River Monsters (2009) s02e05 Episode Script

I'm Jeremy Wade, biologist and extreme angler, in search of freshwater monsters.
I normally track down these beasts in the tropics.
I've never searched for one in the subarctic before.
On these lakes, deep in the Alaskan wilderness, people have been going missing without trace for as long as anyone can remember.
There are native myths of a monster that's killing them.
People just disappeared out of their boats.
Whatever it was, they were afraid it would come up and swallow 'em.
It has no fear of taking on boats and their propellers.
There have been many strange sightings, as well.
He said he could see on the surface of the water a large octopus.
He judged the length of the arms to be near 100 feet.
I'm going to investigate whether there really is a deadly monster from the deep killing all these people.
It's quite possible this is the biggest fish I've ever had on the end of my line.
One of my obsessions is tracking down freshwater monsters throughout the world's rivers.
But a story of one monster in an Alaskan lake particularly caught my imagination.
There are many myths of lake monsters all around the world, from places such as Loch Ness in Scotland and Lake Tianchi in China.
No one's sure these creatures have actually been seen.
But this monster in Lake Clark in Iliamna is different.
Since the 1940s, bush pilots have been flying over this remote area, and sightings seem to be getting more and more frequent.
There are reports of it being up to 20 feet long.
What are these mysterious shapes in the water? Are they causing people to drown and disappear into the depths without leaving a trace? People have tried to prove its existence for many years.
30 years ago, there was even a $100,000 reward put on its head.
That's half a million in today's money.
This kind of bounty attracted many monster hunters, from serious fishermen to someone who tried to lure it out of the water by playing music.
All these attempts failed.
And, eventually, the reward was withdrawn.
With still no hard proof, it would be easy to dismiss this monster as pure fantasy.
But I believe these stories must have come from somewhere.
And there is something down there in the depths.
This is my first trip to Alaska.
And my journey starts by going deep into its wilderness.
I normally fish in the tropics.
And I'm out of my element in a land of bottomless, icy lakes jagged mountains and Arctic tundra.
As a proportion of its population, more people go missing in this forbidding landscape than in any other state in the US.
The best way into this isolated area is by plane, threading your way through narrow mountain passes, where conditions can deteriorate in a moment.
There are many legends of this monster.
But between the smoke of the clouds and the mirrors of the lakes, could it actually exist? My investigation to find out will focus on two connected bodies of water: Lake Clark and Lake Iliamna, which together cover an area of over 1,000 square miles - roughly the size of Rhode Island.
The larger of the two, Lake Iliamna, is 77 miles long and 22 miles wide, making it the largest freshwater lake in Alaska.
Both lakes reach staggering depths of up to 1,000 feet.
With such a vast area of water, I've probably got more chance of winning the lottery than catching this monster on my own.
The best way to start my search is to gain some local knowledge.
Quite a few communities are dotted around the lakes.
These are the people who will have been here for generations.
And these'll be the people who have the stories about the monster, the people I want to talk to.
People have lived on this land for more than 7,000 years.
And for centuries, they've fished these lakes, wearing lightweight waterproof parkas made from seal gut.
These isolated communities have a strong ancestral tradition of myths and legends, including the lake monster.
I'm meeting up with the Hill family, who are Athabaskan native Alaskans.
They have a fishing camp on the northern shore of Lake Iliamna.
If you look at the shape of Iliamna Lake on the map, it has a shape of a fish.
There's a large head, tapering down to - A tail.
a tail.
And the legend is, that's how this lake was formed.
It was this huge fish that was trapped by the mountains.
And when a fish is dying, or laying on its side, it flops.
And kind of makes a hole.
Some people say even the name, Iliamna, means a great, black fish.
Could this be biting holes in people's boats? People just wouldn't paint their boats a certain colour.
And you didn't wanna paint the bottom of the boat red.
I guess there was some connection between painting the bottom of a boat red and it disappearing.
The red could've attracted the predatory monster, thinking it was blood from some injured prey.
These legends of the monster are clearly ingrained within local culture.
The problem with oral history is it can be very hard to pin down exactly when something happened.
If you take one generation to be roughly 25 years, then just four tellings of a story can span 100 years.
So, going back from today, just 20 generations takes us back 500 years, the time when Columbus was arriving in America.
And look at this.
You only need to go back just 40 generations to take you back 1,000 years.
That's the time when William the Conqueror was invading Britain.
The problem with stories passed from one generation to the next is they're not like newspapers - they don't have a date.
So, something that you hear, it could've happened 1,000 years ago.
Or maybe it happened just last week.
Is there really still something down there? Or are they talking about an animal that died a long, long time ago? I need to find stories of the monster that are still within living memory.
And I've found one on Lake Clark.
Pilot and town mayor, Glen Alsworth Senior, recalls what happened to an aircraft mechanic in the late 1940s.
A gentleman working for us was trying to catch these large lake trout, but he kept having them break the line.
And so, being an aircraft mechanic, he got some aircraft cable, which is very, very strong.
So, on his normal lake trout tackle, he was getting broken off several times? - So, that's when he put the cable down there? - He kept getting broken off.
The mechanic then fashioned his own hook and fixed it to the end of the cable.
This was then tied to a washed up tree stump.
He knew that he had a line there that fish would not break.
And so, he decided whatever kind of monster was busting off his line, that wasn't gonna happen to him again.
Confident that he'd get his fish this time, he left and planned to come back the next morning.
A neighbour that lived by the river observed that stump passing by against the wind.
And the lake was very rough.
And the gentleman that observed this was very surprised.
How could this tree stump be moving against the water? Against the wind and the waves.
That is one of the most amazing fishing stories I've heard.
Because, from what you describe about the stump, it sounds like a few men would struggle to shift it.
And something in the water has just ripped it out of the bank, dragged it across the lake, and, to this day, nobody knows what it was.
And, you know, it could still be down there somewhere.
That's quite a thought.
Glen has told me the exact spot where the stump, weighing nearly 200 pounds, was ripped from the shore and dragged into the water.
I'm going to see what I can catch at this location.
I've brought a tent, I've brought my rod.
And I'm going to be throwing a bait into this very same area of the lake.
I've got some pretty thick cable with me.
This is probably about this is about 250-pound breaking strain.
The thing about the stump is, there was no no give anywhere in the system, so that's why it got ripped out.
But if you can actually let the fish have some line, this, fished correctly, stands more chance than a bit of aircraft cable tied to a stump.
This is not the kind of rod you'd normally see being used in freshwater.
This is sort of a marine big game rod.
It would normally be put to use pulling in shark, marlin, tuna - that kind of thing.
But, everything I've heard about this place, there's stuff in here every bit as big as those animals.
A fish the size of what I've been hearing could actually sink a boat, if you're attached attached to it on a line.
You know.
If that line jams.
So I will be carrying a knife.
Because the worst case scenario is something sounding heading towards the bottom, the line getting jammed.
And I'd rather lose the fish than lose my life.
There's a steep drop-off that's further than I can cast the heavy line.
So I'm using a kayak to get my bait to a spot where a giant might hide.
I'm actually glad I'm only about 20 yards out into this lake, not 20 miles.
I can really see how this lake just takes on a totally different character once you're actually out on it in a small boat.
Something that could drag a tree stump into the lake could easily knock a small boat over.
The water in these lakes is only 50 degrees.
If I was tossed into the water here, my body would seize up and I'd drown.
In these icy waters, bodies sink rather than float.
And at depths of up to 1,000 feet, mine might never be found.
With the bait out, the plan is to leave it lying on the bottom overnight.
And see if I can tempt the monster onto my line.
It's just a waiting game now.
It's getting close to night.
But, during the Alaskan summer, it never gets completely dark.
It's actually very strange being up in the Alaskan night, because it's well after midnight now and I can see the far bank.
I can see the horizon there, I can see the mist over the mountains.
It's a very, sort of, strange other-worldly place.
The bait has been in the water for over 12 hours.
If the monster was nearby and hungry, it would've taken it by now.
There's nothing there.
The bait's still there.
When the weather comes in, the lakes are covered in an eerie fog.
I heard this story about something coming again and again for fish in the water.
And er I went there and offered a prime piece of fish.
And just nothing doing at all.
The stories I've heard from the Alaskan natives shroud these lakes in myths and legends.
Such as, if you see the monster, a tragedy will soon befall your family.
In conditions like these, the brain becomes very suggestible.
And it's easy for your mind to play tricks on you.
I actually thought I saw something back there.
And I did a real double-take.
But I think it was just the dark, long face of a wave.
And I can really imagine how, if you're out here any amount of time you're gonna see things, even if there's nothing there.
This place has a special atmosphere.
But I'm a rationalist.
I've got to stay detached and not let my imagination get in the way.
To move this investigation on, I need to find out if people have actually come into contact with the monster.
Hello, Bill.
I'm meeting up with Bill Trefon, who is Alaskan native Dena'ina.
His family has been living on Lake Clark for generations.
I heard that your parents had an encounter with some large unknown creature in the lake a while ago.
What did they think it was? And there are pike in the lake? Big pike in the lake? Did your mother have any idea how big it might have been? 12 feet.
Going back generations, people say that if you actually see one of these big fish, it's like a bad sign.
Tragedies like Bill's father drowning only help to strengthen the legends surrounding the monster.
But this story has given me some vital information as to what it could be.
Attacking a propeller suggests it is a sight predator.
It's not some deep water scavenger, but it's active on the surface.
This all fits with it being a pike, which is what Bill's mother thought she saw.
To see if the pike here really can reach such a monstrous size, I have to catch one.
This is Chilitma Bay, near where the boat was attacked and where locals say the biggest pike are.
I've come across pike in warm water before.
But I've no idea how big they can grow in these glacial conditions.
A pike has hundreds of needle-sharp teeth that can cause serious damage to whatever gets into its mouth.
Including humans.
I'm using here an imitation frog.
And I've got this little clip here, which goes under the hook.
And the idea of that is it brushes off any weed.
So I can chuck this right into the middle of the weed, and twitch it, and so the legs actually kick as I twitch the tip.
Agh! Whoa! Went for it, but I was a little bit over-excited there.
And that was right in the weeds.
I'm very impressed by the er the aggression of the fish that had a go at the frog.
That was only a small fish.
If that had been a bigger one, there'd have been an almighty splash.
But er I think a lot of people who don't fish are very surprised.
You see a placid bit of water like this and you throw something small in the water and they'll just launch themselves at what they think is a piece of food.
Oh No.
Oh, yes.
There's a fish on! There's a fish on.
It's a very gentle take.
And it's a pike.
It's not a very big one.
Whoa! Jumping Look at that! That thing jumped out of the water a couple of foot.
Ooh! He's gone.
OK.
Managed to throw the hook.
But anyway.
There are pike in here.
So, I've had a pike on the end of my line.
That was very exciting.
It jumped clean out of the water.
Glen Alsworth Junior has seen many times how voracious the pike around here can be.
- You've seen them take birds.
- Yeah.
Yeah.
I've seen 'em take birds.
I've seen 'em take baby and adult ducks.
I saw one eat a muskrat once, in this river.
Pretty much anything they can fit their mouth around.
It's not even tempting to get your hand in there when releasing one.
Two weeks ago, I had uh Releasing one by the tail, it turned and did a 180, a small 30-inch pike, and it took a bite out of my hand as I was releasing it.
And so after it bit a hook already, then it came for my hand after that even.
If it would've been a 40-inch fish, it probably would've took done some damage to my tendons and my fingers.
If a four or five-foot pike can eat water fowl and mammals, it seems logical that a 12-footer could be a man eater.
So what I've got here is a lure that sends out very strong signals.
It's a very bright flash and a very strong vibrating throb.
That was probably what happened when that fish went for that propeller.
Fish on, fish on! Fish on! Oh, it's a nice size fish.
It's a nice size fish.
Here we go.
That's a nice fish.
He's going under the boat.
I don't want him to go the other side.
Look at that! Lovely fish.
Lovely clear water.
So you can see the fish really well.
A lovely Alaskan pike.
Just do a quick measure here.
40 inches.
Lovely fish.
A 40-inch pike is probably around 20 years old.
The thing about a pike, if there's ever a fish where the way it looks tells you about the way it lives, that is the pike.
You know.
Head full of teeth at one end, not just on the jaws, but on the tongue, on the gill rake as well.
And they have eyes that make them a deadly sight predator.
You can really see here these sighting grooves sort of converging on the prey here.
So, a bit like sighting grooves on a on a rifle.
And they can just judge the distance to the prey.
And they're so wonderfully camouflaged, blending into weed.
Very long, streamlined shape, and then you've got the dorsal fin right at the back, so you've got a big propulsion unit.
As soon as that prey comes within range, it lunges and, once it's in those teeth, there's no getting away.
So, just a perfect predator, this fish.
There she goes.
I've seen that pike can certainly be aggressive.
They'll hit a piece of vibrating, flashing metal on the end of a line.
I suppose that, once in a while, they might possibly hit a boat propeller.
The thing that's bothering me is that Bill's mother talked about seeing something that was 12 foot long.
And pike just don't get that big.
They'd be really pushed to reach even half that length.
And at that size, they're not gonna be knocking anybody out of a boat, and they don't pose a threat to anybody in the water.
So I'm doubtful that what Bill's parents encountered was a pike.
But I do believe that what they encountered could have been the lake monster.
But what is there in the water that can reach that kind of size? Something monstrous could have come in from the sea into Lake Iliamna.
Connecting the two is the Kvichak River, which is 50 miles long.
Just seen some dark specks on a tiny island down there, hauled out on some gravel.
Those are freshwater seals.
This is one of very, very few places in the world where you have seals in freshwater.
It brings home the fact that, although we call this expanse of water a lake, it's huge - and if seals have managed to get in here from the ocean, it makes you wonder what else might have got in as well.
Salmon sharks, a close relative of the great white, have been seen in the area.
But they can't live in freshwater, so that has to rule them out.
But there is one animal around Alaska's shores that's big enough to be the monster and can survive in freshwater.
Beluga whales are big enough to be the monster and can live in both salt and freshwater.
Could they have swum up the Kvichak River into Lake Iliamna? The shallowest part of the river is The Braids, a labyrinthine area of channels.
And they'd have to swim through here to get into the lake.
My pilot, Glen Alsworth Junior, knows the area well.
This looks like about, what? Er five or six miles? - Something like that? - Yeah.
There's about five miles where it's braided this way.
And the deeper channels, of course, you can see the darker blue water where the deeper channels are and the lighter brown where there's more silt deposit.
This water here, there looks to be some pretty good channels through.
I think er you've certainly got eight or nine foot in places.
It might come up to two or three here and there.
But, apparently, people navigate these waterways with prop boats without chewing up their propellers, so It looks as if there's enough water for belugas to get up into the lake.
The thing about belugas is that they are mammals.
They breathe air, so they have to surface regularly.
In that case, even with the sparse human population round the lake, the sightings would be much more common than they have been.
Whatever the monster is, it's something that stays submerged and hidden for long periods of time.
On top of that, the people here know what belugas look like.
If the lake monster was a beluga, frankly, it wouldn't be a mystery.
I'm drawing a bit of a blank with suspects so far.
So I'm going to come at this from a different angle.
I'll investigate the monster's potential food source.
Legends of the famous Loch Ness monster have been dismissed by some because there isn't enough food in the lake to support an animal of that size.
Is there enough food in Lake Iliamna to feed a monster? There is one event each year in these waters that could be what I'm looking for.
Every July, there is the world's largest run of sockeye salmon.
I'm normally busy catching river monsters in the warmest parts of the world.
And fishing for salmon is totally new to me.
The temperatures have affected things a little bit.
So the run is The timing is a little bit off from normal years.
But it should be a good place to have the salmon start packing in.
With all this water, and the unpredictable nature of the salmon run, it can actually be quite hard to find the salmon.
But one very good way to find them is to look for bears, because that's the only reason they're by the water - to feed on the salmon.
And actually, we've just spotted our first bear.
So we're going to er come in and have a closer look here.
This is bear country, and they depend on the salmon run for food - so I'll be in direct competition with them for the best fishing spots.
We're only about 65 miles from where self-styled grizzly expert Timothy Treadwell and his girlfriend were eaten alive by a hungry grizzly.
Is this the place where we saw the bear from the plane? Yes.
You can see a very regular bear trail where they're coming and going from the river.
If a bear comes close to us, we'll stand side by side and try to look big, like they do.
Then, typically, they'll just move around you and then move off.
If a bear's trying to fish in an area, though, the last thing we wanna do is for that bear to think that we want the fishing hole and we expect it to move.
So, if they want it, we'll let 'em have it.
Carrying a gun at all times is common practice in the Alaskan wilderness.
And, in case a bear does attack, my pilot, Glen Alsworth Junior, is carrying a 50-calibre handgun.
The bears may have already found a good fishing spot.
Just literally 15 feet from where I'm standing, there's been a steady procession of fish through, working their way upstream.
And there's also some big, dark groups holding further down.
So I'm looking forward to getting a line in the water.
There are no bears in sight, so it seems safe to try and catch my first salmon.
When sockeye salmon come out of the sea and enter freshwater, the males undergo a monstrous transformation.
They develop a hooked jaw and grow teeth to defend their spawning grounds.
Not only that, both the males and females turn red and stop feeding.
So they won't go for any bait or fly.
What you're doing is, you're casting out You've got a lump of lead here and you flick it 45 degrees upstream.
It comes down and the fish are all facing upstream.
And the idea is, they've got their mouths open, like this, and it gets in their mouth.
That panics them, they run and, as they run that ends up in the mouth.
So it feels like a strike.
And that will be in the mouth, probably like that.
But they're not actually going for it.
That's the theory.
Let's see.
Time to try and get my first salmon.
There you go.
You got it.
Agh! He's off.
I actually hooked one.
That was a bit of a surprise.
The line just was ticking down And they haven't spooked off too far.
just ticking down, it just stopped, and I was a bit too surprised.
I pulled.
I should've tried to set the hook a bit more on that one.
With this many salmon around, it's not long before the bears return to their fishing spot.
Here's a bear, just coming out of the brush on the far side.
Whereabouts is it, Glen? He's just looking out of the brush, watching for salmon.
Oh, yeah.
That's a very definite fisherman's posture, isn't it? You can tell he's ready to pounce down in the water.
Within minutes, three large grizzlies have surrounded us.
Our day on the river has suddenly become dangerous.
This is typical.
You find a good spot, somebody else comes in, tries to elbow you out, though, in this case, I'm going to make a graceful retreat.
He may turn back.
There's fish between us and the bear.
Definitely a good time to keep talking, keep making noise.
That way, if he has his nose under the water, he can still hear us and doesn't end up popping out of the water close to us and having to make a decision about how he's gonna react.
With the bears this close, I can pick up some fishing tips.
I think he needs a bit of practice.
It's almost on a level with my early fly-fishing attempts.
They wait till there's a bunch of fish congregated underneath them.
And then just jump on top of them that way.
Cos I guess, a bit like a human fisherman, if there's lots of fish, even if you're a bit inept, you're still going to you're still gonna get something.
Once they've moved off a bit, I can carry on trying to catch my first salmon.
But these grizzlies are putting me to shame.
Agh! Fantastic to see these bears close up.
I wasn't expecting that.
You can see they're semi-aquatic.
I don't think this is the lake monster.
But you could call it, in some ways, a bit of a river monster.
Ah! Here we go.
Believe it or not, this is the first salmon I've ever had on the end of my line.
This is a fish that can swim hundreds of miles up these fast-flowing rivers to get to its spawning grounds.
So it can put up a strong fight.
Fish has done me a favour.
It's turned off the main flow.
I'm so engrossed with catching a salmon, I don't notice our interested onlooker.
Out of the water! Out of the water! OK, OK.
Right.
I think We're gonna want to break the fish off.
Does he want the fish? This bear is clearly not afraid of us.
And that's a problem.
Shall we just break it off? I'm just gonna break the fish off.
This is a young grizzly.
But, although not fully grown, it could still attack and kill any one of us.
You can have the fish.
Luckily, it's more interested in the salmon than us.
It took my fish.
And, a minute later, it's back for more.
This time, we need to fire a warning shot.
I'm gonna fire one.
He's getting too pushy.
- No! - You guys, plug your ears.
Just deep breaths.
Just calm down.
It's all all part of the er the day in the life of a fisherman in this part of the world.
Even after a warning shot, the bear won't leave.
So it's best that my film crew and I get out.
I didn't quite succeed in landing my first salmon.
But it's clear that they are a vital food source to the whole area.
With millions of salmon coming in every year, and fish like pike in these waters year round, I'm convinced that there is enough food to sustain the monster I've been hearing about.
Back on the trail of the monster, my investigation has taken a leap forward.
This could be the breakthrough I've needed.
I'm meeting up with Robyn Levine, who saw the monster last year while coming in to land on Lake Iliamna.
Hello.
Lovely place to work.
Robyn is an anthropologist who works on these lakes, studying subsistence fishing by the Alaska native people.
And it was round here you saw the monster, as well, I gather.
Yes.
The Iliamna Lake monster.
She's trained to observe things accurately, so has a clear description of what she saw.
Robyn is going to show me exactly where she saw the monster from the air.
There's the drop-off, yeah? You see the clear shallow right over there? - Yeah? - Um, that's where we saw it.
Right there.
It was over on that very clear patch.
Oh, really? We probably had a good 30 to 40 seconds, maybe longer, to see it.
Initially, I thought it was a seal.
But, almost immediately after that thought crossed my mind, I realised it was far too big and it moved differently.
It had a long, broad head blunted nose.
There were very distinct pectoral fins, fins on the side of the fish.
What about the size of this? As we were pulling into the bay where we were landing, and my friend was coming to pick us up in his boat, I estimated that what we saw was about the same size as his boat.
And that's 15 to 18 feet long.
18 feet is the same size as three of me end to end.
And much bigger than what Bill's mother saw attacking her boat.
It looked so normal.
I've seen beluga from the air.
I've seen seals from the air.
It looked a part of the natural environment, and I was sure there was some obvious explanation for what we saw.
This is the breakthrough I needed.
A graphic description of its shape from somebody who saw it recently and who observed it clearly for some time.
And, from her description, the thing that struck me most was how much she emphasised its fins.
Now, on a normal fish seen from above, like salmon, you don't see the fins, because they're tucked in or folded away.
But there are certain fish where, particularly, the pectoral fins behind the head really stick out, a bit like wings, almost.
This is a crucial bit of the description.
And I now really do think I have my prime suspect.
I've now got a strong suspicion that the monster I've been looking for is a white sturgeon.
It's a living dinosaur that has changed very little over 65 million years.
Their range is all along the west coast of North America, from mid-California all the way up to Alaska.
They can survive in both salt and freshwater.
And I've also seen how the river that connects Lake Iliamna to the sea is easily deep enough for them to swim up.
Even though they're bottom feeders, they have an interesting behaviour.
They can jump out of the water.
In recent years, a relative of theirs, the gulf sturgeon, has been seriously injuring people in Florida.
Could jumping white sturgeon in Lake lliamna and Lake Clark be the basis of the myths of fishermen going missing? Could they be causing people to disappear knocking them out of their boats and into the freezing water? To prove my case, I need to get my hands on a big sturgeon.
However, what we're talking about here is an absolutely immense body of water, where nobody has ever caught one and where the sightings are less than once a year.
So, to get one on the end of a line, if I had 40, 50 years, I might be in with half a chance.
But, realistically, it's just not gonna happen here.
My challenge has always been to catch this monster.
And, by hook or by crook, I'm going to get one.
With the odds stacked against me here, I'm leaving Alaska and going down to the Columbia River, on the Oregon/Washington border.
Here, they have a large population of white sturgeon.
And I'll have a much better chance of catching one.
This will be another first for me.
I've never caught a white sturgeon, and I hear they can put up an incredible fight.
This line, although it's very fine, is actually er it actually has a breaking strain of 100 pounds.
It's braided line.
The thing about this is, it's nice and supple.
So er it's not going to drag a lot in the water.
But another thing about it is, it's got no stretch.
Virtually no stretch, compared to nylon monofilament normal fishing line.
What that means is, if I hook a big fish with this, I haven't got that elasticity of the line.
I'm gonna feel everything very, very directly up here.
So it's gonna be quite a physical um struggle with the fish on this gear.
So, just one final detail.
What we're using here is a barbless hook.
There's no barb on there.
That's very much about just looking after the fish.
We need to go quick! We're on the backing.
We're on the backing.
I'm going to drop this bait into about 80 feet of water.
There we go.
It's fully rigged.
I think it's still sinking.
That's going down in about 80 foot of water.
And it's bumped the bottom.
Bring it in there.
That's fine.
Any time now, something could take that.
One very obvious difference between here and Lake Iliamna is that here you've got a current - the water is moving.
Whereas in a lake, in still water, the bait sits there and the scent diffuses out very slowly.
There can be fish not very far away, maybe not aware that it's there.
But er moving water here, that bait is really advertising itself down the current.
Oh! That's a bit of a knock again there.
Bit of a knock.
Something's definitely interested in it.
It's at that point where all your imaginings about what's under the water they are well, they're starting to take shape.
Whatever it is is on the end of that line.
But that line is so fine the water here's pretty deep, 70 foot or so.
I'm attached to something.
That's a There it is, there it is, there it is! There it is! My first white sturgeon, and the animal, I think, can easily grow to become a lake monster.
It's a bit of a tug of war, this.
I just bring it up and then Look out.
While taking the hook out, my chance to finally see the monster up close eludes me.
That was a very, very brief contact with the animal there.
I was leaning over the side.
I couldn't reach as far as I wanted.
The sturgeon are clearly here, and that one was about five feet long.
But I want a larger one.
White sturgeon can grow to about 20 feet.
It's not long before I get my next bite.
And this one feels much bigger.
This fish could be bigger than I am.
When the fish wants to go, I'm letting it go.
But I'm letting it go under pressure.
It's having to work for the line it takes away.
And then, when the fish takes a bit of a breather, I'm hoping, you know, in those little gaps, that I can gain a wee bit of line.
I think we might have to It might be an idea to cast off.
I think it might help if we cast off.
Are we going? Are we on our way? This is a long, long run.
We're running out of line here.
We're running out of line.
We need to go quick.
We're on the backing.
We're on the backing.
Wait a minute.
That's the end of my line there, off the reel.
I wanna get the proper line back on the reel.
Right.
There we are.
We've got the line back on the reel.
That was hairy.
I was watching my line going.
That line's coming up on the water.
There's the fish.
There's the fish! There it is.
There we go.
There we go, there we go.
There we go.
Agh! I've seen the fish now.
That is certainly a big fish.
It's taken me half an hour to bring this sturgeon in.
Knowing that this is only around half the length they can grow to, I now totally believe that a larger one could drag a tree stump into the water.
That was a tiring fight.
I've caught some big fish in freshwater.
This is probably the biggest freshwater fish I've caught.
Er about 300 pounds, this one.
So, you know.
A real monstrous fish.
Another thing that's very notable about this fish is that it's got very small eyes for such a large animal.
I think what that tells you is, vision doesn't play a very big part in its world, finding its way around and also finding food.
And, if you look a bit closer at the head, you see those four feelers hanging down near the mouth.
That's how it tastes the water, how it found the bait, the scent trail coming down the current led it to my bait.
Also interesting, there's such amazing patterning all over the fish, but here on the snout, you've got these vibration sensors.
The kind of thing that most fish have down the lateral line, to pick up any vibrations in the water, which could tell them where prey is.
It's just like, if you're a human being, it's just a sense we're not used to.
Just feeling vibrations.
But very, very apparent there, that a fish like this lives in a different world, perceives its world differently down there in the dark water, 90 foot down.
In terms of its difference from other fish, and in terms of its size, this really is a remarkable creature.
That's actually 105 or even 106 inches.
That's eight foot 10 inches.
Nearly nine foot.
Nearly nine foot, this fish.
It's quite a thought.
That's one and a half times me.
At nine feet, this fish is roughly 80 years old.
But they can live to over 100.
This looks big in the water, but these things grow to 20 foot, possibly even more.
Imagine seeing that in the water.
You could be forgiven for saying that was a monster.
Up to 20 feet long matches all the descriptions of the monster.
Including Robyn's.
Plus, the pectoral fins and the long, streamlined body fit how she described what she saw.
But what about the teeth marks on the propeller? Just take a look at the mouth.
Although you could say it's predatory - it's eaten quite a large dead fish - but there's no teeth in there at all, I can put my hands in there.
It's almost It's very telescopic.
You can imagine that extending and literally sucking in a small fish.
Having only gums means it couldn't have been teeth marks on the propeller.
But I think I know what caused them.
What's interesting about a sturgeon, it hasn't got a bony skeleton the way most fish have - it's just got cartilage.
But what it has got is bony plates on the outside of the body.
Not totally covering it, but just in rows.
These are some form of protection.
They are quite tough bits of bone.
And also, a very bony head.
A very bony gill flap, as well.
I believe Bill Trefon's parents actually ran over a white sturgeon.
And the propeller going over its bony plates caused what looked like teeth marks.
It may not have any teeth, but this mouth is perfectly formed for being a bottom feeder, eating molluscs and small fish.
This explains why it is so rarely seen on Lake Iliamna or Lake Clark, because it spends most of its time in up to 1,000 feet of water.
On the rare occasions when they do come to the surface, this could be what is causing some people to disappear.
Their jumping.
Nobody knows why they jump out of the water.
Maybe it's a panic reaction to being disturbed.
But when they do, an airborne giant could easily knock somebody out of their boat and into the icy depths.
This all makes me convinced that the Alaskan lake monster is actually a small, landlocked population of white sturgeon.
But so impressive just to get close to an animal like that.
To touch it and look at it close up.
And I really think that, for a few moments there, I was actually in the presence of the creature that is the lake monster.