Solomon - I know you're the gar guru here - but I'm not kidding when I say the snout is about half the length of a normal FL gar's. If you look at the first photo, the nose is just as long as the head itself. That is not a photo-distortion.
I'm not trying to make it out to be something it's not - but something isn't quite right for Florida.
Could it be a FL / Shortnose hybrid ? Also, could you tell me how you can tell it's not a Shortnose?
great job on the pics and being very observant of the features...many times we don't get that with gar ID threads/questions, and so you have provided us with a lot of good info for the ID. the issue of snout length is two parts in your case:
- more and more FLG's are "farmed", and even those raised from an early age in captivity (even with being wild-caught) tend to have shorter snouts than their wild counterparts...so snout length, although a decent diagnostic, is still complicated with captivity and variation. your fish fits with an LFS FLG pretty well...pattern and other morphology also back that up (caudal peduncle, pattern, body shape).
- secondly, reGARding your shortnose question, SNG's actually have longer snouts at that size than all other gar species except for LNG. the name is misleading...SNG's only develop the shorter snout when they are around ~16-18"+ long. before that their snouts are longer than SPGs, FLGs, and any Atractosteus gars.
given our experience with hybrids and seeing FLGs from various sources, i'm pretty confident in the FLG diagnosis. you will probably see more development in FLG characters as the fish grows, so definitely keep us posted as this will be a cool fish on which to track progress. good luck!--
--solomon
