Finding Bigfoot: Sneak Peek Of "Fishing For Bigfoot In Oregon" Episode

Courtesy: oregonflyfishingblog.com

The "Fishing For Bigfoot In Oregon" episode hasn't air yet, but that's not going to stop us from telling you what to expect on the show this Sunday. As you all know by now, we're BIG fans of Animal Planet's Finding Bigfoot show. A week ago, we posted an article about an Oregon fly fishing blog joking about changing their name to "Oregon Bigfoot Blog". They posted the article in light of an email sent to them from a man named Issac Roman about foot prints he found near a creek in the Klamath tributary.

Foot Print Taken By Issac Roman
In the Klamath near a creek (8/2/2000)

We're not really sure if these footprints are going to make it on the show, but we're pretty sure of one other story that will be featured this Sunday. The story comes from a man name Chris Daughters, the owner of Caddis Fly Angling Shop and operator of the oregonflyfishingblog.com (the blog we were talking about).

Chris Daughters, owner of Caddis Fly Angling Shop

Upper McKenzie River fly fishing Olallie to Paradise

If you zoom in and watch 1:30-1:48 you can see its atleast 8ft tall and 3 feetwide, you can clearly see the huge broad shoulders. Its sasquatch, look closer and you can see its friend behind it.

Enhanced Footage

Here is the story from www.registerguard.com:

Anglers feed saga of Bigfoot

BY BOB WELCH
Register-Guard Columnist
Published: (Thursday, Jun 16, 2011 05:02AM) Today

Before that day in June 2008, Caddis Fly owner Chris Daughters had guided his drift boat down the McKenzi­e River more than 2,000 times without seeing Bigfoot.

Nor did he notice a large, furry creature lumbering along the river banks on that particular trip.

But never underestimate the power of a mystery.

This Sunday, Daughters and his boat mate, Matt Stansberry, will be part of an hourlong “Finding Bigfoot” segment that’ll air at 10 p.m. on the Discovery Channel’s “Animal Planet” program.

Why? Because a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it stretch of video taken of Daughters by Stansberry — neither of the two even noticed it until it was later called to their attention — shows what appears to be a Sasquatch-type creature on the far left side of the image.

“It’s interesting footage,” says Toby Johnson, organizer of the 2011 Oregon Sasquatch Symposium this weekend at Camp White Branch on the Old McKenzie Highway. “It certainly doesn’t look like your typical guy in hip waders with a fly rod, does it?”

If the Daughters-Stansberry footage hasn’t attained quite the same renown as the Patterson-Gimlin footage that triggered the Bigfoot debate in 1967, the pair’s YouTube segment (youtube.com/watch?v=yhacztJoVzQ) has gotten more than 107,000 hits. In addition, Bigfoot-oriented sites that have attached the link have probably doubled that number.

“I think there’s something to it,” says Greg Hatten, a McKenzie River guide and winner of the 2008 McKenzie Two-Fly Tournament. “I can tell you this: I know guys who won’t run the upper Mc­Kenzie alone — and I’m one of them.”

“This one is reeeeeealllly interesting,” wrote someone at www.cryptomundo.com.

Others are skeptical. “There’s obviously another boat pulled up on the bank there with one guy standing by it,” opined someone else on the same site. “The other guy, ‘Bigfoot,’ is walking back to him from down the bank. They then begin speaking to each other. Bigfoot is even wearing a baseball cap.”

If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so, it seems, is Bigfoot. But regardless of whether the video shows the real deal, the footage has only padded the McKenzie Valley’s burgeoning image as a Bigfoot hot spot.

At Ike’s Lakeside Pizza, in October 2009, a British TV crew interviewed area Bigfoot believers about sightings along the river; how can I forget one alleged witness telling me “he looked like the old King Kong.” Since then, Ike’s monthly “Beer and Bigfoot” gatherings have gone to biweekly sessions and, lately, weekly. The Sasquatch Symposium is anchoring its second annual symposium up river. And an Animal Planet crew not only came to gather footage for Sunday night’s show last March but is headed back next week for more.

All of which delights Daughters and Stansberry, who, at least off camera, remain skeptical that their video shows a bona fide Bigfoot but welcome the attention it brings to the McKenzie.

“Can’t hurt business,” says Stansberry, who maintains a fly-fishing blog (oregonflyfishingblog.com).

Wait, I suggested, some guides are already admitting they’re staying away from that stretch; couldn’t Bigfoot become to the McKenzie River what Jaws was to the tourist town of Amity — a reason to stay out of the water?

“If anything, more people will come because of it,” says Daughters, among the McKenzie’s most respected anglers and guides.

Like me, he’s a “ninety-five/fiver” on Bigfoot — 95 percent sure it’s a myth but 5 percent willing to be wrong.

“What surprised me was the number of people who, I realized, are highly interested in Bigfoot, like (UO golf coach) Casey Martin,” Daughters says.

Daughters, 40, and Stansberry, 33, were leading a group of other guides down the river on the day the video was shot. They were between Paradise and Ollalie campgrounds, on a Class 3 rapids known as “Fish Ladder,” when the camera caught the moving figure.

Not that either of them noticed it live or even after seeing the video. More than a year later a couple of guys at the Caddis Fly noticed the dark, moving image. The pair found a website for the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization and, almost as a joke, forwarded the footage.

Since then, the video has taken on a life of its own.

When first seeing the footage, “Finding Bigfoot” crew member Cliff Barackman of Portland found it “fairly compelling.”

The color seemed right — and so did the creature’s perceived lack of a neck. But after visiting the site and further analyzing the film, Barackman is more inclined to believe it’s a couple of guys, one of whom jumps up on a rock — perhaps to get a better view of the boat going through the rapids — and helps the other one up, all in two seconds, max.

“That’s the value of on-scene investigation,” says Barackman, who doubles as a sixth-grade teacher.

I reviewed the footage with Barackman’s insight in mind. I see more of a fleeting, dark figure than two guys on rocks, an image that — whether it is — certainly looks like a Sasquatch.

But, then, maybe that’s what darkens the shadows of the mystery, what perpetuates the Bigfoot debate: the uncertainty on both sides of the river.

More details on this weekend’s Sasquatch Symposium: oregonsasquatchsymposium.webs.com. Welch is at 541-338-2354 or bob.welch@registerguard.com.

Source: www.registerguard.com

Here are some clips from the episode:

Listening for sounds of Bigfoot
The team breaks out the parabolic mic in order to hear the sounds of bigfoot.


What Is That?
The team is fishing for Bigfoot in the Molalla Forest and hear a noise. Have they finally found proof that Bigfoot exists?


Episode Guide:

FISHING FOR BIGFOOT IN OREGON
Premiering Sunday, June 19, 10PM e/p

Bigfoot expert Matt Moneymaker takes his team of specialists to Oregon to examine a video taken on a rafting expedition. While investigating, the BFRO team hears a sound in the middle of the night that they believe could prove the creature’s existence.