Creature record / 2005
July 11, 2005. A Monday evening on Lake Champlain. The water lay flat and still, like a gigantic mirror, as Dick Affolter and his stepson Pete Bodette fished for salmon off the mouth of the Ausable River. Something floated ahead of them. It looked like a log. Then it slowly sank. Later it came back. Bodette stood in the bow with a Canon digital camera and filmed a shape about 15 feet long moving just under the surface, leaving a wake like corduroy. On the recording he asks a simple question. "What in hell is that thing?" The question still stands.
Lake Champlain lies between New York and Vermont, and its monster has a name. Champ. The story runs back through the Sandra Mansi photograph of 1977 to Samuel de Champlain's description of a fish in 1609. In 2005, two fishermen added a new chapter.