Fishing trip from long ago but never forgot!

Many years ago we used to fish a old oxbow lake off the black warrior river near Fosters Al. There was 2 or 3 of these,you had to be a member or have a member with you. I was lucky my friend was as I couldn't and still can't afford their rates:)
The lake we were fishing was full of standing timber,laydowns,weeds, Lilly pads every where, the kind of lake Bill Dance seems to fish often:)
We started our morning throwing buzzbaits,pink floating worms and topwater baits. We prolly caught 20 or so "footballs" these fish were healthy almost as fat as long and dark green color. The water was a tanic color and full of fish.
After fishing around one side and wearing out the bass I decided to go big:) I tied on a 12 inch worm without a weight and swam it among the lillypads. There was a section of pads,prolly around 20'x20' 15 or 20 feet off the bank that we haven't fished yet.

My first cast across the pads, I slowly started swimming the big worm when the whole pad field exploded, and I mean exploded, the wake of it made our 12' boat roll. We both about had a heart attack and thought that had to be a state record of some sort. I miss the biggest strike I've EVER had:(
Well, I reeled up and made another cast same place, I hadn't move the worm 2 feet when the fish hit again, blew a hole about 5 feet and missed my worm. I kept on swimming the worm(now my shakes had put more action to it also:)Bout 5 feet more and again someone threw a cinder block into the pads at my worm, and again it missed:( I was just about to the end of the 20 or so feet of pads when it happened again, this time I dropped my rod and watched my line, this time it started moving and set back with all I had,when I stuck the fish it didnt move, I set it again and this time the fish went ballistic, it pulled our little tin boat about 20-30 feet while I tried to gain control. After about 5 minutes,seemed like 5 hours I had the fish close and told my buddy to get ready to help. We had no net and didnt know what we had yet. When the fish surfaced it was the biggest gar I had ever seen in my life.
I could not lift it out of the water, all I could do was lift it about half way. Thought about keeping it because it was at the time by for my biggest fish of any kind. We both guessed it weight in the area of 60-70 lbs. But really didnt want that thing in a 12' tin boat:)
After talking to a local taxidermist he said it was a alligator gar and he would have mounted it for free since it was so large.
Man I would give anything for at least a picture, but now after catching 100lb tarpon, 50 lb cobia, 30lb red snapper and 10 lb black bass in my life so for that one fish with it's multiple hits and finely boating it is one top of my list of fish caught. I'll never ever forget that day and glad I got to share it here, sorry for the length and grammer,etc...
I fish way better than I write:)