River Monsters’ Jeremy Wade: Biologist & Extreme Angler
The world’s most fearless fisherman, Jeremy Wade, is a biologist, teacher, writer and television host who has been travelling to the world’s most remote rivers for more than 25 years. He has encountered some of the strangest and most petrifying fish out there and has risked his life more than once to document the stories of hundreds of monster fish.
1. How long have you been hunting River Monsters and what about it fascinates you?
I have been doing this for the past 30 years, fishing for evidence to piece together the stories behind mysterious freshwater deaths, tracking down perpetrators wherever they’re hiding. Over the years, I’ve learned that behind stories of fantastical thesis, there’s often a real flesh and blood creature. When I hear about people disappearing from the same small remote area of jungle, you have my full attention.
In the latest season of River Monsters, I head back to the Amazon, a place that holds endless mystery for me, and over the course of a whole year, I went further and deeper into more remote and unknown River Monsters territory than ever before. I’ve heard a report of a brutal, underwater mutilation that happened in an instant; a cruel cut that severed a young man’s prospects. But I knew that investigating in the Amazon isn’t going to be easy.
2. You have gone to different freshwater sites around the world, but why did you decide to come back to the Amazon?
It’s a river that has mesmerized me with its split personality. One moment it can sustain you then in the blink of an eye it can transform into something deadly. I’ve seen injuries inflicted by many underwater assailants. The Amazon rainforest covers tropical South America in a cloak of vegetation so immense it would smother more than two-thirds of the mainland U.S. and the scale of the mighty river that cuts through its heart is so vast, it’s almost impossible to comprehend.
To put it in some kind of perspective, the amount of water flowing through the Amazon is greater than the flow of the Ganges, Congo, Yangtze, Mississippi and Nile combined. These tropical waters are so prolific that the concentration of fish species is 10,000 times that of the ocean. These include some very real River Monsters. When you think of all the aquatic predators patrolling these watery highways, it makes navigating these rivers a bit like driving a convertible through a lion enclosure.
3. You have been searching for the man-eating fish, which locals call lau-lau, for about 20 years. How was this excursion different from the last one?
These creatures are very notorious and very hard to find. Leads have gone cold in the past but this time, I discovered a site within the rainforests of Guyana which I suspected held the key to their mysterious location. Like you said, I have been searching for 20 years and this time, I didn’t want to come back until I caught one.
4. Can you share a basic strategy when it comes to hunting down big, deadly fishes such as the lau-lau?
The thing about big fish is they get big by minimizing their energy output and where you’ve got a dip, a fish can lie there out of the current without expending any energy and also, any food that comes down is going to tumble into that space like a conveyor belt bringing food to them. On this trip more than ever, my gear is critical. A giant lau-lau has eluded me for so long that I can’t take any chances. I’ve got my best equipment from all over the world. High-tech braided line from Germany. Hooks from Japan and a custom-made rod from the U.S. A very good rule when you’re fishing; think like a fish. Where would you be if you were a fish?
5. The people living around the area of the Amazon must have had great stories to tell. Did you encounter anything bizarre in terms of their dealings with these deadly creatures?
In one of the episodes, I met the Matis tribe in Brazil who, instead of catching and killing dangerous electric eels, they catch them to eat them. That was interesting. They catch them by hand. A fish that strikes fear throughout the Amazon. A fish known to kill in seconds, the Matis apparently catch with bare hands. That’s something I needed to see to believe. It was one of my most ambitious and possibly most dangerous journeys. I travelled for days to meet a secretive tribe who have such an intimate knowledge of these fish that they allegedly catch them with their bare hands.
6. Most people only come across wild, dangerous creatures through shows such as yours and others on the Discovery Channel, but nothing probably beats the experience of coming face-to-face with larger than life monsters. What are the most astonishing creatures that you’ve come across?
Time and time again, it’s the magical combination of the rational and irrational, the real and fantastical that has brought me face to face with my most mind-blowing monsters. When I investigated the notorious legend of the Loch Ness monster, it led me to a totally unexpected predator – the Greenland shark. And in Japan, the inspiration behind a mythical beast, known as the kappa, turned out to be a creature even stranger than the legend — the giant salamander.
7. While you hunt during the day, of course you have had to stay the nights as well. How was it like living close by the Amazon, which you know is infested with all sorts of dangerous freshwater monsters?
Many people have become too scared to go out on the water alone at night. And this is because they feel that there’s something large in the water that’s followed them. Normally at night, normally just as it’s getting dark, they don’t know what it is but there’s something they feel that’s coming after them. Locals avoid going on the river at night fearing that something may attack them. This is when the big hunters come out.
8. Have you ever been attacked or injured by a river monster?
I’ll tell you about this story about the Arapaima, a real Amazonian heavyweight. Arapaima may not have the teeth of predators like piranhas, but they’ve got unmatched size and power, as I know all too well. I’ve been to a couple of arapaima farms in Brazil. And on one unforgettable occasion, I was attempting to track arapaima when one erupted from the net and slammed me in the chest. They’re normally harmless to people, but if cornered by a net or on a line, they can suddenly transform into giant deadly missiles. Hundreds of pounds of muscle and bone launches into the air, and if you happen to be in its path, the blow could kill you.
Catch globally renowned angling guru and biologist Jeremy Wade on a worldwide search for harrowing tales of man-eating freshwater beasts with the hopes of finding our whether these freshwater mysteries are tall tales or frightening facts on RIVER MONSTERS 6, premiering Tuesday, July 8 at 9:00 p.m. on Discovery Channel.
