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DEBBIE ELLIOTT, HOST:
Fishing stories are known to be the stuff of legend, and Denny Glover almost had a whopper on his hands this past week. While dropping a line in California's Sacramento River in search of salmon and striped bass, Glover and his friends saw what they thought might be a dolphin or a porpoise. Glover told ABC7 that when it resurfaced, it was clearly a whale.
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DENNY GLOVER: It would breach. It would spout, take a breath of air and then go back down.
ELLIOTT: Scientists say it's rare for a humpback to swim this far inland, some 60 miles upstream from the Pacific Ocean. But it's happened before.
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UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR: Humphrey, the lost whale - a true story.
ELLIOTT: In 1985, a humpback known as Humphrey spent weeks in the river before swimming back out into the Pacific. He was a local celebrity and subject of a children's book. In this latest whale sighting, researchers at the Marine Mammal Center say the humpback is more than 20 years old and has been documented up and down the coast 15 times. The researchers are asking the public to avoid interacting with the animal, which is to say, don't try reeling in the humpback.
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