Legends say that
one of Europe's most beautiful lakes guards an ancient secret...
There it is.
.. cos a mysterious creature lurks in its depths.
Do you have any idea what it was? No.
And now, the beast is stirring once more.
This is a heavy fish. Heavy fish.
Could this be my chance to unmask this mythical creature?
Caught in the act. Caught in the act.
I'm Jeremy Wade, fisherman and adventurer.
For more than 35 years, I've travelled the globe, hunting for monsters.
Look at this beast.
But mysteries are still out there.
There's something behind me.
I'm journeying into the unknown to reveal...
Yes!
.. the secrets hidden in these dark waters.
In the mountainous heart of Northern Italy is a vast lake...
.. carved out by glaciers one and a half million years ago.
Plunging to more than 1,000ft, Lake Garda is deeper than Loch Ness.
And just like Loch Ness, it's said to hide a monster.
The northern end of the lake is desolate.
But it's in the populated south
that the mysterious creature has recently been spotted.
It's really easy to see why this place is one of Italy's top tourist destinations.
You've got mountains, you got water, you got sunshine.
It's a really unique combination.
And it's quite strange to think that something so out of the ordinary
should manage to stay hidden and unnoticed
in a place that's so busy.
The Lake Garda Monster first appeared in the 16th Century.
Since then, a number of witnesses have described a terrifying beast,
half-snake, half-dinosaur.
In recent years, little had been seen of the creature.
But fresh reports of something strange in the water
suggest that the beast may be back.
What I'm gonna try and do is get as many first-hand details as I can,
and then try and work out if there are any common features.
I'm starting my investigation in Spiaggia La Zattera,
on the lake's southern shore...
.. where I've arranged to meet Angelo Sparianni,
an angler who claims he saw the beast.
I think this is the guy.
Few people here speak much English,
so I've been practising my Italian.
Scusi. Buongiorno. Angelo? Si. Sono Jeremy.
I hear that you saw something strange, something big in the lake.
Can you tell me what happened exactly?
Angelo says he was out on the water putting out ground bait,
when he heard a loud noise.
Crash, crash!
He looked up just in time to see something break the surface.
It was long and flat?
The head comes out of the water, and the body, the tail... like it was somersaulting.
Si, si, si. How big was this thing?
The overall size of it was something in the region of seven to ten feet long.
Do you have any idea what kind of fish...?
Angelo has been fishing here for seven years.
But what he saw that day was unlike anything he'd seen before.
What particularly fascinates me is the level of detail.
He's a fisherman. He's used to looking very closely at the water,
and he knows what he saw.
So, for me, his testimony carries weight.
From Angelo's description, I should be looking
for a long, thin, maybe snake-like beast,
black in colour, seven to ten feet long,
and capable of leaping out of the water.
I want to find out how this compares with other recent sightings.
Angelo has got put me in touch with a woman named Clara Butturini,
who says she saw the monster near a swimming beach
seven miles from where Angelo saw it.
So, can you tell me what you saw exactly?
No fin on the back? No, no, no.
How big was this?
So about ten feet? Si, si.
Do you still go swimming here? No.
No? No, no, no, no, no.
Clara actually saw two beasts
about ten feet long with humpbacks, releasing bubbles.
So far, these descriptions I've heard
don't point towards any creature I know.
But I've never fished Lake Garda before,
so I need to get a line in the water.
The lake is 1,000ft deep in the centre.
But both sightings happened close to the shore.
It seems strange for such a large creature to hang out in the shallows.
But perhaps it comes here to feed.
Shallow water, weeds, that's where you find small fish.
And it's the small fish that are the food for the bigger fish,
which are the food for the even bigger fish.
The first thing I need to verify
is whether there's enough prey here to sustain a monster.
You have it, you have it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
This is black bass? Yeah.
This is a small black bass.
That is a miniature predator. Size of the mouth on that.
I'm gonna pop it back in.
And that was literally within minutes of starting.
I'm not used to casting my line in such busy places.
But the traffic doesn't appear to scare the fish away.
Here we go.
Miniature perch. The main things about perch
are their spiky fin on the back,
and these vertical black bars on the side.
It's got big eyes for the size of the body, and a big mouth here.
And normally with perch, where there's one, there's more.
Yeah. That's another small perch.
Fish... That's really nice.
So there's quite a lot of them here.
It's clear that these waters are full of fish.
This is a lake with life in it. I've seen the small life,
and there's every sign that there's gonna be big life in here, as well.
So there are plenty of potential prey fish here.
But Lake Garda is 32 miles long.
Finding a lone predator won't be so easy.
To have any chance, I need more information
about the creature that's been seen this lake for centuries.
To the west of Lake Garda, the Ugo da Como library near the city of Brescia
is well-known for its vast collection of ancient manuscripts...
.. including many about this region in the 16th Century,
when the lake monster was first reported.
This book was written by a historian called Grattarolo in 1599.
And on page 11,
he talks about enormous monsters living in underwater caves.
He reports the case of a monk who was paralysed by fear
at the sight of the beast.
He said he saw under the island
in some very dark cavern, some fish,
or rather, boundless monsters.
There are still friars who say they have noticed under the water,
and have seen those monsters and were so frightened of them
that they have not dared to return.
Grattarolo doesn't give a physical description of the creature.
But there is one intriguing detail.
The location of an underwater cavern where the monster was said to live.
So, this is the island here where Grattarolo mentions the caves.
Not that far from where Clara saw those things in the water.
But I came here to find out
what creature could fit the descriptions I've heard.
And digging into more recent records,
one fish stands out from the rest.
I found lots of references to sturgeon.
This was a delicacy back in medieval times,
reserved for the nobility.
So here you have a fish, which, if it manages to evade capture,
can potentially grow to monstrous sizes.
I'm no stranger to this family of pre-historic giants.
There's the fish! There's the fish! There it is!
In Alaska, I found that sturgeon could have been behind stories of lake monsters.
Witnesses described a huge creature with a tendency to leap out of water.
These things grow to 20ft, possibly even more.
And I mean, just imagine seeing that in the water.
I mean, you could be forgiven for saying that was a monster.
Here, too, a sturgeon seems like a viable suspect.
But there's a problem.
While the medieval texts indicate
that sturgeon did once exist throughout Italian waters,
more modern records say that
they were so heavily fished for their caviar
that there are none left.
But I'm not aware of anything else big enough to fit the descriptions I've heard.
Is there a chance that there might still be a lone giant sturgeon
hiding in Lake Garda?
If anybody knows, it will be the fishermen.
Carp grow to a maximum length of about three-and-a-half feet.
Whatever the ten-foot lake monster is,
I can be fairly sure it's not a carp.
Suddenly, things aren't making sense.
Everything was pointing very nicely towards sturgeon,
but talking to fishermen here,
nobody has seen sturgeon for years, and years, and years.
Um...
They appear to be extinct. So these recent sightings can't have been sturgeon.
But what else could it be?
So the sturgeon may be a dead end.
But I did get that other lead at the library.
The location of a deep underwater cave
said to be the lair of the monster.
If I can find it, perhaps that cave will give me some clues
about the creature's identity.
I've heard about an underwater survey outfit operating on the lake,
who say they've found the very cave that Grattarolo described.
OK. This is the machine.
That's good and solid, yeah.
Angelo Mordino's remote-operated vehicle
is equipped with sonar and video cameras.
It's my best hope of finding out
whether there's anything living in the cave.
What I would give to be able to drain this lake and just see what's there.
Of course, that's impossible.
Um, the best we can do is we can send the ROV down.
If we can find the cave...
If we can get to the mouth of the cave, look inside, maybe we'll see something.
Am I about to discover the true identity
of the Lake Garda Monster?
This looks like it.
I'm on Lake Garda in Italy,
looking for a real flesh-and-blood creature
behind sightings of a mysterious beast.
I've ruled out a sturgeon,
because it's said to be extinct in these waters.
So I'm following another lead.
According to a 16th Century manuscript,
the beast once lived in a deep underwater cave
beneath the lake's largest island.
The island is known locally as the Isle of Skulls,
because it's scattered with Roman tombs.
This place is magnificent. It's also quite spooky.
It's almost like going back in time.
And this is the very place
where the legend of the Lake Garda Monster was born.
It's this place where the monks were scared to get in the water
because there was something down there.
Just doing final preparations before putting the ROV in.
We've got a live feed from the camera.
Once it's running, we'll be able to see what the ROV is seeing.
And we're hoping we'll be able to guide it to the cave.
In some senses, 200ft is not a great distance.
But when it's 200ft below the surface of a deep lake,
to a place that is steeped in legend, it's another story.
It's going down.
So this is what the ROV is seeing.
It's really spooky and mysterious down there.
It's like a sculpted underwater landscape.
It's a vertical wall, but it's not a clean wall.
There's fissures, there's bumps.
We're 180 feet below the surface,
beyond the reach of daylight.
So we're relying entirely on the narrow beam cast by the ROV.
It's just a world of shadows down there.
And what you think is an opening is just an area of shadow.
There it is. Is that it?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I think we got it, we got it, we got it. That's the cave.
According to legend,
this cave is the lair of the Lake Garda Monster.
We're now coming in towards it.
I'm almost half expecting something to just appear
in front of the camera any moment.
There's no signs of life, but this is the perfect mental image for a monster's lair.
The ROV needs to go in far enough
to see whether anything is hiding inside.
- Is it possible to go a little... - OK.
We're trying to just move in a bit.
But the cave entrance narrows,
and the ROV is struggling to move forward.
It's difficult to manoeuvre, so we bumped, we bumped.
Basically we're on the threshold, but we can't go any further.
It's possible that there is something lurking deeper within this labyrinth,
but we can't get to it.
My investigation is no further forward,
and this creature, this thing, whatever it is remains...
for now, anyway, just as elusive as ever.
Neither of my leads from the library has delivered an answer.
I need to know whether there could be any other creatures living in Lake Garda
that have escaped my attention so far.
And I've heard of a place nearby that has an unusual collection.
The River Po Aquarium specialises in local fish species.
Here's a pike. It's actually got a deformed mouth and tail.
This was actually rescued from a poacher's net.
So, it got damaged in there and it's recovered.
So it's a bit of a sort of rescue home as well, this place.
Pike don't grow large enough to match the descriptions I've heard.
And looking around, I'm not hopeful that I'll find anything that does.
The thing I'm looking for is not gonna fit in one of these tanks.
These are the kind of tanks you might have in your living room.
But there is something that I wasn't expecting to see.
Adriatic sturgeon. This is the first time I've seen this species of sturgeon.
This is a small fish, but it's still very significant.
Now, I was told that these were extinct.
Clearly they are not extinct, in captivity.
But this is just one fish.
I'm just wondering what it's doing here. What is the story of this fish?
From everything I've read and heard,
sturgeon have vanished from Italian waters.
So where did this fish come from?
The best person to ask is the owner of the aquarium.
Sono Jeremy.
The sturgeon inside, where did it come from?
It seems that although sturgeon are gone from the wild,
they are not extinct.
Vitaliano says this one came from a fish farm.
Turns out that fish came from somebody they call
the Father of the Sturgeon.
Apparently he only lives about half an hour away from here.
I've been told that this man set up
one of the largest sturgeon caviar farms
in the region.
Could a farmed fish have escaped
and followed the streams to Lake Garda,
where it's being mistaken for a monster?
Yeah, this looks like a fish farm here.
There are hundreds of small Adriatic sturgeon here,
about the same size as the one in the aquarium.
But I'm looking for something a lot bigger.
These are the Adriatic sturgeon,
also known as the Italian sturgeon.
When I asked Jacinto whether sturgeon ever escape,
he says no, but he has been actively releasing them for decades,
hoping to quietly re-establish the species.
And some of his release sites are on the River Po,
which is directly connected to Lake Garda.
I'm thinking that maybe some of those recent sightings
were Adriatic sturgeon,
but fish that were bred in captivity
in the early years of this project, 25 to 30 years ago.
That's actually plenty of time for one of these fish
to reach a serious size.
But before I put the Adriatic sturgeon back on my suspect list,
I want to get a closer look.
Jacinto says that the bigger ones here can be caught by hand.
So I'm gonna gently try and get hold of one.
I wanna have a good look at it. What I wanna do...
A bit like sharks, you can turn them upside down,
leave them a few minutes, that calms them down,
and I should be able to lift it briefly out of the water. That's the theory.
Here's one. Here's a big one coming.
I wonder if I can do anything with this.
Some fish go into a sort of trance when they're turned on their backs.
A state called tonic immobility.
This technique will be my only chance of hanging on to one of these powerful animals.
There we go. Adriatic sturgeon.
This one seems to have gone calm quite quickly.
The fins aren't twitching. The gills are going. It's perfectly OK.
At about five feet long,
this fish is significantly shorter than accounts of the lake monster.
But Adriatic sturgeon are known to grow to nearly seven feet long.
And other characteristics do match up.
An unusual opportunity to get a look at the underside of a sturgeon.
Normally the stomach, which is very flat,
is pressed against the bottom of the river.
But occasionally they do rise to the surface to bask.
And when they do, because it's got a swim bladder,
if it comes up from any depth, it's gonna equalise pressure,
it's gonna let off air, it's going to release bubbles.
That's exactly what Clara saw.
Sturgeons don't have skeletons. They don't have bony skeletons.
The only bone they've got is these plates on the skin.
And one of those is along the back.
If these rose to the surface gently, you'd see a hump.
It's maybe one of these that is the Lake Garda Monster.
The bubbles and humped back do fit Clara's description.
And a big one of these would be around the right size.
I've been invited to help release the latest batch of youngsters
with biologist Dr Thomas Guissato.
Off you go, off you go.
What are you making of that, I wonder?
No, it really does feel like being part of a history in the making.
Adriatic sturgeon can live for up to 50 years.
So I'm shocked when Thomas reveals
that he's not expecting many of these fish to survive.
This is the first time that anybody has mentioned the siluro.
There is an immense predator swimming in these waters
that the sturgeons' wild ancestors never had to deal with.
A monstrous beast that swallows young sturgeon whole.
These fish are known in Italian as siluro.
In English that translates to "torpedo".
But I know them as wels catfish.
I've investigated the wels before.
They're true freshwater giants.
And in the right conditions, they can grow to almost ten feet.
But they're native to Central and Eastern Europe.
They should not be in this river.
So how did the siluro get to be here, and when did that happen?
So, apparently it was in the 1950s,
and it was just a very small number of fish that were put in,
five or six, something like that, that were put in by sport anglers
as something interesting to catch.
But the problem is when wels catfish are introduced into a river like this
which is significantly warmer
than the rivers that they're normally historically found in,
you just get a kinda population explosion.
And they just take over. And they can reach immense sizes.
We're talking over 200lb.
I had heard that there were some wels in the lower reaches of the Po.
But Thomas tells me they have spread upriver.
A wels catfish cold match up with the account of the lake monster
that Angelo gave me.
Wels have long, snake-like bodies.
They are normally dark in colour,
and they can breach the surface when hunting.
The question now is
has this giant made it to Lake Garda?
Just found a story here about some fishermen in a lake called Lake Iseo.
These guys, they fish for freshwater sardines.
And what they're saying is that their livelihoods are severely threatened
by the arrival of wels catfish.
Lake Iseo is connected to the River Po.
In fact, it's even further upstream than Lake Garda.
Almost 150 miles inland.
If I can confirm that wels are in Lake Iseo,
then there's a very good chance that they've also made it to Lake Garda.
According to the news report,
the fisherman lives on Lake Iseo's central highland.
It's like a mountaintop in the middle of the lake.
Very steep sides to the lake.
They plunge down, and then in the middle something comes up.
And...
the guy I wanna meet is somewhere over there.
When I ask Andrea how sure he is that wels catfish are here,
he says he's positive.
He wants to take me out to show me the damage they're doing to his sardine nets.
We found the flag, the end of the net.
They move very... Although this is a lake, there's no flow,
there's wind, it moves around during the night.
"Let's hope we've got a good result," he just said.
Here we go. This is my first sardine, freshwater.
And there's that very characteristic mouth.
What's this?
That's a lovely looking fish.
A bit like what I know as a chub in England.
It's sort of a cross between a chub and a carp.
But the next section of net that Andrea pulls in
is in bad shape.
They're damaged.
Damaged. Big fish. A big fish?
So this would be the siluro?
Probably? Probably. We got a big hole in the net.
So this is the damage that the wels catfish does.
It gets in the net... Because it's a very fine net designed for small fish,
big fish gets in this, it gets wrapped up,
maybe it stays tangled, but maybe it just busts the net.
It's all been ripped away. It's a big hole.
The perpetrator is gone. Not only does it damage your net,
you don't get to remove it.
And, um...
Look at this. Caught in the act. Caught in the act.
OK. Balance, please. Balance, balance, balance, balance.
Yes...
Here we go.
No. No. How come?
What happened? No. It went.
It's out and... Yeah, yeah.
The fish may be gone, but I saw enough to get a positive ID.
It was definitely a juvenile wels catfish.
We wanted to catch that, because here it's important that they're removed from the lake.
Now that they're in here,
there's actually no way they're gonna be eliminated.
That one, it's damaged the net, and...
It's damaged the net and it's escaped. So that is...
That is a bad... It's the worst possible result.
The wels we just saw was small.
But the fact that they're here is very significant.
Wels have indeed made it all the way to Lake Iseo.
So there is a strong likelihood
that they're also in Lake Garda.
Wels are capable of reaching seven to ten feet long,
large enough to explain the recent lake monster sightings.
I want to see for myself if they're getting that big here.
Big fish often congregate in the deep water
near man-made dams.
So I'm heading to the largest dam on the River Po.
If big wels are anywhere, it'll be here.
The fastest way to reach the Serafini hydroelectric dam
is by boat.
So this is... This is River Po? Yeah. Big river.
Wels catfish are drawn to the deep, well-oxygenated pools
below dam walls,
as well as the huge number of prey fish that can gather there.
This dam is normally off limits to fishermen,
but I've managed to get special permission from the regional government.
Wels are most active at night.
But we need to get our bearings here before the sun sets.
Just over 30ft of water here.
There's a hole. And that's where we're fishing.
In the hole and around the edges of that.
I'm using a flexible plastic lure designed to imitate a small fish.
I'm very much in mind of the fact that at any moment
something very large could hit this,
and I'm absolutely gonna know about it.
It could be just literally a heartbeat away.
To look at it, it's nothing. You're just pulling something up and down the water.
But it's incredibly intense.
Yes? I got a fish.
I'm on the hunt for a mysterious freshwater giant
that has become known as the Monster of Lake Garda.
Yes?
I believe that a huge wels catfish could be behind the monster myth.
But to prove it, I need to catch a big one.
Something at least seven feet long.
Yeah, very nice. Be careful. Yeah.
It felt like a break, but actually that, um... The hook's out.
I have made contact with something in the Po.
I guess that's the main thing. And I have more time.
Wels are wily fish.
They rarely fall for the same trick twice.
So I switch up my technique and my bait.
My guide Yuri suggests I put live night crawlers on my hook.
The idea is you lower it down just off the bottom.
Imagine my knee is the bottom.
And then it's up in the water and then down.
Up and down.
But what you're hoping is that this is going to get in the face
of a catfish.
And if I was a catfish, that is gonna be quite appetising.
Particularly if it's hanging in front of me and suddenly it moves.
That reflex takes.
I'm watching the screen. I'm trying to see what depth we are. I can also see the bait.
And I'm moving the bait up and down.
And I'm adjusting as the depth changes.
And what I'm also doing is...
.. using this clonk to make a sound which is known make a catfish active.
It's thought this mimics the sound of other catfish feeding,
triggering anything that's down there to start moving and investigate.
I'm using my hand, so I can feel when there's a take.
If a take happens, I've got to be very quick.
I've gotta grab the line, I've gotta set the hook.
If I get it wrong with a big fish,
either I'd lose my fingers or I'd be over the side. It's as serious as that.
But whatever may be lurking in this river,
is not falling for my trickery.
Caught, caught. Yeah, I felt something.
There we go. Something actually took the worms,
but it didn't inhale the whole thing.
So I came close. Not close enough.
That was a near miss.
As daylight fades, we set out for our all-night vigil
on the island below the dam.
Excellent. Very good.
We're gonna be fishing at very long distance,
beyond what is possible to cast.
So we're gonna position the baits very precisely
using the boat.
We are going to attach the tackle
to the rock with a thin piece of line.
And the idea is when a catfish takes the bait,
the force of that will break that weak line.
Bait is gonna be rainbow trout.
Yeah, it's just basically now driving out and positioning.
Right. OK.
Yeah, what I'm doing now, I'm making sure
the line is absolutely tight.
Yeah, I think that could be good.
So, switch that on.
And if anything...
.. knocks the line at all during the night, that's gonna sound,
I'm gonna be out.
All set.
It's now just a waiting game.
The worst case scenario is I'm here for the next 10 or 12 hours,
and nothing happens. On the other hand,
something could happen at any moment.
But it seems our activities have aroused suspicion.
Yeah, we just had a visit from the police,
which, you always get a bit nervous, "What have I done?"
They came on foot, you know, so suddenly they were here,
wanting to see documents.
But basically there's a history of a lot of poachers here,
so they're checking up on that. So it's actually good to see.
And I think obviously we're here,
there's a bit of activity, there's lights occasionally.
You know, at night, you know, people notice.
Somebody probably, "Hello, there's something going on that might be irregular or suspicious."
And they came and checked us out. But it's all good. It's all good.
All we need now is for the fish to check us out,
and then our night will be complete.
Could there be a wels catfish in here
big enough to be the Lake Garda Monster?
I'm just finding it very disconcerting,
almost creepy, the combination of this place
that I'm looking out at,
and the fact that perhaps lurking in the water
are these creatures that have just been on the planet for an incomprehensible length of time.
Just that juxtaposition. I mean, it's...
It's almost like I've wandered into some kind of
science fiction movie.
It certainly feels like the perfect setting
for a monster.
Yes! Wait, wait.
It broke the weak line.
Yeah, something happened.
A moment of excitement. What happened is that something took the bait,
broke the weak line attached to the rock,
but then came this way. Yeah. So basically the line is slack.
So I was winding, I was striking, and I felt nothing at all. Yeah.
So... Maybe a little fish. Maybe a small fish.
Um... But they're moving. They're moving tonight. Yeah.
That is the thing. It's encouraging.
Interesting.
We have a slight mark. Slight sort of abrasion here.
Catfish have this... They have lots of teeth,
but they're very small and they're very sharp.
And it's almost like a pad of sandpaper.
And so there's a bit of abrasion on the flank of the bait.
Um...
Chances are it was a small fish. Maybe something just three-foot long.
Something like that. A big fish would have just taken that right in.
I'm not too disappointed. I'm fairly confident that was a small fish.
The fish I'm looking for is much, much bigger.
I'm just settling into my shelter here.
The important thing is that I don't get too comfortable, though.
If I'm too comfortable, I fall asleep
and I'm not going to hear the sound of one of those alarms.
So I have to...
Yeah, it's a long night, so I've got to be relaxed, but I've got to be alert as well.
Basically if one of those alarms goes,
I've just got to be straight out of here
and down to the rocks.
Yeah, we have one. Right.
That's the kick.
Yeah, yeah. This is a good fish, good fish.
That felt like a tail whacking the line.
Yeah, it pulled the other way...
Yeah, this is a heavy fish. Heavy fish. Yeah.
It's gone the other way.
I need to keep the line clear of snags.
If the fish wraps it around a rock, it will all be over.
There it is... Yeah. .. on the surface. Yes.
The belly is hitting the shallow water now.
Try and bring it in the middle here.
It's coming in. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Wow. Yes, yes. Yes.
Look at this.
There we go. Wow! That's a good size. Yeah.
Fantastic.
Start at that end, maybe.
Seven feet, two inches.
It's clear that wels catfish are growing large enough here
to account for the recent lake monster sightings.
If this isn't a monster of the deep, I don't know what is.
This is just skin covered in slime.
Then you've got these tentacles.
This is a fish that navigates and hunts by feel,
and reading the vibrations in the water.
It's one reason why catfish do so well in muddy rivers like this
with low visibility.
But the big thing that you just can't help but notice
is this enormous mouth.
This isn't a fish that takes dainty bites.
This is a predator that swallows big prey whole.
Just a massive fish. Massive.
So, the big question.
Is the Lake Garda Monster one of these?
Well, if you're talking about a report in the 16th Century,
or in fact anything up to the mid-1900s,
then absolutely not.
That quite possibly would have been a sturgeon.
But what about now?
This water behind me connects with Lake Garda,
and if a fish like this can be here,
then there's every reason to suppose
that there might be something like this hiding somewhere there.
And if you glimpsed this creature breaking the surface of Lake Garda,
you'd be left in little doubt that you'd seen a monster.
And who knows, maybe one has even taken up residence in the cave beneath the island,
like the beast reported in the 16th Century.
But from everything I've now seen,
I think the Lake Garda monster could well be a double act.
With early stories inspired by a sturgeon,
and some of the more recent sightings by a giant wels catfish.
I came to Italy to look for a real flesh-and-blood creature
that might explain the legend of the Lake Garda Monster.
I never imagined
I might find two.
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