The summer after Jaws came out, I was fishing with my dad up on the coast of Maine. We were trolling around this island in not much more than a skiff and we saw the big dorsal-like fin just floating upright in the water. It wasn't moving, but from the size of it, it looked like whatever it was attached to must have been as big as our boat.

It just floated there and floated there and after a while we motored a little closer and then closer still. It didn't move. We finally came up on it from behind and it was like there was nothing in the water immediately behind the fin. But the fin was sticking up out of the water what seems to me to have been two feet.

It took a moment or two, but then we saw that there was this really big, black mass in front of the fin. We motored around and then we could see this giant fish head attached to the fin, with no body in back of the fin.

It was a great big sunfish and it is the weirdest thing I have seen in person while fishing. Just a great big fish head and dorsal fin sticking out of the water. Very docile. It didn't move an inch the whole time we were checking it out.