The rivers, marshes, and bayous in the Pascagoula River region of south Mississippi are vast and full of fish and game — including alligators. Ryan Ceccorulli had drawn an alligator tag for that area near his home in Biloxi. This allowed Ryan and his party to harvest one alligator under 7 feet long, plus a second gator as large as they could find.
On Aug. 30, the first night hunting in their 17-foot aluminum boat, the Ceccorulli family located a “smallish” gator with forward-facing sonar that 16-year-old Tatum Ceccorulli had learned to use while fishing for bass and saltwater sheepshead.
“I started using it a couple years ago,” the junior at St. Martin High School tells Outdoor Life. “We figured it would be helpful to locate big alligators, and it sure works.”
Tatum took a remarkable video of his sonar unit the night he, his 7-year-old brother Tabor, and their dad found and caught a 6-foot-10 gator. They located the gator just 10 yards from their boat on sonar. Then they cast a weighted, large treble hook over the gator, snagged it, and hauled on it for 10 minutes. When they got it next to their boat, they dispatched it with a 20-gauge.
They then loaded the gator and motored home, where they skinned it and processed the meat.
“The next night out we wanted a big one, and we’d seen a 13-footer in one bayou and that’s where we headed,” says Tatum, who competes on his high school bass fishing team. “Using sonar we found a big gator, cast and snagged it. But when we brought it to the boat it was only a 9-footer, so we let it go.”
The Ceccorullis’ good friends Boobie and Brie Myles tagged along with Ryan and Tatum that night. They ran their boat up several bayous and marshes using spotlights and sonar to look for a big gator.
“We saw a huge splash in the middle of a channel, and I could see a dead 7-foot gator being thrown around on the surface by a huge gator,” says Tatum. “The big gator must have killed the smaller one, but when we got close to it with our boat the big one went down.”
The smaller dead gator was floating on the water nearby, while the hunters watched in case the big gator rose to the surface.
“We were there for about ten minutes, knowing the big gator wasn’t going to leave its dinner,” Tatum says. “While we waited, we started casting with heavy tackle and big trebles to see if we could snag it.”
Finally, they hooked the big gator and fought it for a time before it broke off. But Tatum hooked it a second time.
“At first I thought it was just a small gator because I was able to bring it in pretty easily,” he says. “But I think the gator was pretty tired from the first time we hooked it before it broke off.
“We eased up to it with our boat and, sure enough, it was the big gator. So we got another treble hook snagged to it. [Then] I threw a snatch line rope over it with a big 20/0 treble hook.”
The team managed to slip a steel snare around its neck and dispatch it with a shotgun. Then they taped the dead gator’s mouth shut as a backup safety measure. With plenty of team effort, they hauled the 11-footer into their 17-foot boat. The run back to the ramp — normally just 15 minutes — took an hour that night. They couldn’t get their boat up on plane with the heavy gator aboard.
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They loaded the boat with gator inside onto their trailer and headed for home. The second gator was skinned and its meat processed to share among friends and family.
“That was an old gator, that had almost no teeth,” Tatum says. “We didn’t weigh him, but he was very skinny, which I guess is why he was trying to eat that 7-foot gator that night.”