ETTS

So I'm fishing this past weekend on a small stream near the house and I see the print below in the sand along a particularly sweet piece of water.

So immediately I think "What the heck is that?" And then, "Probably a critter with large teeth!" And then I look over my shoulder and scan the area but I'm good cause my spidey-sense isn't tingling.

With my experience at wilderness fauna identification being limited to distinguishing cats from dogs* I use the Google but it's just as dumb as I am on this subject. So, I search out experts on mammal identification** and find such over at a popular fly fishing site.

Now all the usual crackpots and intertube trolls will say things like "You made that up!" or "It's three deer prints on top of each other. You can clearly see the dew claws!". I have had to suffer such nonsense and worse.

But one particular clear thinker on flyaddict.com provided the proper identification - the Eastern Three-toed Sasquatch. Now, that's a pretty bold statement*** cause we all know that the Eastern Three-toed Sasquatch has been so cross-bread with the west coast strain that it's nearly impossible to tell the difference.

But this alert reader had divined the stream that I was upon and, even more amazingly, the exact run. And, he knows that on this particular river,which is mostly riffle, run, small pocket rinse-and-repeat sort of water, this run is the only place with the right mixture of water velocity and features to be good centerpinning**** water.

AND, Eastern Three-toed Sasquatch are known centerpinners****. They've got the long arms that makes mending and using those rods so effective.

So, mystery solved. Watch your backs out there. Stick to the pockets. There's Sasquatch on the water.

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Notes:
* I'm a dog person. Everything else is a cat.
** Cause we all know that despite the three, aggressively shaped claws is not the reptilian Chupacabra cause that's more of a southern species.
*** And a stupid one if not for the information in the next paragraph.
**** Not that there's anything wrong with that.