Nate writes "We decided to go night fishing for catfish in the Kern River canyon because it was too hot during the day. I decided not to go too deep into the canyon but to the first or second campground off the 178hwy. We arrived to lower richbar around 12:30am just after midnight. All three of us were armed, just for protection like we always do. Haul our fishing gear and started fishing with chicken liver as bait. By 1:30am we caught at least 6 catfish in a stringer.

We were happy that we didn’t really had to use the flashlight since the moon was out. As we were talking, we heard this roar. Roar so loud that we felt instant fear as it vibrate through our chest. I have heard many animals nothing like this. Then we all noticed across the river by a tree, this thing stood up, all black, tall 9-10ft, muscular. We all froze. It proceeded to push the tree next to it into the river.

The tree snapped and echo throughout the canyon. I grabbed my knife and cut my fishing line. My friend and brother also in a hurry brought their poles to cut our lines. As I’m finishing up with that, it jumped into the river and was swimming (more like walking through the water) towards us. At that moment, I drop the poles, pulled out my gun, and keys. Told the guys to run to the car. Understand that this river, Kern River, have killed many people, trying to swim across or drowned. We all ran to the car with left our poles, the fish and stringer, and tackle box. Running in fear to the Lexus and drove off. I must’ve been going 70mph. After a couple miles we came out of the canyons towards Bakersfield, I slowed down, and utter the first words. Wtf was that? We were in shock but asking that it snap the guys back. My friend said the .45 wouldn’t do a thing to it. We laugh but we’re all still in shock, how big it was, how it was swimming through those rapids, like it was in a indoor swimming pool.

Like the river current wasn’t an obstacle to get across. It shook all of us. Let me know if you like to hear the second story.”