River Monsters by Jeremy Wade Read Free Book Online

lines around the clock, struggling to keep myself awake with just a sleep-deprived cameraman,
James Bickersteth, for company, the rest of the crew having gone home to England. I remember the insane joy we felt on the sixth day, when I finally landed a goonch. Then reality returned: the
realisation that, at ten pounds, this could be bait for the fish I was after. But at least getting one any smaller was impossible. The next day I caught a nine-pounder.
    We moved pools, and I caught a twenty-seven-pounder. With some creative camera work it looked quite big, but who were we kidding? The next day, fishing in a thunderstorm, I got my line stuck and
deployed an ‘otter’ to free it: a half-full water bottle attached to a snap-swivel, which I clipped round the line and lobbed into the current. Once it had floated downstream of the
snag, I yanked hard on the line and felt it come free. But suddenly there was a force, much stronger than the current, ripping the line out. Hanging on for dear life, I stopped the fish’s
run, and after a period of stalemate, I brought it back towards me, thanks to a countercurrent on the bottom where the rapid at the pool’s top end rolls over a lip into deep water. But I
couldn’t bring it any closer. Before I’d started fishing, I had planned for this eventuality: I would launch myself into the water and pull for the beach on the other side. But a
day’s rain had made the river wider, faster, and higher. As I kicked off my shoes, James yelled at me not to do it, and, wisely, I listened to him. But in the chaos, the fish slipped off the
hook.
    Back in England we faced the cold reality of a film about a monster fish but without a monster fish. Harry Marshall, boss of Icon Films, decided, against everyone’s advice except mine, to
send us out again. But the monsoon had arrived early. From Europe, finding out if the river was even accessible was impossible. Satellite images showed a dark mass spreading over the region. On our
arrival, the river was raging and brown, but a carefully placed bait would still hold bottom. Because of the water colour, I ripened my fish baits in the sun to create more of a scent trail
underwater. And on the third day I hooked something immense, which hung on the line like a great boulder, not running at all but slowly inching through the dark depths until the line went
vertically down into the water at my feet, where a great mass of bubbles now erupted followed by a dark back that was a yard wide. For a moment I thought I’d hooked the biggest goonch in the
world, but then I realised it was a huge soft-shelled turtle ( Aspideretes gangeticus ). My guide Alam wanted to cut the line, but I heaved it towards some shallows, thrust the rod at James,
and grabbed the turtle by the shoulders. The thing was like a tank and almost carried me into the river while shooting its prehensile neck, fully two feet long, and bolt-cutter jaws towards Alam.
With great difficulty we blocked its escape with a rock and then turned it on to its back. This two hundred–pound animal hadn’t been anywhere near my suspects list, but if, for any
reason, it locked on to a swimmer’s foot, there would be no resisting it.
    Five days later, at the bottom of the pool, with a heavy fish gaining momentum in the current, James yelled at me again. But this time I ignored him. I had a clear plan and knew what I had to
do. Half an hour later, having scaled a steep, muddy hillside, crossed a bridge, sprinted down a riverside road, and stumbled exhausted across a field of boulders, James arrived at the precise
moment I yelled at Alam, ‘Now!’
    The camera frame wobbles then holds position. In the foreground Alam reaches through the surface and grabs something, and in the frame’s opposite corner a great head rears out of the
water. This was the image that launched the series – and probably remains the iconic moment of all the episodes so far.
    To the end of its tail, the fish was six