Taylor Smith
Howdy,
I wanted to send in a sighting I just had.
Tuesday September 20, 2022 I was on a company retreat at the Villa cabins of Lake Raystown Resort. I had heard of Raystown Ray prior but only the name – I hadn’t heard what it might be or any stories about it. Literally all I knew of it was thr name. Middle of the afternoon my coworker and I were standing on the bank looking North at the water towards the bridge that leads to the resort.
I saw a dark shape moving in the water at least 50 yards out. At first glance I thought it was a beaver because I’ve seen beavers swimming multiple times, but it wasn’t moving like a beaver. I pointed it out to my coworker and we watched it breaching the surface. What appeared to be its head was swaying back and forth side to side. I couldn’t make out any more detail than that the shape of it was rounded like the mouth of a musky/pike. That’s what I assumed it was in the moment – maybe a pike that had just snatched up a smaller fish and was working on orienting its catch in its mouth to swallow it down easier. Though I couldn’t see another fish at the time I’m still not ruling out that possibility because visibility was so limited and the creature was moving away from us.
We both watched it swim like that for maybe 15 seconds before going subsurface. We looked for probably 5 minutes after that for any sign of it popping back up in case it had been a waterfowl diving but nothing came up.
I’m not the best judge of size/distance but my guess is that it was 3ft long at most.
Thanks,
Taylor Smith