While fishing -

[Atehequa]

in the Jackson River above Covington Virginia back in 1994, three of us caught sight of something we've never seen before. Not having all that much luck with our fly rods we switched over to our ultra-light spin casters in hopes of catching some trout for supper. Having caught our limit and secured those trout on a stringer, we caught a good many more which were released. As the sun came up a little more that morning the fish stopped biting and we were getting ready to pack up and head back to camp when one of my friends spotted something in the water. He called us back to have a look. It appeared to be a huge aquatic salamander over 2' long with olive colored skin with darker green mottling and feathery gills. It also had a long flat tail. Now I've seen hellbenders before, but whatever it was crawling along the bottom near the river bank was no hellbender. One of our party decided he was going to snag it on the treble hook of a Mepps rooster tail spinner, but that caused this creature to zip away into deeper water.

Upon getting back home and doing some research I learned about a prehistoric aquatic salamander called Greerepeton which grew to around 5' and once lived near the area where we were fishing.

 

[pixelsmith]

Welcome to the forums!
It could be an unknown form of north american mudpuppy. How can you be sure it wasn't a Hellbender?

 

[Atehequa]

Greetings pixelsmith.

I've spent a good part of my life near rivers and streams and seen my share of hellbenders and other aquatic salamanders, but what we saw in the Jackson did not resemble them. Some years later an angler from the same general area told me of something similar that was attempting to eat from his stringer of smallmouth bass. He had to "whack the critter" with his fishing rod.

 

[Goggs Mackay]

MUDPUPPY SALAMANDER HELLBENDER GREERAPETON

Man, that's some cool pile of names! Beats the hell outta those archaic Latin names.

 

[pixelsmith]

Greetings pixelsmith.

I've spent a good part of my life near rivers and streams and seen my share of hellbenders and other aquatic salamanders, but what we saw in the Jackson did not resemble them. Some years later an angler from the same general area told me of something similar that was attempting to eat from his stringer of smallmouth bass. He had to "whack the critter" with his fishing rod.

I have never seen a hellbender in the wild.. it would not surprise me if it was a new species, a hybrid or even a thought to be extinct Greerepeton.

 

[Atehequa]

I've read about giant salamanders in China and Japan.

Hellbenders and other fully aquatic salamanders I've seen were living in some pretty cold waters up in the mountains which lends to my theory that some of these larger lake and river monsters could very well be giant amphibians. Getting their oxygen from water, they would not be seen all that often near the surface aside from feeding or crossing shallow areas.