The Bull Pike

http://mythicrussia.wordpress.com/2013/04/01/lake-monsters-of-old-russia/

Lake Monsters of Old Russia

Never mind Loch Ness, Russia claims not one but six legendary lake monsters, and Russians are no more eager than the Scots to give up on these tales (which, incidentally, are great cameos for Mythic Russia games). Indeed, Russia Beyond The Headlines recently reported on the way that a deep dive into Siberia’s Lake Labynkyr promptly sparked all kinds of rumors about finally coming up with evidence of its particular monstrosity:

The dive made by Dmitry Schiller’s team into the icy waters of Lake Labynkyr on February 1, 2013 could qualify for the Guinness World Records. The team members dived to the bottom of the polar lake at the coldest time of year, in Russia’s coldest region.
The dive has already prompted a blaze of publicity in the Russian media, not to mention the repercussions it has borne. Rumors abound that parts of the skeleton and jaws of a huge animal were found on the lakebed, with the help of camera technology.
The members of the Russian Geographical Society team have since denied this claim, but “Nessie Fever” was unstoppable. Both scientific and pseudo-scientific exploration teams have set off in pursuit of a Russian Loch Ness Monster all over the country.

Lake Labynkyr is meant to be the home of a massive, predatory fish, with a “dark-grey, oval-shaped body,” known as the “Devil of Labynkyr.” A similar “bull-pike” is reportedly to be found in nearby Lake Vorota and also distant Lake Khaiyr, in Yakutia above the Arctic Circle, along with a more reptilian or serpentine creature, “probably 4 to 4.5 meters [13-14 feet] long, 1.5 to 2 meters tall, with a long neck, maybe 1.5 meters. It had a small, flat head, like a snake”… Far, far to the east is Lake Elgygytyn, and no one even knows what the great entity living within its icy depths may be. These aren’t all beasts of Siberia, though. Bubbling Lake Brosno, located in Tver Region, is considered home to Brosnya, a water dragon. (That RBTH article also has a handy map showing the locations of all these places.)

Similarly, I had a map of all of those places that I made myself and it is posted on an earlier blog. The term "Bull-Pike"is incidentally also in use in English to mean a really large great Northern pike, although the largest specimens are almost always females. Such pikes are said to grow to nine feet long and weigh a hundred pounds-and similar records used to come in from places like Ireland, Wales, Sweden and European Russia for very large pike. The largest record of a pike is supposedly fourteen feet long according to an older edition of the Guiness Book of World's records, but that record is almost certainly a misquoted reference to a very large sturgeon instead. -DD

Scale indicating how much larger a bull pike is said to be in relation to a standard very large pike about six feet long. The muskellunge is a similar species also at about the same size. Below is a range map of pikes: it should be noted that reports of really big pikes also come from the "Blank" area of the former NW Territories of Canada and some of the Russian water monsters in question are also North of the blue limit. The range shown on the Wikipedia map is to be taken as only a general indication and not to cover all specific occurances as reported. -DD

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_pike
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esox
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muskellunge

Could it be Nesski? Russian scientists claim to have found remains of 'Siberian Loch Ness monster'

• Divers say underwater scanner picked up jaws and skeleton of beast

• Tales of creature measuring 33 feet nicknamed 'the Devil' in Lake Labynkyr predate Loch Ness monster

By Steve Robson and Will Stewart

PUBLISHED:06:23 EST, 4 February 2013| UPDATED:11:19 EST, 4 February 2013

Russian scientists claim to have spotted the ‘jaws and skeleton’ of a mystery creature which could be 'the Siberian Loch Ness monster’.
Divers braved temperatures of minus 42C to investigate long-held beliefs that a monster lives at the bottom of the remote Lake Labynkyr 4,500 miles east of Moscow in the Siberian wilderness.
And the geologists told local media their underwater scanner found the remains of a jaws and skeleton which could be the rumoured beast nicknamed 'the Devil'.

Could this be Nesski? This picture is said to show the mystery beast of the lake popping its head above water

 

'There have been all sort of hypothesises about what kind of creature it could be: a giant pike, a relic reptile or an amphibia. We didn't manage to prove or to disprove these versions..... we managed to find remains of jaws and skeleton of some animal,' Viktor Tverdokhlebov told the Siberian Times.

Tales of a monster measuring up to 33 feet in length predate the accounts of Nessie in Scotland, say Russian academics.

Last year a picture emerged which appeared to show 'Nesski' poking her [long and pointed] head out of the water.
Top diver Dmitry Shiller led a Russian Geographical Society mission to one of the world’s most mysterious lakes which is an average 170ft in depth but has an underwater crevice reaching down to 262ft.

Mystery: Lake Labynkyr in the Siberian wilderness has baffled scientists for years as it does not freeze over in the winter

Siberia

The lake puzzles scientists because unlike millions of others in Siberia it does not freeze solid in winter but maintains a temperature of at least plus 2C on the surface. More than 3,000 ft above sea level, it is in the same district as Oymyakon, the coldest inhabited village on earth.
Native Evenk and Yakut people have long claimed a ‘Nesski’ lurks in its depths.
Known as ‘the Devil’, testimony dating back to the 19th century says the monster has enormous jaws.
Images have also recently emerged from a 2006 scientific trip to the lake when strange objects - one of 21ft 4in (6.5 metres) in length - were recorded on a Hummingbird Piranha MAX 215 Portable fish-finder at a depth of 138 to 197 feet.

The fish-shaped object in the sonar tracing has

 mysteriously developed legs in the drawing in red

Evidence: Scientists found a strange large object using their echo device in 2006, left, and made an artist's impression, right, of how they believe the creature might look

'It was our fourth or fifth day at the lake when our echo sounding device registered a huge object in the water under our boat,' said Associate Professor Lyudmila Emeliyanova, of Moscow State University, of her own close encounter a decade ago.
It was clearly alive and too large to be one of the dozen or so known fish species in the lake.
'The object was very dense, of homogeneous structure, surely not a fish nor a shoal of fish, and it was above the bottom,' she said.
'I was very surprised but not scared nor shocked, after all we did not see this animal, we only registered a strange object in the water. But I can clearly say - at the moment, as a scientist, I cannot offer you any explanation of what this object might be.'


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2273182/Russian-scientists-claim-remains-Siberian-Loch-Ness-monster.html#ixzz2RfpPQx7b
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http://www.livescience.com/26836-lake-labynkyr-devil-vorota-monster.html

Reports Surface of Monster Lurking in Russian Lake

Marc Lallanilla, Life's Little Mysteries Assistant Editor

Date: 04 February 2013 Time: 02:51 PM ET

For centuries, strange reports of a large, underwater creature have come from people living near the remote Lake Labynkyr in Siberia.
Now, a team of scientists from the Russian Geographical Society report they've found the skeletal remains of an animal that fits the description of the "Devil" of Lake Labynkyr, according to the Siberian Times, though skeptics have yet to be convinced of the legendary creature's existence.
"There have been all sorts of hypotheses about what kind of creature it could be: a giant pike, a … reptile or an amphibian," said research team geologist Viktor Tverdokhlebov, as quoted in the Siberian Times. "We didn't manage to prove or to disprove these versions … [but] we managed to find remains of jaws and skeleton of some animal."

 The Russian research team — which included divers from the Russian Emergencies Ministry, camera people from the Sakha National Broadcasting Company and scientists from Yakutsk State University — was exploring the lake bottom to gather samples of water, plants and animals.
And on the bottom of the lake, using an underwater scanner, they discovered the large jawbone and skeleton, the Voice of Russia reports. Despite their claims, the team brought no physical evidence of their purported find to the surface. [Loch Ness, Chupacabra & More: Our 10 Favorite Monsters]

A mysterious lake that never freezes
The lake itself has been a source of scientific mystery for generations. Though other lakes in the region freeze solid during the long Siberian winter, Lake Labynkyr doesn't — it maintains a near-constant surface temperature of 36 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius), according to the Daily Mail.
This has led some to speculate that an underground hot spring may warm the lake. This scenario is plausible, as much of the rock in the Lake Labynkyr area is volcanic, and scientists know most of the eastern Siberia area is seismically active, according to the Smithsonian/NASA Astrophysics Data System.
The large lake measures roughly 17 square miles (45 square kilometers) in area and has an average depth of 171 feet (52 meters), though a large underwater trench runs as deep as 263 feet (80 m), the Daily Mail reports.
This is not the first time some evidence of Lake Labynkyr's "Devil" has surfaced. In addition to local folklore, some scientists have reported seeing a strange creature in the lake (and in nearby Lake Vorota).
In 1953, a team of geologists from the Soviet Academy of Sciences led by Viktor Tverdokhlebov visited Lake Vorota. Tverdokhlebov reported seeing a large, underwater animal the size of an orca swimming near the surface of the lake, according to a report in the Siberia Times.
And in 2012, an associate professor of biogeography at Moscow State University Ludmila Emeliyanova claimed that she used sonar readings to record several large, underwater objects in Lake Labynkyr.
"I can't say we literally found and touched something unusual there, but we did register with our echo-sounding device several seriously big, underwater objects, bigger than a fish, bigger than even a group of fish," Emeliyanova said, as quoted in the Siberia Times.
Skeptics weigh in
Of course, considerable skepticism surrounds rumors of the Labynkyr "Devil" and any Vorota "monster," especially given the lack of any verifiable photographs, video or physical evidence.
Yury Gerasimov, of the Institute of Freshwater Biology at the Russian Academy of Sciences, casts doubt on any such cryptozoological reports, according to the Siberian Times. He questioned claims regarding the creature's size.
"If we trust the stories about this 'Devil,' there must be about 1.5 meters [5 feet] between its eyes. It means the length of its body must be about 7 to 8 meters [23 to 26 feet]," Gerasimov told the Siberia Times.
It's often supposed that the creature is a large fish such as a pike. However, "pike do not live so long in order to reach such a big size," Gerasimov said. "There are two factors that help fish to grow: nutrition and comfortable water temperatures. Even if nutrition is perfect there, surely the temperatures are not that high. So, in my opinion, the view about a huge pike is a fantastic one," Gerasimov said.

[The problem once again is that we are dealing with more than one type of creature. The creature that left remains of a bony skeleton and jaws very well could have been a giant pike. It would not be the creature described as 25-26 feet long and five feet between the eyes: that would be a giant sturgeon (or Beluga). Both kinds of giant fishes are described in the Russian and Siberian reports.-DD]

Great Bear Lake home of monster fish of mythic proportions

Great Bear Lake home of monster fish of mythic proportions

Great Bear Lake monster fish
By Ed Struzik, edmontonjournal.com April 15, 2012

University of Alberta biologist Louise Chavarie holds one of the monster lake trout that live in Great Bear Lake.

University of Alberta biologist Louise Chavarie has been pulling big fish out of the ocean since she was nine years old working alongside her father in the cod-rich Gaspé region of Quebec.
But when she and her colleagues netted a 23-kilogram lake trout in Great Bear Lake in the Northwest Territories recently, she admits she was a bit wide-eyed when the fish appeared to be nearly as long as she is tall, which is not small.
“It was a big fish,” says Chavarie who more than capable of pulling her weight. “But the Dene people in DeLine, the village on the shore of Great Bear, have caught fish that are much bigger than that one.”
That may sound like a tall tale. The biggest lake trout in Alberta, which was caught in Cold Lake more than 80 years ago, was about the same size as the one Chavarie netted. Alaska’s biggest lake trout came close, but it was just 21 kilograms.
Great Bear is known for its monster fish. In 2000 American sportsman Matt Cornell’s 35.7-kilogram behemoth established an angling record that has not been broken since. However, DeLine resident George Kenny got a bigger one three years ago when he netted a 38-kilo fish in the lake near Broken Plate Creek. He says he caught a larger fish the year before, but threw it back in so that it could produce more of the same monsters.
Up until recently, Iceland’s Lake Thingvallavatn was considered to be most special among the world’s polar lakes. Not only does it have big char, which lake trout are, it has four anatomically distinct forms of char with different food habits and growth rates. Lake Superior, by way of comparison, has three. Lake Hazen, the biggest lake above the Arctic Circle, has two and recent studies suggest it could have three.
But Chavarie, along with her University of Albert PhD supervisors Bill Tonn and Kim Howland are promising to put Great Bear into the record book with their study of four, and possibly five distinct forms of lake trout that have recently been discovered living there. Four of them are found in shallow water. The fifth suspect was found deeper down.
Being 320 kilometres long, 175 km wide and 450 metres deep in some places, Great Bear is the eight largest lake in the world and the largest that lies entirely within Canada.
Like most Arctic lakes, it was created thousands of years ago when the continental ice sheets retreated. Lake trout and other forms of char living in recently deglaciated regions gradually moved in to exploit the new source of food that became available.
With very little competition for these new food resources, the fish ended up dividing the lake up like a pie. While some became small bottom feeders, others became big bottom feeders. Monster fish such as the one that Chavarie and George Kenny caught became incredibly fast-growing fish eaters. All of them, more or less, exploited plankton.
Unlike most other fish in crowded southern lakes where competition for food is intense and where the ability to specialize is limited, Great Bear’s trout could be on the same kind of fast-forward evolutionary trajectory that has been seen in Darwin’s Finch in the Ecuadorean Galapagos. Finches there have evolved to have a smaller beak within two decades.
Great Bear’s fish have not been evolving nearly as fast as those finch. But in a relatively short period of time, they have morphed into these anatomically distinct forms with different food preferences and growth rates. Although they already exhibit some genetic differences, they can still interbreed.
This kind of diversity is extremely important because it could supply these fish with a range of evolutionary options that allow them to adapt to a rapidly changing Arctic world, which is warming faster than any other place on the planet.
That ability to adapt may not help lake trout in the big lakes of Alberta, Saskatchewan and other parts of southern Canada and the United States, however.
University of Alberta scientist David Schindler believes that big shallower lakes like Lake Athabasca on the Alberta/Saskatchewan border, which produced the world’s biggest lake trout in 1961 on the Saskatchewan side, may not be able to sustain these fish in the future if water temperatures continue to rise.
In the 1990s, he and others demonstrated that lake trout do best in temperatures ranging between 8C and 12C. A temperature of 23C is lethal for lake trout, as it is for the closely related bull trout, Alberta’s most famous fish.
“The opossum shrimp — Mysis relicta — the main food for small lake trout, have similar temperature tolerances as well,” he points out, “It is probably no coincidence that they are both glacial relicts that co-evolved, so where one is found, so is the other.”
Cold water fish such as these can be sneaky, says Schindler. They have been known to move into warm water to feed for short periods of time before retreating back to the deep to cool off.
“But I suspect we will lose some of our biggest lake trout lakes, such as those that do not stratify in summer because they are so large and shallow that they don’t form a thermocline – that steep temperature gradient which separates the upper mixed layer of warmer water from the colder water below.
“Lake trout survive because the lakes never reach temperatures above 17-18C,” he adds. “But with climate warming, they will probably exceed 23C and there will be fish kills in places like Lake Athabasca and other large lakes in southern NWT/northern Alberta and Saskatchewan.”
Being as deep as it is, Great Bear in not going to warm as fast as Lake Athabasca or Cold Lake for that matter. But Howland says young fish in the lake could be at risk if they are forced to move out of the near shore shallows into deeper waters occupied by adults.
“That’s why it’s important to keep monitoring the situation and to ensure that harvest rates are sustainable.”
Currently, the community of DeLine, which is participating in the study, harvests about 3,000 fish each year.
Former DeLine chief Walter Bayha says the fact that Great Bear is still home to “Grandfather” fish such as these that can live up to 50 years or more is a sign that all is still well in this part of the world.
“People here take great pride in the fact that this one of the last place on Earth where there are still fish as big and healthy as these fish are. It’s important that it stay that way.”
Chavarie says she got the idea of going into this field of science just as the cod fishery began to collapse.
“When I grew up in Gaspé, I often went cod fishing with my father who was a biologist with Parks Canada. When I was nine, we could catch more cod than we needed; there were so many. But five years later, may father and I went out fishing one day and we caught only one fish after several hours of trying. When I go into fishing communities like DeLine, I tell them that. When change happens, it can happen very fast.”

© Copyright (c) The Edmonton Journal

--I had heard independantly of enormous trout in Southern Alaska but I guessed that possibly they would have to be a different species, not lake trout. In the far North the tales of Monster fish that usually come out concern gigantic Great northern pike rather than trout or sturgeon. On the other hand, reports South of Reindeer Lake and the Churchill River sound more like sturgeon.

http://cryptozoo-oscity.blogspot.com/2010/03/great-slave-lake-creature-possible.html

Friday, 12 March 2010

Great Slave Lake creature -possible identity?

Great Slave Lake is the second largest lake in Canada It covers an area of 10,962 square miles and is said to be more than 2015 feet (approx 670 metres) deep( I was unable to find a verified depth). It is named after the Slave (Dogrib) tribe of Native Americans. In 1771 British fur trader Samuel Heame exploring the area crossed the lake, which he named Lake Athapuscow. In the 1930’s gold was discovered in the area lead to the establishment of a city called Yellowknife. The lake remains partially frozen for almost eight months of the year and the ice becomes thick enough for trucks to pass over it. Stories of an unknown creature in the lake nicknamed Ol’Slavey have been around for many years. People travelling across the lake have reported their boats being hit or striking an object when over 300 feet( 96 metres) of water but not actually seeing anything.
The first documented sighting I could find was this but no date :On a moonlit night Antoine Michel and his wife where returning to their home from a caribou hunt across the lake. They saw what appeared to be a large rock sticking up out of the water and navigated the boat around it. The rock sank below the surface as they passed and waves from it rocked the boat. (Unusual behaviour for a rock.)
In the mid 90’s there was a recovery operation to locate the body of a man who had fallen through the ice. Two of the three divers reported they saw a large animal which was described by one of the divers as having an alligator like body with a head like that of a pike.
In 2004 Roman Catholic priest, Father Jim Lynn, looked out from his home on the shores of the Great Slave Lake, near Yellowknife, and saw a something moving at a great speed across the lake. See report below:

'It was like the head of a dragon'

Continuing reports of mysterious creature

swimming in North America's deepest lake

YELLOWKNIFE, N.W.T. - Somewhere in the murky depths of the continent's deepest lake, a monster lurks. Jim Lynn is sure of it. This week, the Roman Catholic priest was looking out from his home on the shores of Great Slave Lake near Yellowknife when he saw an object trailing a small boat across the water. "I got the goggles because it was moving fast and I was kind of curious as to what it was," said Lynn, 66. "It was high, six to eight feet above the water and moving at an incredulous speed. "It was like the head of a dragon -- just coming out of the water at just a ferocious speed, just moving like crazy." Lynn watched as the creature, which looked green, hurtle behind an island, then disappear. He quickly called the Yellowknifer, a local newspaper, to place a advertisement asking the person on the lake that day to call him. "I would think they would have felt the waves (from the creature)," he said. Step aside, Nessie and Ogopogo, there's a new mystery leviathan on the block. And according to Chris Woodall, it's called Ol'Slavey. Woodall, a Yellowknifer columnist, wrote earlier this summer that Great Slave Lake, with a maximum depth of 614 metres, hides some weird and wonderful creature.

To his surprise, his phone soon started ringing with calls from people who claimed to have seen just such a thing. He gave the creature the name Ol'Slavey, after one of the aboriginal languages in the Northwest Territories. It's a fitting name, since the Dene have many stories about an unknown creature in the waters. When Antoine Michel was growing up in the traditional community of Lutsel K'e, about 200 kilometres east of Yellowknife, he was taught that a creature lived in the waters off Utsingi Point, about 80 kilometres southwest of the community. To appease the nameless creature, people boating by the point pass in silence and pay respect to the lake with tobacco offerings. "We usually stop the motor and go around the point, paddle quietly," he said. Years later, he saw the creature himself, on a calm moonlit night as he and his wife returned by boat from a caribou hunt. "We seen a rock there. I thought it was a rock first time, there was seagulls around it," he said. "I just turned away from it, I didn't want to hit it, (then) it just went down. I felt the waves, and then I just took off. I didn't take a look back." Boaters have seen strange creatures suddenly surfacing in the water in front of them. Lutsel K'e is near some of the deepest pockets in Great Slave Lake, a natural habitat for a beast of the depths. Naysayers will say it's just a big fish, but northern divers who actually swim those waters say differently. A decade ago, Arctic Divers was on a deep-water body retrieval near Lutsel K'e when one of its divers saw a terrifying beast. "It looked much like an alligator, but with a head like a pike," said Wayne Gzowski, the company's district manager. "I really do believe that there's unknown marine life in a lot of these areas," he said, in places that have never before been explored by humans. According to aboriginal legend, the great Mackenzie River was created by a giant beaver. Rene Fumoleau, a retired Oblate priest and respected northern historian, remembers a Gwich'in elder telling him that a dragon now lives in the waters of Canada's biggest river."There are some places where the water never freezes in winter, and that is because there is that monster somewhere at the bottom of the river that stirs the waters," he said. The Mackenzie flows out of Great Slave Lake; perhaps Ol'Slavey moves between haunts. Whatever the case, Archie Catholique, the chief of Lutsel K'e, is a believer. "The elders were saying that this thing here doesn't bother anybody -- it's not there to hurt anybody," he said. But, he added, "people see it."

Source: Nathan VanderKlippe CanWest News Service Saturday, September 18, 2004 Originally from Edmonton Journal

The description sounds to me like a sturgeon or an alligator gar. I have no idea if they would like in those cold waters. Perhaps someone can post if they know. Certainly an intriguing tale.

"Russia's Loch Ness Monster"

Brosno dragon
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Brosno Dragon, also known as Brosnya, is the name given to a lake monster which is said to inhabit Lake Brosno, near Andreapol in West Russia. It is described as resembling a dragon or dinosaur, and is the subject of a number of regional legends, some which are said to date back to the 13th century. [1]

.......

Legends
Rumors of a strange, giant creature living in Lake Brosno have existed for several centuries. One legend says that the lake monster scared to death the Tatar-Mongol army that headed for Novgorod in the 13th century. Batu Khan stopped the troops on the sides of Lake Brosno to rest. Horses were allowed to drink water from the lake. However, when the horses ventured down to the lake, a huge roaring creature emerged from the water and started devouring horses and soldiers. The Batu-khan troops were so terrified that they turned back, and Novgorod was saved. Old legends describe an "enormous mouth" devouring fishermen. Chronicles mention a "sand mountain" that appeared on the lake surface from time to time. According to another legend, some Varangians wanted to hide stolen treasure in the lake. When they approached the small island, a dragon came to the surface from the lake and swallowed the island up.

It was rumored in the 18th and 19th centuries that the giant creature emerged on the lake surface in the evening, but immediately submerged when people approached. It is said that during World War II the beast swallowed up a German airplane. Today, there are lots of witnesses who say they chanced to see Brosnya walking in the water. Locals say that it turns boats upside-down and has to do with disappearance of people

Theories
Many people treat the existence of Brosnya skeptically and still say that the creature may be a mutant beaver or a giant pike of 100-150 years. Others conjecture that groups of wild boars and elks cross the lake from time to time.
[emphasis added, and only the introduction to the various explanations-DD]

References
1.^ Vorotyntseva, Sofya (2004-01-20) Loch Ness Monster Has a Relative in Russian Province, Pravda













Rather than a mutant beaver explanation, I have heard that wild boars of unusually large size swimming in the water, as well as the typical swimming elk (moose) account for most modern sightings at this lake. These are the lake monster sightings that are like the ones from Loch Ness and elsewhere and cause people to think of Plesiosaurs and Brontosaurs. But they are not the origin of the large swallowing dragon.

To some extent, all bodies of water are said to suck down and drown people and animals and this is ordinarily understood as a sort of poetic mythological personification of the waters themselves. In this case, however, it becomes quite clear that what people were originally describing was a very large, very old and very evil-tempered Pike and pride in the notoriety of that pike (possibly the family of pikes even) made the locals brag and exaggerate their stotries of their monstrous pike until it could swallow up enemy warships sent against them, or Nazi planes. But the shape of the monstrously large fish on the old postcard is definietly a pike's head. Some reports of Lake Monsters from Scandinavia are also obviously such pikes, and a series of such reports occur across Canada but most prominently in the Mackenzie River system and around the Great Lakes. Some of them have been photographed and you can still always tell from the shape of the head and the conformation of the fins.

Best Wishes, Dale D.
Pike-also often at the bottom of "Out-of-Place-Crocodile" Reports.