot in length and around 7 to 8 inches in diamater. as mariners said he heard of a child being killed, i dont know of this but around 8 yrs ago a 7 yr old and his father were smimming in the mississippi and the child was attacked by a billy gar witch the father said to the best of his knowledge it had to have been 7 feet long. it had mistaken the young boys leg as a bait fish and drug him under. we catch them off and on through out the yaer and they are garabage fish up here. i know they have thier purpose, to control population of smaller species. the will eat about anything that moves when they swim by. they are very aggressive fish. never tryed to keep one in a tank but it would be awesome to observe their feeding habits closely. we have anouther odd ball fish also dont know what type of fish it is but we call it a dog fish. it has scales like a carp, a head like a trout, tail like a arowwona (spelling) and teeth like a pyrana. it is jet black and it literally barks at you when taken out of the water.
I hope my rambling gives some one some insight into these fish
Shane