My name is Jeremy Wade.
I'm a biologist and extreme angler.
I've battled with the most dangerous
freshwater fish on earth...
Ahh!
From rays wielding 10-inch barbs to assassins
that strip flesh from bone.
But for me, the most frightening monsters are the ones that lurk
unseen, then drag unsuspecting victims down to their deaths.
I've heard of one river in southern Africa where the death
toll is devastatingly high...
The Zambezi.
Tales abound of unexplained deaths, from fishermen being
dragged under to babies being snatched from their mothers.
Locals say a monster is lurking here, but what kind of beast
could it really be?
He must have been 14, 15 feet long.
There's only one way to find out.
Fish on!
By taking on a river I've never fished before to hunt down
and uncover the Zambezi's invisible executioner.
The Congo and Zambezi rivers both originate from the same
country in Africa... Zambia.
Now, if the Congo can support possibly
the fiercest river monster I've caught...
Those teeth!
Ooh.
I've every reason to suspect the Zambezi could hold
a river monster of its own.
This is new territory for me, and gathering intelligence from
this sparsely-populated region isn't easy.
The Zambezi claims countless victims on its 1,600-mile
journey to the Indian Ocean.
Most of the fatalities are blamed on crocodiles and hippos
or accidental drownings in waterfalls and rapids.
But along one stretch of the river where it forms the border
between Zambia and Zimbabwe, there have been deaths
that can't be explained away.
One recent story concerns an experienced fisherman
who disappeared in this gorge.
Some say he was swept away by the current,
others that he was pulled in by a giant fish.
From experience, I have no doubt that this river could harbor
such a fish, but proving it will be another matter.
Traveling down the Zambezi is going to be dangerous.
In places, towering gorges squeeze the river into mile
after mile of boat-crushing rapids.
I'm not taking them on lightly, but this is the only way
to find out what's in the water.
Somewhere down there is something that has pulled
fishermen under the water to their deaths.
And now that I'm seeing this river myself for the first time,
I'm starting to have very, very mixed feeling about going
to have a closer look.
The thundering rapids of the Batoka Gorge have claimed many
lives, yet grinding poverty means many fishermen have
no choice but to try their luck here.
Two years ago, two Zimbabwean brothers were fishing
in the gorge when one unexpectedly disappeared.
Was it an accident, or was something more sinister at work?
Before I can even start my investigation,
I first have to contend with the rapids.
The rapids aren't the only dangers
fishermen face in the gorge.
Spray makes the banks treacherous, and rocks can
hurdle down the cliffs without warning.
But the only way to find out what creatures call this place
home is to literally test the water.
This is horrendously deep.
It's only just touched the bottom.
The line was just sinking, sinking, sinking for...
Don't know... it felt like about half a minute.
It's very, very deep here.
So deep, a monster fish could easily hide out
without being detected.
This has to be some of the most dramatic scenery
I've ever fished in.
And as an angler, of course, what you're always aware of is
the fact that that continues under the surface.
But the thing, really, here is that this is completely
unfamiliar to me.
The only way I'm going to learn about this river is by just
getting a bait in a variety of different places and just
gradually building up a picture of what the geography is like
under the water and also what the fish life is like
under the water.
If you believe the deeper the water, the bigger the fish,
then I'm in line for something pretty huge.
Well, so much for the idea that in the deep water, the very deep
water, you're always gonna find very big fish.
This has come out of maybe 70, 80, 90 feet of water.
Perhaps this is the exception that proves the rule.
Brown squeaker.
It's a small catfish that makes sounds
by moving its spiny fins.
It can give you a nasty stab, but it's no man-hunter.
If a fish is responsible for unexplained drownings here, then
it would have to be both strong enough to survive the rapids
and big enough to pull in a man.
Yet somehow it has remained hidden from sight.
To this day, a fisherman called Jaconia is still unsure
how his brother disappeared.
Two years ago, they set out in opposite directions to fish
the gorge, planning to meet up later at their camp.
Only Jaconia returned.
When you came back to the camp, your brother didn't come?
So, shoes and trousers and that was all?
Oh, you found the line?
The line was...
Right.
Did you get the hook back?
The absence of a hook makes me suspicious.
Hooks don't just fall off.
Perhaps something ripped it off the line.
Further downstream, a croc would be the prime candidate,
but they avoid rapids.
So I asked Jaconia if there are any big fish in the river.
How big do they grow?
He says there are.
Same size as you.
Yeah.
That's the body?
Okay.
And how long to get a big one?
How long to bring it?
- One hour, 30 minutes? - Yeah.
Human beings are out of their element in water.
From my own experiments, I've shown that a fish a
third of my weight could drag me under.
The beast Jaconia is describing easily outstrips that.
Many languages are spoken in these former British
territories, but Jaconia can't give me the fish's English name.
So, this big fish, what does it look like?
My first real clue... a snake-like fish that grows
to the size of a man.
But where is it hiding?
I've tried a deep pool, but Jaconia thinks the turbulent
margins on the edge of the white water hold bigger predators.
This is where anything overpowered by the rapids is
thrown out, dazed and confused, delivered right to the jaws
of any waiting predator.
There are no second chances for me with these waters either.
I need to get my strategy right first time.
If I fall in the river, which I don't want to do, but it is
a possibility, at least we got an eddy here.
We got a slack.
I can come into slack water.
And there's a beach over there.
There's some possible places to land fish here.
It might be a bit of a scramble, but it's doable.
At least I've thought about it.
The last thing you want is to have a fish on, you get it in
close, and then what do I do?
How do I land it?
And you end up doing something potentially dangerous.
It makes me wonder what kind of fish survives conditions
as tough as these.
Is this the home of Jaconia's snake-like giant?
Fish on!
It's a strong fish, this.
Whatever this is, it's not giving in without a fight.
I think it's off.
Oh, no. No, no.
I've got to get it into calmer water or I might lose it.
Ah.
Tiger fish... toothy, strong fish, powerful predator.
Fairly fragile out of the water.
I want to get it back soon.
Interlocking dagger-like teeth make short work of prey, and a
powerful, muscular body propels it like lightning.
An even more horrific cousin rules Africa's other
monster river... the Congo.
The goliath tiger fish is the big daddy of them all.
This creature stands accused of slicing children
virtually in half.
The Zambezi's tiger fish has the razor-sharp weaponry
of a killer,
but does it fit Jaconia's description of an invisible
executioner capable of killing his brother?
It grows quite big, but not as big as the animal
I've been hearing about.
And also, it's not really serpentine.
But it just goes to show that you do get fish living in some
really crazy water.
That's a good sign.
But I don't think I'm any nearer at the moment...
for the fish that I'm after.
I fish the rapids for another day, but no more bites.
I need to rethink my strategy.
I need to understand exactly how the victim came face-to-face
with his killer.
Jaconia has a nephew who his brother taught to fish.
I'm hoping he can shed some more light on the mystery.
So he put the line around his foot so that he could go to
sleep or rest and that would let him know when
there was a fish on?
Yeah.
Something very big came along and actually pulled him
into the water? - Yeah, in the water.
Aah!
So he drowned?
Yeah, he drowned.
Melvin is convinced the killer was a fish for the same
reason than roused my suspicions...
The missing hook from the hand line.
Does anybody have any idea what kind of fish
this could have been?
The what fish?
Solomon fish.
So it looks a bit like a snake?
Yeah, like a python snake.
It's not a name I recognize, but it's the second time
the potential killer has been described as a snake-like fish.
The obvious candidate would be an eel, but I don't know any
African eels strong enough to pull in a grown man.
This sounds like something else.
Then my attention is drawn to the serpentine talisman
around Melvin's neck.
What is that exactly?
Right.
The god of the Zambezi.
And what exactly is Nyaminyami?
What kind of creature?
Mm-hmm.
And do other fishermen also wear this?
Do you think if I'm going on the river,
would it be a good idea if I had one?
Yes.
Wearing the amulet is a symbol of respect
rather than a guarantee of safety.
According to legend, the half-snake/half-fish god exacts
his vengeance whenever he feels fit,
and he's blamed for many drownings.
Locals believe the god rules the entire length of the Zambezi,
and anyone taking to the river is wise to appease him.
But whether this amulet will protect me,
I have no way of knowing.
So, clearly, the river is very dangerous and there are cases of
fishermen being pulled under the water by big fish.
Aah!
The name is not something I recognize, but it's described as
something that's a bit snake-like.
And curiously, this is also the description given to Nyaminyami.
And I wonder if this means that there is a link
or is it just a coincidence?
Locals believe the river god has his lair 250 miles downriver in
a flooded gorge called Kariba, another place where fisherman
have disappeared.
It's time to follow the Zambezi's
relentless course downstream.
This stretch of the Zambezi has undergone
a massive transformation.
50 years ago, the river was dammed at Kariba to generate
electricity for a booming mining industry.
It was an unprecedented feat of engineering on a scale never
before seen in this forgotten corner of Africa.
But unimaginable freak floods threatened to destroy the dam
before it was finished.
The locals attributed these catastrophic events to the river
god Nyaminyami, angered by the attempt to tame the Zambezi.
But in the end, the dam prevailed.
At the time, it created the largest man-made lake
in the world.
Now stocked with huge numbers of small commercial fish,
perhaps this vast deep lake has provided sanctuary to an ancient
snake-like predator.
A predator so terrifying it inspired belief
in a river monster god.
The reason I've come here is because this is where Nyaminyami
is said to live.
The only thing is after the construction of the dam,
the monster, or the fish which gave rise to the legend,
could be living under 400 feet of water.
So it looks like I might have my work cut out.
Whether or not the dam upset Nyaminyami, there's no question
it upset the natural forces in the region.
Erratic winds rise and fall over the lake without warning.
I'm within a few miles of my destination,
but the weather is getting worse.
The wind's up, and there's quite a few waves on the water.
The thing is Lake Kariba is so massive that it's changed
the climate, locally.
You get these storms coming up.
We've had lightning flashing.
So the wise thing is to head for dry land.
But the head wind is too strong.
There's no way I'm going to make it to Kariba town tonight.
Now I just need to find any safe port in a storm.
Right, this isn't exactly what I was wanting to do.
The boat is actually rocking from side to side.
There's also lots of rocks.
And, you know, one thing we don't want to be doing
is hitting any rocks in this boat.
We're now navigating at night.
The boat's been sort of tipping backwards and forwards.
It's head to the nearest safe shore or sink.
There's a safe landfall here.
We hope there is, anyway.
I have to say it's very much of a relief to be on dry land,
although I'm not exactly sure where we are.
Somewhere on the shore of Lake Kariba.
Luckily, a miraculous little bit of sand as opposed to some of
the rocks that were out there, which were worryingly close.
I'm very glad and very lucky to be safely ashore.
The next day, Lake Kariba is dead calm,
as if nothing happened.
But I now understand a little more about the threats facing
local fishermen here.
Well, the lake is showing its normal face once again today,
and it makes me appreciate perhaps that if you lived here
and you're in the habit of going out on the water, probably in a
smaller boat, and you experience something like that, well,
the idea of an angry water god doesn't seem totally farfetched.
But I have to stay focused on facts if I'm to uncover
the Zambezi's invisible executioner.
I'm not interested in the commercial fish in the lake.
I need to tap into the knowledge of the people that used to live
along the Kariba Gorge before it was flooded in the late 1950s.
They were relocated to resettlement villages,
some more than 100 miles inland.
Patrick is one of the few elders who remembers life on the river
before the dam.
They didn't want to come here.
They were forced to come here.
Some people resisted, and it sounds like people even died
as a result of river resistance.
Before living in this sort of dry area,
they were living beside the banks of the Zambezi...
A place called Matongo.
There were lots of different types of fish, so as well as
growing food, there was always the river there to provide fish
from time to time.
Are there any very big fish in the river?
Any fish that are dangerous to people?
There's one fish in particular... mazunda.
Apparently, this is a very, very strong fish.
If you're in the canoe, you've got to go with it.
You don't pull when it is pulling.
If you do it right, you eventually tire it out,
you get it to the side of the river, and you spear it.
You get it wrong, and that fish is going to flip your canoe,
pull you into the water, and maybe nobody
will ever see you again.
But that's not all.
Patrick goes on to tell me something even more horrifying.
The fish he calls mazunda
has developed a taste for human flesh.
Stories tell of women going down to the river to do the wash
and sitting their toddlers in the shallows to keep cool.
They don't know if it's the noise, the vibrations,
or even the scent of the soap in the water,
but sometimes it draws the mazunda in.
It's got a big head, big mouth, the back end like a snake.
If there's a baby in the water, this fish can just take it in
one mouthful and possibly, even a small person.
So this, by the sounds of it,
is the big fish that's in the river here.
Mazunda.
Well, I'm in no doubt now that there is a large,
potentially dangerous fish in this river, and people have been
describing it to me and telling me names.
Do those names refer to different creatures, different
fish, or is everybody talking about the same thing?
Back at the lake, I look for mazunda at the fish market.
- You don't have it here? - Yes.
But one of the fisherman does know of them.
Yeah.
That is actually the thickness of the body.
He tells me a story of a brutal encounter 20 years ago.
A South African tourist took on more than he bargained for,
fishing in waters that were strictly out of bounds.
This hand liner thought he could outmuscle a mazunda.
When the line was pulled from his hands, he made the mistake
of securing it around his waist.
Man-made dams often stir up stories of super scaled
river monsters.
Deep fish-filled lakes form above the dam wall, delivering a
constant stream of food to the water below.
What better place for a freak of nature to grow?
But without an eyewitness, I'm skeptical, until I learn of
another man who had an encounter with the mazunda
at exactly the same place.
A big body underneath and...
Vernon Bailey has lived in Zambia since the 1940s.
But when he went into the water to hunt tiger fish, nothing had
prepared him for what he would see.
Kariba Dam, snorkeling and fishing below the dam wall.
And that was in 1969.
As I was swimming up, this submarine-looking thing came
after me, very close.
It just gave me a big eyeball
and just kept moving on in dead silence.
He must have been 14, 15 feet long, and I reckon between
200 and 250 pounds.
That thing could swallow me without a question.
But what exactly was that thing?
What is the real identity of the mazunda?
Vundu... v-u-n-d-u.
Can you describe what it looks like?
It's a species of barbel.
It's one of the catfish, but it grows exceptionally big.
Known by a multitude of names, the vundu is the largest
freshwater fish in southern Africa.
This top predator uses its extra long barbels to detect chemical
traces of its prey in the water, and the broad fins fringing its
muscular serpentine body give it supercharged power.
If Vernon's estimate is right, his giant was at least twice
the size of the accepted maximum for the species.
Is it possible?
Unlike land animals, fish are largely exempt
from the law of gravity.
With bodies supported by water and plentiful food, below dams
for example, a phenomenon called indeterminate growth
can supersize some fish into giants.
But supposing Vernon's giant was a one-off,
would a normal-sized vundu have the strength to pull in a man?
Aah!
A big vundu is more than capable of doing that.
Strength coupled with a mouth big enough
to swallow a baby whole?
It can only be the vundu.
Every year, Vernon revisits the dam and claims he can still
see the shapes of vundu in the water below.
There's now only one place for me to go.
This road that I'm on is the border
between Zambia and Zimbabwe.
But it sits on top of this structure that causes
the Zambezi to back up for almost 200 miles.
And the difference in height between the surface here
and the river surface there is about 300 feet.
But access down there is forbidden.
However, the authorities have agreed to forward my request
to the head office in the capital, Lusaka.
So frustrating to hear that there are potentially giant fish
there, but I can't get down to the water.
I can see the water, but I can't get there.
Well, not for now, anyway.
It'll take days, maybe weeks, for a decision
on whether I can fish here.
Time I just don't have.
But there is one other option.
There's a part of the Zambezi that remains virtually
untouched... the lower Zambezi on the border with Mozambique,
where temperatures top 120 degrees.
Perhaps I can find my river monster there.
At a former slave town called Luangwa, I try to find someone
to take me to the remotest parts of the river.
This river here.
- Yes. - Yeah?
A boatman called Tafilia agrees.
But as we draw near to a prime fishing spot,
he's reluctant to get too close.
Crocodiles have slaughtered 13 people in this village in
the last year alone, including a chief and his wife.
What's worse, Tafilia tells me vundu have pulled fishermen
into the croc-infested waters.
If you're in a canoe, does it pull the canoe?
- Right. - Yes.
According to Tafilia, there are giants still left in this
remote corner of Africa.
But once again, I'm operating in unfamiliar territory.
I'm in a nice fishing spot here.
The only problem is this hippo.
Most of them they disappear when the boat is around.
This one seems to be quite curious, so it's quite
disconcerting to think that there are other things a lot
bigger than me with prior claim to this place.
And hippos kill more humans in Africa
than any other large animal.
Yeah.
That is a fish on.
I might just look at this... How the teeth are,
how the hook is.
Oh, good, a net.
Excellent.
Fantastic.
Ooh.
It seems a fearsome lineup of predators stalks this part
of the river, too.
Tiger fish as well as vundu.
Whew.
These things.
One minute, the lion is just hanging limp,
and the next minute, it's screaming out.
Lovely fish.
It's not the one I'm...
It's not the fish I'm after, though.
What I want to do is hold it in the water and let it recover,
but I've got to remember there's crocs in here.
I got to think of my own safety as well.
But I think it's about ready to go.
I was thinking then, somewhat selfishly,
that if a croc come along, it's more likely
to go for the fish than my arm, hopefully.
But anyway, it's gone.
I'm not sitting here for 5 or 10 minutes waiting
for that fish to recover.
It's a fish.
It's good to see a fish, but the one I'm after is just more
elusive even than that.
Typically, at this point, I would try
to fish for my target at night.
But here, the crocs are man-eaters.
Fishing in the dark would be suicide.
We should head back to camp.
But then I spot a gruesome opportunity,
seemingly too good to miss... a dead hippo.
My angler's instinct is saying get all this in the water
and get a real scent trail going,
but just the act of dragging these bits a few yards into
the water, that could turn me into bait.
Because it's not just possibly vundu that will smell the scent,
but the crocodiles as well.
This carcass will be a magnet for scavengers after dark.
So I cast a handline into the scent stream and leave it for
the night in the hope of hooking a vundu.
I'll have my answer one way or another in the morning.
Everything's gone.
The pelvic girdle that was up the bank.
The head.
The head's just disappeared.
Something's dragged it into the water.
The hyena and crocodile tracks show why it would be suicide
to fish these banks after dark.
But has anything cleaned up the bait on the hand line?
It's still stuck on something.
Yeah, other places, if the line is snagged fairly close
to the side, I might jump in and free it,
but here would not be a good idea at all.
Even standing, actually, this close to the bank
is somewhat risky.
But something has managed to dodge the crocs.
A sharp-toothed catfish, a smaller cousin of the vundu
that shares a similar body shape.
The whole body is muscle.
It's quite serpentine.
There's a lot of surface area to act against the water.
Catfish use their sensitive barbels to sniff out prey in
murky water, and it's surprising what can attract them.
In the Congo, I used the local's favorite bait...
Cubes of soap.
Could this explain the stories of attacks on babies?
As I continue my hunt for the vundu,
I get surprising news from the Zambian authorities.
I've been granted permission to fish below the dam.
This is the first time ever it's been officially allowed.
But I only have one shot, one day.
I have to get back now.
Finally, it's my turn to confront whatever lurks
in the churning depths below the Kariba Dam.
The clock is ticking, and there's no access to boats.
I'm casting into a pool 500 feet wide
and said to be 300 feet deep.
That's fish on.
This is my last chance to uncover
the Zambezi's invisible executioner.
I just want to let out the line.
I'm just gonna wait till he comes this way.
Its instinct is to pull down towards the bottom of this
300-foot pool.
I'm gonna run along the back there.
That's a vundu.
What a fish and what a place to catch it in.
Could be crocs here.
So what I'm going to do...
I think I'm just going to pull it.
Just looking for a good place to land.
Maybe up here.
I think one of these would be capable of taking a baby.
And with a mouth this wide, it could suck in
almost anything that passes.
It would be capable of pulling an unwary fisherman if that
fisherman had the line wrapped around his toe or ankle.
Now that I've felt its power on the line, I have no doubt
the vundu could have pulled Jaconia's brother
into the river and drowned him.
But could the river monster also be a river god?
That is the representation of Nyaminyami.
Now, I wonder if this is the creature that the water gods,
the water spirit is based on?
Both possess powerful serpentine bodies.
And perhaps the fangs on the traditional carvings are
inspired by the extraordinary barbels that vundu
use to hunt down prey.
My journey along the relentless Zambezi has made me realize that
any creature that can survive this unforgiving river
for millennia has to be a force to be reckoned with.
Whether or not this is the beast behind Nyaminyami, I mean,
it certainly embodies the power of this river.