Large alligator nets tall fine

It sounds like a Hemingway-sized fish tale, but a Jacksonville man who said he fought an alligator off his boat full of fish and called 911 for help last weekend ended up being charged by wildlife officials for having under-sized fish.

"I was freakin' out," said Adam Robert Rush, 27, of Village Drive. "I'm from Wyoming. I've never seen an alligator that big and up close before."

Rush, a Marine sergeant with the 8th Engineer Support Battalion, said he was bass fishing in the Blue River behind Hinson Farms on March 27 when the battery on his trolling motor died. An alligator, which Rush estimated to be around 9 feet long, left the bank and came straight for his 10-foot boat.

"He had fish hanging off his boat, and I suspect that is what the alligator was after," said Sgt. C.F. Smith with N.C. Wildlife.

Rush said that when he pulled the string of fish into his boat, the alligator tried to follow in after them.

"He tried to get into the boat, so I hit him in the head with the oar," Rush said. But with the engine dead and the oar broken, Rush was left stranded.

Then the alligator began to circle the boat, Rush said.

In Ernest Hemingway's 1952 Pulitzer- and Nobel Prize-winning novel, "The Old Man and the Sea," a fisherman wins an incredible fight against a giant marlin only to lose the trophy fish to sharks. Smith said he doesn't believe Rush's encounter with the alligator was quite as dramatic, saying North Carolina alligators do not normally attack people.

When Onslow County sheriff's deputies arrived on the scene, a friend with a boat had pulled Rush to shore, according to an incident report.

Responding wildlife officials got a look at the bass Rush caught and ended up giving him a ticket for under-sized fish. He was also cited with no boat registration.

"We have to enforce the law," Smith said.

While there are plenty of alligators in Onslow County, officials say there has never been an unprovoked alligator attack in the state. Large alligators this far north are very old and nonaggressive, said Robbie Norrville, a biologist with the Wildlife Commission.

It is a violation of federal law to kill an alligator.

Contact crime reporter Lindell Kay at 910-219-8456. Read Lindell's blog at http://onslowcrime.encblogs.com.