Flessie, The Flathead Lake Monster.

Be careful boating on Flathead Lake, you don't want to mess with "Flessie".

Have you heard about Flessie?  The Flathead Lake monster.  Flathead Lake is huge with plenty of room for an underwater monster to live and rarely get seen.  If I were a lake monster I would live in Flathead Lake.

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The first sightings of the Flathead Monster date back to 1889.  Captain James C Kerr of the lake steamboat the U.S. Grant claimed he saw an large whale like object in the water, along with 100 passengers.  Some reports say that one of the passengers on the steam boat shot at the creature and the creature dove for safety.

Local residents named the monster Flessie many years after James Kerr and his passengers reported seeing a monster. Sightings of Flessie continued throughout the years averaging between 1-2 each year, until 1993.

In 1993 Flessie was spotted about 13 different times.  Maybe it was the Year of the Monster.  Nobody knows why, but reports of Flessie dropped back down to 1 or 2 yearly sightings after that.

Flessie has been described as a large eel shaped creature, with a wavy body that looks like a snake, 20-40 feet long.  Flessie has brownish to blue-black skin with grayish-black eyes.

One report was from a 3 year old boy that had fell into the lake and when asked how he managed to get himself to shore and safety he said :The Flathead monster lifted me up".

Big Fish Unlimited offered a  significant reward for the capture of the "superfish" Flessie in the 1950's.  A man named C. Leslie Griffith was reported to have caught a 7 foot 6 inch, 181 pound white sturgeon.  This sturgeon is on display at the Polson-Flathead Historical Museum.

Did Leslie catch Flessie?  Some say that he did, but most say that he did not.  So the next time you are on Flathead Lake, and you see something out of the corner of your eye, don't shake it off as a coincidence, it's Flessie, the Flathead Lake Monster.