I hadn't watched Animal Planet's show River Monsters until I ran across a marathon over the holiday weekend.  I don't much care for "let's hunt 'em" shows, but River Monsters impressed me as being more of a travelogue than a hunting show.  And the host's insistence on releasing the caught fish unharmed sealed the deal.

After watching two episodes, the third turned out to land square in cryptozoological territory.  The first episode I saw was about the Giant Snakehead, the second about the Goliath Tigerfish, and the third was about the Lake Iliamna monster.

I gather that this isn't a show about cryptozoology.  In fact, I wasn't able to find any information about the Lake Iliamna monster on Animal Planet's website.  Instead, they have it tucked neatly away under the heading "White Sturgeon."

Nevertheless, the host's enthusiasm for cryptozoology was evident from the first.  The host and star, Jeremy Wade, turns out to be a minor star in cryptozoology circles himself.  In 1993 and 1994 Wade photographed what was thought at the time to be a previously undiscovered species of freshwater dolphin, the Sawtooth dolphin.  

In the River Monsters episode "Alaskan Horror," Wade does an excellent job of laying out the case, researching the options, and offering the travelogue perspective.  

Wade brings in accounts such as that of an old sourdough who, tired of losing his bait to some mysterious creature, created a "fishing line" out of aviation wire.  The fisherman then secured the wire to a large stump on the shoreline.  

Imagine, then, the surprise of one of the neighbors, who saw the stump moving slowly and majestically across the lake, up against the wind.

In another story, a native couple fishing the lake struck an object.  The woman saw a large fish behind the boat, which she described as a twelve foot northern pike.  The propellers of their outboard motor had bite marks.

Wade points out that the northern pike is native to Lake Iliamna.  Not only can it grow quite large, but it is a visual predator which attacks things that flicker and throb - as the blades of an outboard motor's propeller would.  

Wade then emphasizes this point by catching himself a 40" northern pike, which in his estimation would be about 20 years old.  This means that a twelve-foot pike would be about 72 years old.  Wade dismisses the proposition, but I'm not so sure.  Gigantism isn't entirely unknown in Alaska, and some fish do continue to grow until their death.  And cold-water fish can be remarkably long-lived; witness the koi, which can literally live for centuries.  I could believe in the existence of a 72 year-old pike.

At any rate, we move on to our main suspect: the sturgeon.  Wade interviews an anthropologist who spotted the Lake Iliamna monster the summer beforehand.  It was silhouetted against a light-colored sand bar, and she was able to provide an excellent sketch.

Wade then moves on to the Columbia River, where he lands a massive sturgeon.  (Watching the effort he expends in reeling it in, we can easily believe in a sturgeon dragging a stump across the lake.)  Lo and behold, the sturgeon matches the anthropologist's sketch precisely.

Photo credit: SFBoater.com