Miyoshi Price
•7/3/2026
NORTH FORT MYERS, Fla. (WINK)—A North Fort Myers man is lucky to be alive after an alligator attack turned a quiet night of fishing into a fight for his life.
James Grayson McMicken, 71, says the gator dragged him into the water, but he used one survival trick to make it let go. WINK News sat down with McMicken, who pulled out photos of him while he was at Cape Coral Hospital that had to be blurred because they are quite gruesome.
The photos show deep bite wounds on both sides of his right leg so severe they had to be closed with stitches and staples.
"I'm going to do everything I can not to die," McMicken said.
McMicken says it was a routine night. He took his bulldog out, grabbed his fishing pole and made one cast into the canal behind his North Fort Myers home.
"I started reeling, and it jumped out of the water and grabbed me," McMicken said.
The gator clamped down on his right leg and pulled him into the water.
"He rolled me down off the bank into the water," McMicken said. "I stuck my thumb in his eye."
McMicken then grabbed his fishing pole and fought back.
"I just took that fishing pole and jabbed him in that other eye and jabbed him and jabbed him and jabbed him," McMicken said. "It seemed like forever, but it wasn't that long. But then he turned loose."
McMicken said he's legally hunted alligators before and says that experience taught him their eyes are their weakest spot. After the gator released him, McMicken faced another challenge—getting back to his house.
"I'd have never made it crawling this far, so I called my dog over, and she stood there and let me get up on her back to where I could get stood up," McMicken said.
When he made it inside his home, his wife cleaned him up.
"Then I sat down in my chair and passed out," McMicken said. "I was so exhausted."
His family rushed him to Cape Coral Hospital, where he says he became a novelty.
"All the nurses on the floor had to come by and go, 'Wow, you did what?'" McMicken said.
FWC says the attack happened Friday. Officers and a state-contracted nuisance alligator trapper responded, and as of Thursday, trapping efforts to find the gator were still underway.
"No gator is going to run me off," McMicken said.
McMicken is now recovering at home and starting physical therapy. He hopes to be back out fishing soon, although he told Price he'll never head to the water's edge at night the same way again.
