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I was told spotted gars are mostly mistaken for Floridas and spotted gars are more common than florida gars , can anyone else tell my the markings? He's pretty thick also


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Floridas gars bred on south east asian fish farms are commonly labelled as spotted gars by the farms. Very few hobbyiests have spotted gars. As there have only been a couple sources of them over the years aside from catching your own if you live where they are native.

Pattern is very variable for florida gars. Gars can end up getting pretty thick depending on their diet and feeding schedule, though it is best to regulate the diet if you notice your gar becoming obese.
 
Traditionally it's been said that you can differentiate by snout length. With the distance from the eyes to the gill cover being being less than 2/3 in the florida gar and greater than 2/3 in spotted gars. This doesn't hold true in all populations of spotteds. As well captivity can skew snout length in gars. Longnose for instance have significantly shorter mouths when captive raised than a wild caught gar of the same size.

I believe the only surefire way to differentiate between the two is that floridas lack bony scales on the throat.
 
pharmaecopia said:
Traditionally it's been said that you can differentiate by snout length. With the distance from the eyes to the gill cover being being less than 2/3 in the florida gar and greater than 2/3 in spotted gars. This doesn't hold true in all populations of spotteds. As well captivity can skew snout length in gars. Longnose for instance have significantly shorter mouths when captive raised than a wild caught gar of the same size.

I believe the only surefire way to differentiate between the two is that floridas lack bony scales on the throat.
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Snout length is a pretty useless diagnostic for these two species in pretty much all cases, especially in captivity. Almost any gar that's been raised in captivity will have a different snout length than its wild counterpart of the same size, and there are many factors that play into that difference.

The surefire way can be potentially deadly to the gar if one screws up while checking, so it's best to avoid it unless you've been shown by someone who knows what their doing.

All things considered, the most logical conclusion is that you have a Florida gar since you're located in Alaska; true spotted gars are generally not available in the commercial fish trade and typically must either be collected by you or acquired from a trustworthy source within the natural range of the spotted gar.
 
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