NATCHEZ — Lurking beneath the water of Old River Friday night was an 822-pound monster. Its fangs alone could easily puncture any hunter’s boat — and they did.

“Once I saw its eyes, I knew we had a big one,” Clay Gibson said of the record-breaking alligator he caught early Saturday morning alongside his sons Parker, Reeve, Britt and his grandsons Ashton, 13 and Aidan, 10.

Gibson set out on the Old River at 5 p.m. Friday for the opening day of Mississippi’s alligator-hunting season.

He immediately saw several gators swimming beneath the water, but he had his eyes set on catching one specific monster.

“You can tell how big an alligator is by the length between the tip of its nose and its eyes,” Gibson said. “Once we saw this alligator, we could tell it was big.”

On their first attempt, Gibson said the 13-foot alligator got the best of the six hunters and was able to escape.

They wouldn’t take no for an answer, though.

During their third encounter with the river monster, Gibson said he and his crew were able to hook the beast.

“He dragged our boat at about 2 mph,” Gibson said. “There was nothing we could do.”

Hooking an alligator, Gibson said, is no quick or easy process.

After several failed attempts to capture the beast, Gibson and his band of hunters finally got lucky at approximately 10 p.m. Friday.

“Once he got right up to the boat, I thought ‘Oh my, this is a big one,” Gibson said. “Just the size of its head — it was unbelievable.”

The six men fought the animal for another 30 minutes, eventually wearing down the gator, which was believed to be anywhere from 50 to 80 years old.

“That’s how you catch an alligator,” Gibson said. “You wear him down.”

The gator didn’t go down without a fight though.

During its last fight to remain ruler of Old River, the gator chomped Gibson’s 18-foot dory boat, leaving several punctures.

Gibson said he wasn’t concerned about the damage at all though. He was concerned with what his next step was in taming such a large beast.

“After we put the snare on him and dispatched him, we had to tie him over the side of the boat and just go real slow,” Gibson said. “When we got to the shore, we didn’t know what we were going to do with him. It took four of us just to get him in the bed of the pick-up truck.”

The crew left the river at approximately 2 a.m. with their big catch. Gibson took the alligator to Vicksburg Saturday to be weighed and measured.

That’s when he received his award-winning news.

At 822 pounds, the gator holds the state record for its weight. And if it still had its full tail — which Gibson said was gnarled off some years ago — the gator would have captured the state record for length, too.

“If its tail wouldn’t have been bit off, they said he would have been 14-feet long,” Gibson said.

The chomped tail didn’t deflate Gibson’s victory at all, though.

He said when he set out to hunt with his boys Friday, he was just hoping to hook anything.

“There is no way I thought we would catch this,” he said.

As for the creature’s future, Gibson said he plans to sell its remains — but keep its head, which will be mounted, as a reminder of a victorious night spent on Mississippi waters.

“My wife told me I can’t mount the head at home,” Gibson said with a laugh. “So he’ll be at my office.”

Alligator season will continue for tag holders though noon Sept. 7.

For more information on alligator hunting in Mississippi, visit mdwfp.com.