JEREMY WADE
AO: The Pacu fish, found in
Papa New Guinea, is nicknamed the “ball cutter,”
after killing two men by
biting off their jewels. Is
this fact or fiction? Are
there any other murderous
fish we should be aware of?
JW: It turned out that the original report was an exaggeration.
Nobody died. But people in PNG
really are frightened by that
fish, and I wouldn’t want to have
to bathe in that water every day.
Most of the incidents we investigate are very rare
occurrences. The fish aren’t willfully attacking
humans, but making a reflexive strike at something that looks like it might be food. The key
here is the low visibility that’s common in fresh
water. They can’t see the person, just the blurred
white shape of a foot. And there are many fish
that might go for a human foot, if the circumstances were right (or wrong, from the human’s
perspective). One is the Goonch catfish, a hideous looking thing that was the subject of our
first ever episode, filmed in the Himalayan foothills, in India. Other fish will go for humans even
if they can see the entire human figure, but this is
a very special subset of incidents, when the fish
is protecting its nest or young. Snakeheads will
do this, also piranhas (we’re talking single bites),
but the results won’t be fatal. They could be fatal
however if the protective parent is an Amazonian arapaima, which can grow to well over 200lb
and head butt trespassers near their nest. I was
once rammed by a “small” (80 pound) arapaima
and it sent me flying. I could still feel the pain six
weeks later.
76 Summer 2016 Adventure Outdoors
AO: In the season 7 premiere of River Monsters, the “Canadian Horror” episode ended up being a very trying and mysterious Muskie case. What was the
most frustrating thing about this particular fish?
JW: They’re known as “the fish of ten thousand casts” and with very good
reason. I’d had a couple of chances, but missed them, partly because I wasn’t
technically up to speed. Muskie will sometimes follow a lure to the boat, and
rather than take the lure out of the water you shove the rod tip under the
surface and move the lure in big circles next to the boat, and sometimes the
Muskie will take. But this technique takes some perfecting, and experience
of how Muskie react. Anyway, having missed a couple of chances and spent
so long fishing without result, my confidence had ebbed. And confidence is a
huge part of angling: the belief that something will happen, that all this effort
will bear fruit. When it goes, that’s bad news. I’d actually given up on Muskie
when I hooked that fish.
AO: Can you name another time in which you may have felt “beaten” or like
you may not be able to solve the case?
JW: There was a fish in India that I didn’t catch, but that was all about not
getting permits to film in the place where we needed to go. When it’s a straight
contest with the fish, we have an amazing record of getting results. Our past
track record puts tremendous pressure on us every time we head out, and I
think that plays a big part, the expectation. There have been times when there
has been extreme desperation, like the giant river stingray in Argentina, but
then there was the last-minute turnaround in fortunes. Many of the fish I
have caught on camera have been of a size that I couldn’t expect to better, but
there have been a few when I knew that, with more time, I could do better.
And on occasion I’ve been able to return and do just that, as in the case of the
Lau-Lau catfish in Guyana.
AO: Do you have a favorite place for fishing? If you could go anywhere right
now for a fishing expedition, where would you choose to go?
JW: It used to be Guyana, where the rivers are much richer in life than other jungle rivers in South America. But in the last few years there has been a
very noticeable decline, which seems to be the result of commercial fishing to
supply the gold miners. I’d actually like to go back and fish for Muskie again.
There’s some unfinished business there. Despite the frustrations, or perhaps
because of them, Muskie fishing is definitely a bug.