Bushnell may be putting out there a million dollars for a Bigfoot trail camera photograph, but there are lesser goals available.

In Minnesota, the Lake City Tourism Bureau has offered a $50,000 reward for hooking, netting or capturing on a camera a large, serpentlike creature living in the Mississippi River’s Lake Pepin below Maiden Rock.

Lake Pepin is a naturally occurring lake, and the widest naturally occurring part of the Mississippi River. It is a widening of the river on the border between Minnesota and Wisconsin. It is 21 miles long, with a surface area of about 40 square miles (100 km²) and an average depth of 18 feet (5.5 m).

Larry Nielson claims to have seen the creature, which the locals have named “Pepie.” Nielson, 52, of rural Lake City, owns the 125-passenger paddle wheeler Pearl of the Lake. He said he has seen Pepie and believes the creature deserves respect and recognition. That’s why he has taken the lead in attempting to prove Pepie lives.

Collecting the reward requires only a good photograph or a bit of fin or skin. If the photo is determined to be authentic, or if a University of Minnesota biologist can confirm the DNA came from a monster, fame and fortune will follow.

Pepie has been reported since at least 1871. “A lake monster was seen swimming on Lake Pepin” on April 28, 1871, according to the Minnesota Historical Society’s Book of Days Almanac.

Boosters say the legend of Pepie comes in part from the native Dakota people that lived in the area. They refused to travel on Lake Pepin in bark canoes because of large creatures that would come to the surface and damage their boats, according to the St. Paul Pioneer Press.

Four years ago, on a late August morning, Steve Raymond, 57, and his fishing buddy were cutting northeast across the lake to do some pan fishing near Stockholm, Wisconsin.

“Up ahead, I thought I saw a tree, but it wasn’t a tree. It was undulating. We got closer, maybe 50 to 75 yards from it, and I saw at least 20 feet of it out of the water,” Raymond recalled. “It was greenish, with a cast of yellow.”

Raymond grabbed a camera and took a snapshot, which he has since misplaced.

The lake is the birthplace of water skiing. The American Water Ski Association states that water skiing began in 1922 when Ralph Samuelson used two boards as skis and a clothesline as a tow rope on Lake Pepin in Lake City, Minnesota.

Thanks to Cryptomundian Mary McConnell for passing along word of this new reward.