Creatures in Fish Lake Utah

Ok this is kind of a wild story, especially when you see who told it to me. My college professor told me a story about how he and his friend personally witnessed a creature at fish lake in Utah: (picture below)



My professor grew up in Richfield, which is very close to the lake. The wildest thing he remembers as a young adult, was when the Navy tried to find the bottom unsuccessfully! Navy divers came in groves with extremely long lines and high poered sonic devices. No bottom was found. Since the divers were unable to find a bottom to the lake, the lake was dyed with deep dark blue tint to find out which other water systems were conneceted to the seemingly bottomless body of water. Remarkably two different bodies of water appeared to have the very same dye come up in them. One was the Buraston ponds near Salt Lake City (some 200 miles away) and the other was Bear Lake (much further!).

One day fishing, as usual, the weather started up around 2 pm. He was with one of his friends, and they were able to get the boat to saftey at the eastern shore. The fierce wind was kicking up huge waves that were moving west to east. Amazingly, after they got to shore, they noticed what they thought was a fish rolling gleefully in the rain in the waves at the surface. Then it hit them. This "fish" was as long as their boat, which was at least 12 feet long. Either this was SOME fish or no fish at all.


[edit on 8-7-2007 by theutahbigfoothunter]

Says on wikipedia the max known depth is 127 ft. and large lake trout can be caught there.

en.wikipedia.org...

However, the max known length of lake trout is 150 cm, nowhere near 12 ft.

www.fishbase.org...

Very large fish in local bodies of water are not all that anomalous. I ive in Missouri, we have a body of water here that you may have heard of, it's called "Lake of the Ozarks". Lake of the Ozarks is an artificial, large lake created in the "way back" by the expedient of creating a dam. Bagnell Dam is relatively large. My grandfather worked on it in the early days (I am almost 60, so you can get a sense of around 1920s or thereabouts).

At any rate, a friend of my father's was an inspector on the dam. It required him to, periodically, don a deep sea divers outfit and to walk along the bottom of the dam to inspect for cracks, etc. He, apparently, by his own story, had enough and quit. He claimed that along the bottom of the lake there were catfish big enough to simply open their mouths and slide him in with out even creating a hiccup.

I also remember, as a young lad, my father, two brothers and I seigned (spelling) out a small lake that was hidden on back property of another of my father's friends. It hadn't been fished, that anyone knew of since the late 1930s. We pulled Buffalo Fish out that were upwards of 40 pounds and 36 inches long.

It is quite possible that a fish that is unencumbered, or hunted down, could very well grow to 12 feet or so, in length.

Now ... As to a 12 foot trout?

I don't know about that, but it probably would be a good meal for you and 40 or 50 of your friends.

Maybe a Sturgeon?

Originally posted by sigung86
Very large fish in local bodies of water are not all that anomalous. I ive in Missouri, we have a body of water here that you may have heard of, it's called "Lake of the Ozarks". Lake of the Ozarks is an artificial, large lake created in the "way back" by the expedient of creating a dam. Bagnell Dam is relatively large. My grandfather worked on it in the early days (I am almost 60, so you can get a sense of around 1920s or thereabouts).

At any rate, a friend of my father's was an inspector on the dam. It required him to, periodically, don a deep sea divers outfit and to walk along the bottom of the dam to inspect for cracks, etc. He, apparently, by his own story, had enough and quit. He claimed that along the bottom of the lake there were catfish big enough to simply open their mouths and slide him in with out even creating a hiccup.

I also remember, as a young lad, my father, two brothers and I seigned (spelling) out a small lake that was hidden on back property of another of my father's friends. It hadn't been fished, that anyone knew of since the late 1930s. We pulled Buffalo Fish out that were upwards of 40 pounds and 36 inches long.

It is quite possible that a fish that is unencumbered, or hunted down, could very well grow to 12 feet or so, in length.

Now ... As to a 12 foot trout?

I don't know about that, but it probably would be a good meal for you and 40 or 50 of your friends.

Aha, nice try!

www.snopes.com...

Tell ya what Fanny ol' son...

You go down there and report back.... If it's that important to you ...

May have been a whopper my Dad's friend was telling ... Maybe not... Maybe Snope's doesn't know everything. He may have been startled or frightened enough so that it was half as large as it appeared to him. I dunno.... Don't really care all that much either.

The only thing Snopes seem to have going for them is a questionable photo. there are people who build whole UFO careers on tons of questionable photos, and there are folks out there who still swear the UFOs are down here taking folks and being responsible for most of the world's evils.

I'm not willing to take life and limb in hand to prove it or disprove it to your satisfaction. I'm simply retelling a tale that I heard at the dining room table one fine evening in my, otherwise, mispent youth. Take it or leave it... I was just passin' time on the forum.

To be fair mate Snopes has it down as undetermined so you may be right, I was just pointing out the fact that it seemed to be an uncanny account.

I wouldn't doubt there are catfish that big. If you've ever fished in Lake Texoma, you could become a believer. There a GIANT fish out in that lake, god knows just how big the biggest is, all we know is the biggest caught.

Something interesting, is the fact that the lake is connected with other lakes that also have been rumored to have "creatures" in them. I was recently up in Logan Utah for a car show and also did some alpine diving, and a local service station attendant told me of the people she had know who swore they had seen "something" in Bear Lake. I just think it is funny that these lakes are connected somehow, at least in theory. It's really hard for me to fathom an underground tunnel connecting these lake that spans close to 300 miles.

I'd believe the catfish thing; those fish get huge if allowed too.

Has there been any newer interest in this topic from any of you out there?

reply to post by theutahbigfoothunter


In the book "Hunt For the Skin-Walker" which details the bizarre happening around the infamous "skinwalker ranch" in Utah, the authors allude to a few stories of serpent-like creatures and bizarre huge-toothed animals being seen in the bodies of water near there. Utah definitely has it's history of strangeness.

Sturgeon are known to grow large in bear lake perhaps it came to Fish lake via one of the waterways?

I wouldn't believe everything "Snopes" says just because they say it. I've found instances where they are ridiculously biased. For example what the say about Barack Obama.

There are giant catfish and they will grow as large as their environment allows. If they have the right conditions to grow to 12 ft. then they will grow to 12 ft. Just do a search on "giant catfish" to see pictures of real monsters.

thats crap there are no catfish in there it is too high and too cold, a catfish could live there but it would not grow that big. Lake trout will do the same though and they will thrive in the cold growing about an inch per year, so that would be a 144 year old lake trout or makinaw or not even a trout but a char species.

sturgeon. Most likely candidate. plus sturgeon can look menacing although they are not. it's easy to see how someone wold mistake one for a monster. sturgeons like in cold water too.

PS there are plenty of catfish that live in cold water.

I'm not surprised at all. I know here in New Mexico at Elephant Butte lake there are really really big catfish.

I remember because I have a phobia of lakes and oceans. I refuse to go in haha. But I was on a jet ski with my dad and we were talking to a park ranger at the marina, and he said that right near the dam is where the "giant catfish" like to hang out.

So we drove over there to check it out, and my dad throws me in the water knowing that i am deathly afraid of lakes. It was very scary. But I remember very clearly that I could see very big fish.

I could see them because they were right near the surface. The biggest one I saw was probably around 5 feet long. And having a phobia it paralyzed me in fear. It got very close to me. If it would have touched me I would have passed out I think.

I'm sure they get much bigger, because people have some good stories of what they have seen at Elephant Butte.

Originally posted by DimensionalDetective
Utah definitely has it's history of strangeness.

Agreed. Here is a link to an interesting website, one I visit from time to time, dealing with a wide range of Utah phenomena.

The Utah UFO Hunter / AKA: Alien Dave

There is actually a hell of a lot of content there, very interesting site.

I'm going to Fish Lake this weekend to go fishing. I got a stick of dynamite just in case =) Ive fished there before and yes the lake is very deep. But to be connected to Bear Lake and another lake near Salt lake is impossible imho. Laws of physics would not allow it. Fish lake is 8800 feet and Bear Lake is 5900, There would have to be enough water coming into Fish Lake to compensate the water draining into Bear Lake. Yes if this were possible this "connection" would act like a drain and empty the lake. And this water way would have to be fairly big to allow a 12 foot fish to travel it. The force and speed of the water would be enormous with a 3000 foot difference. But the bigger the "connection" the larger the force, slower the velocity of the water. Again there would have to be a HUGE amount of water going into Fish Lake and I just don't see where that water would be coming from. Just my opinion.