The spiders seemed out of place here in the North Country. Spiders that big should be in some tropical rain forest or maybe a desert. As the boat bumped the dock, one of the spiders scuttled out of sight around a log, like a squirrel around a tree. The other one leaped to the water and danced across the surface to a clump of reeds and disappeared. They were fishing spiders.
Water striders are insects, and fishing spiders are arachnids.
Both are predators, and both can skim across the water as if it were a solid surface. But fishing spiders are much, much bigger, and leave a much more lasting impression. People who have had a good look at a fishing spider are impressed and tend to use superlatives when describing their encounters. Like any good tale of a missed buck or lost lunker, there is an inevitable temptation to exaggerate. Several species are found around the northern hemisphere.