GASTON COUNTY, N.C. -- There's something fishy going on in Gaston County.
Someone recorded a video of a neon blue creature swimming in a lake. A conspiracy theorist posted it to his YouTube page, and now several people are commenting -- wondering if it's a monster, a peacock, remote control or a fish?
Several people we talked to at Rankin Lake Tuesday had never seen anything like that.
"I'm 56, and I've been coming here for a long time," Don Sanders told NBC Charlotte. "I have never seen anything like that."
Another fisherman didn't seem shocked by the video.
"The way it's swimming around; most fish don't swim around like that," Dean Bell. "That's a coy," he guessed.
Gabriela Hogue, collections manager at the North Caroina Museum of Natural Sciences recognized the creature.
"At first I wasn't sure," Hogue said. "After looking at it, I think it is a blue-faced koi. I'm not sure how big it is or how it got there; a lot of people do transport fish around quite a bit. At first, I thought there was a filter on it because of the blue color. But you know things happen in nature, so I'm never completely surprised. It was neat to see."
Ross Self, chief of freshwater fisheries at the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, weighed in on the video.
"It is difficult to make a definitive identification based on the video clip. Based on the described size and the shape of the scales and dorsal fin, the fish in the video clip appears to be a carp. It could be a common carp or a grass carp. Coloration varies so much with video quality and source that the color is not much help. We have watched the clip several times and see nothing to make us think it is anything other than a carp."
There you have it; the neon blue fish is either a carp or a koi.