My name's Jeremy Wade.
I've been fishing for over 40 years,
but I've never had an experience
like the one you're about to see.
Ooh!
It began as an investigation
into vicious attacks in India.
But somewhere along the line, it crossed over into obsession.
I set my sights on a fish so elusive and hard to catch...
Ooh! Oh!
That it tested my patience to breaking point.
This is the story
of how a fish said to be protected by the gods
took me to my limit and beyond.
He's come around. He's come there.
I'm in northern India.
India is where my extreme-angling career began
three decades ago.
And it was where, four years ago,
I caught one of my most shocking monsters...
I'm gonna have to go for a swim.
A 160-pound goonch...
which proved there are man-eating-sized fish in India.
Since then, my search for freshwater horrors
has taken me all around the globe.
And now fresh reports are emerging
from India and Southeast Asia
of something else attacking people in the water...
Something said to make the goonch look like a goldfish.
These reports speak of stealthy,
lightning-fast strikes by a cunning predator
that appears to patrol near the surface.
Something blasting out of the shallows,
sometimes clean out of the water,
taking birds, dogs, even children
from the edges of rivers and lakes.
There are even reports of fish being cut open
to reveal human remains in their stomachs.
This doesn't sound like the goonch...
A silent assassin rising slowly from the depths.
If these reports are true,
there must be something else lurking in these rivers.
Over the years, I've learned a lot about India.
Here, reality is awash with mystery and magic.
And this bubbles through most powerfully in the rivers.
These rivers are sacred...
The gateway between this world and the next...
and the focus for devotion for millions of Hindus.
I've seen strange things happen in India's rivers
and with the fish that lurk beneath.
I have a background in science,
but out here, that's not always enough
to understand what's going on around me.
To solve the mystery of these new attacks,
I start with straightforward door-to-door inquiries.
I'm looking up a friend who I haven't seen for 30 years.
It's not this one. It's a bit further up.
Might be this one.
But word travels fast, and Umesh comes to find me.
Hi, Jeremy! Hello!
- How do you do? - I'm very well.
Look at your hair. It's turned white.
I tell him why I'm back and about the monster I'm hunting.
How do I look?
I've heard one story
about a spear fisherman out hunting at night...
trying to spot his targets by flashlight.
But in the darkness, this hunter became the hunted.
Jaws sunk into his leg with such force
that the culprit had to be cut off him.
I need to get a line in the water.
Umesh suggests a place to start.
The water in this river is running shallow and clear.
A wary hunter in this water
could easily see me before I see it.
So I need to adopt a stealthy approach.
To start with, I decide to try fly fishing.
That's what I'm using on the end.
Now, they call this fly fishing,
but that's actually designed to mimic small fish,
particularly when it's pulled in through the water in jerks.
That makes that tail sort of wave around a little bit.
This movement could trigger the attack reflex
of any predator that's down there.
But I'm already at a disadvantage,
because I'm no expert in this technique.
The last time I tried fly fishing,
it landed me in more trouble than it was worth.
Okay, you can have the fish. You can have the fish.
Go on. - Whoa.
And this time, it's proving just as frustrating.
How did that happen?
That's rubbish. That was rubbish... absolute rubbish.
Time to go again.
I need to keep my line aloft and untangled
while I work out enough distance to hit my spot.
But that's easier said than done.
I saw a flash of silver,
a very slight tap on the line,
and then nothing there.
But I'm starting to get the hang of it.
Hooking a fish should be just a matter of time.
Yeah. Yep. Here we go.
It's actually coming up the current.
It's actually very small.
This is just a juvenile,
but it could grow into something much bigger.
Right. That's a very small fish,
a lot smaller than what I'm used to,
but this is actually a memorable fish for me.
This is my first mahseer on a fly.
I've caught mahseer before, but not on a fly.
I'll get him out of the sun.
It doesn't look much,
but I've caught mahseer to over 90 pounds.
At that size, they're a real muscle fish
and one of the most valued sport fish in the world.
But even the giants pose no threat to people,
so this can't be the attacker I'm after.
Progress is being made, you know, notch by notch.
The mechanics of this fishing is slowly coming, slowly coming.
My fly fishing is not pretty,
but it's starting to be effective.
I just hope it's a match
for the predatory heavyweight I've come to catch.
I've heard rumors of another attack south of here
on a lake that's harvested by commercial fishermen,
so I'm heading there to investigate.
At first, it's tough going, as the fishermen on the lake
are tight-lipped and wary of outsiders,
but I manage to persuade one of them to talk.
Mihin Biswas tells me of a boy who was wading in the shallows
searching for worms to use as bait.
But something else was lying in wait.
So, like, the fish actually took the whole hand?
The child was bitten...
Actually pulled his hand out of the water,
and the fish was still attached.
The child's mother had to come
and pries the jaws open to get the fish off.
He tells me the attacker was a catfish known as the sareng.
Mr. Biswas said, you know, a big sareng... a 40-, 50-pounder.
He said it's got jaws big enough
to almost grab him around the waist.
This isn't your usual bottom-feeding catfish.
Going under many aliases,
the sareng is a formidable predator.
Explosive speed flows from a streamlined, muscular body
and jets of water shooting through its gill slits.
Banks of needle-sharp teeth bristle in its jaws.
And it's been reported to grow to the size of a man.
The unprovoked attacks I'm hearing about
make it one of the most aggressive hunters
I've ever come across.
But its reputation doesn't stop there.
Mr. Biswas tells me
that Hindus also believe this fish to be untouchable.
I want to start fishing,
but mention of the sareng has touched a superstitious nerve.
I can't ignore local beliefs,
and the lake's fishermen have asked to speak to me.
Is this a fish that fishermen are afraid of?
It seems the sareng is the subject of a religious taboo.
Before I return to the water,
I need to seek an audience with a Hindu holy man.
Right.
I'm a scientist.
My investigations deal with hard evidence and deduction.
But for many, fishing is a superstitious game.
And I've done this long enough
to understand the power of belief.
This holy man may be more than just a detour.
Part monk and part magician,
he lives in a cave high above the holy river Ganges.
It's said that he can levitate
and even inhabit the bodies of animals.
I ask him about the sareng.
It's a big fish. It lives in the river.
It lives in lakes, and it cleans things up.
It eats dead matter. It eats dead animals.
And, according to the holy man,
this fish also eats dead people.
When a Hindu dies, a funeral pyre is built beside the river.
The corpse is brought down to the water's edge.
As the pyre burns down, the remains end up in the river...
as easy pickings for the sareng.
But it's not just the body it's eating.
This is a fish that not only eats
the physical part of people,
it also takes human souls to the gods.
Hindus believe in reincarnation.
When you die, your soul leaves your body.
The sareng swallows the soul and carries it to the gods,
who, in turn, see it reincarnated into another body.
This is a fish that shouldn't be eaten,
but beyond that, it's actually a sin to kill it.
I'm a fisherman, and I'm here to try and catch a sareng.
The holy man warns me that trying to catch this fish
will bring nothing but bad luck.
This fish is actually the gods' gift to people.
And not only is it a big fish with big teeth,
it also has some kind of divine protection.
This is a fish that you mess with at your peril.
A killer instinct, formidable weaponry,
supernatural powers, and divine protection.
I'm starting to wonder if I'm out of my depth.
But if I just catch, examine, and release this fish,
perhaps I won't incur the wrath of the gods.
Even so, I'm nervous as I prepare to go fishing again.
Then I hear there's bad news.
I was planning to go out on the lake with Mr. Biswas today,
but there's been a little bit of bother.
Somebody was fishing the lake unofficially,
and the people who've got the contract there
actually gave him a bit of a beating.
So, this guy came 'round to the lake with his family,
starting to kick off.
He was saying, "Do you know who I am?
My family's important."
The police are going around today.
And so the people who are doing the fishing there,
they say, "Don't come today.
There's gonna be some trouble."
But maybe I can get a look at a sareng at the fish market.
This is not what I'm looking for,
but something else has caught my eye.
Okay.
I've just asked if I can grab one of these.
This bucket of catfish hides a nasty surprise.
I've got to be careful, 'cause they got spiky fins.
That's what I'm trying to avoid there.
Don't want that on my finger.
Bleh.
But they're not the apex predator I'm looking for.
That's heavy. That's a 20-pound fish, easily.
So, you know, cause of death, I think, is a spear.
It's a snakehead.
I'm used to fishing waters where this thing is the top predator,
the top dog.
Here it's just bait.
I've caught snakeheads before.
Some have a violent reputation.
But they don't grow as large as the sareng
and they have very different jaws.
It seems these traders are also wary of the sareng.
And they, too, have a story to warn me off.
Hmm?
They tell me of a fisherman
who was bringing in his lines at dusk.
On one of his hooks was a sareng.
The fish spooked, snagging the line tight around his legs.
The next day, the man's lifeless body washed ashore.
Fear of the sareng runs deep.
It's immensely frustrating to be denied access
to where I want to fish.
I need a plan "B."
I head to a place that's quieter with fewer people.
It's a forested valley
bordering a wilderness reserve called Corbett National Park.
But getting in means trekking miles with full kit
through hostile terrain.
And it's out of the frying pan and into the fire,
because here, the man-eaters aren't just in the water.
I need to keep my wits about me.
We've got sort of a palm print and then 1, 2, 3, 4.
Here again.
Palm, 1, 2, 3, 4.
So, going that way, tiger.
There is actually an active man-eater around at the moment.
I think it's five people in the last couple of months.
But this is where I have to fish.
This water's actually very different
from the water I was expecting to fish.
Down the lake, it's muddy, still.
Here, shallow, moving fast, and clear.
Now, fly fishing is one method I was gonna use down there,
but here, I don't know.
It's possibly the most appropriate,
so that's what I'm trying.
There's a record of a 70-pound sareng
that was caught from this river,
and there might just be another giant lurking here.
But I need to outsmart them by presenting a lifelike lure
in all the likely hiding places.
Ohh.
That was a fish.
But while I'm intent on the river,
other dangers are patrolling the shores...
wild elephants.
There's a couple elephants that have just gone past behind here
very quietly, very quickly.
In India, elephants kill more than 400 people each year.
I'll need to keep my distance.
Don't really want to see them too close,
and when I'm fishing, I tend to be very much normally focused
on what's in front of me.
But here, it's definitely a case
that you need eyes in the back of your head.
If this pair charged,
they would be on top of me in seconds.
I push deeper downstream.
I'm 20 miles from the nearest town.
If anything goes wrong out here, I'm on my own.
But my luck may be about to change.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Still there?
Get down below it.
Yes, it's still there. I can feel it. Ohh! Shh.
Ahh.
It's off. It's off. It's off.
I think tactically,
I should have just let that fish clear the rapid.
It's not gonna... you know, there's no danger in the rapid.
Just clear to the quiet water down below,
then I can make my way calmly down and land it.
But...
Mixed feelings. Mixed feelings.
I'd normally say that was just poor judgment.
But could it be more of the bad luck
the sareng is supposed to bring?
I try to apply some clarity of thought.
I've spooked my fish in the run,
so I turn my attention to the pool below.
Planning to put a bait on the bottom, I rig with heavy line.
But I'm tired and starting to lose my focus.
Even with gear I'm familiar with,
I'm starting to make mistakes.
This is what happens when you use line that's too thick.
Bird's nest on the cast, that line in the current,
and just pulls it all out of position.
It seems that everything is starting to unravel.
It might even be snagged. No, it's not, thank god.
A bad cast, bird's nest on the reel.
Getting that off, the current takes it down,
pulls it out of position.
It's snagged on a rock.
You go to all that trouble making up a leader,
you get it snagged, it breaks,
you got to start all over again.
You know, it's just ridiculous...
Just bloody ridiculous.
It's not just the gear... My temper is fraying, too.
I have to get this situation back under control.
That means getting into the water to recover my gear.
I'm putting my feet potentially very close
to whatever is in there.
This fish has got me pushing my luck,
making bad calls, and taking unnecessary risks.
What's more, no fish is going to be hanging around
after all that disturbance.
The fishing is starting to feel futile.
I don't know what the answer is.
Man-eating tigers, wild elephants,
lost fish, snags, and now this.
Last year, my crew narrowly survived
a direct lightning strike on a river.
I can't risk that happening again.
The annual monsoon storms have arrived unseasonably early.
These rivers will soon be in full spate and unfishable.
But this might just be the break I need,
an excuse to escape these waters
swirling with superstition.
There are other places to catch this fish.
Sareng attacks are known across Southeast Asia.
In Malaysia and Thailand,
they are believed to devour small children.
So, while the monsoon rages in India,
I continue my quest in Thailand's far south.
I've fished in Thailand before
for enormous freshwater stingrays...
I think we've got it. I think we've got it.
And vicious giant snakeheads.
And I've heard of a lake here that's legendary among anglers
for being home to the strangest cocktail of monster fish
in the world.
It's a freshwater freak show
where rare giants from across the globe have been released
to swim with native species, including the sareng.
There must be more river monsters here
than in any other lake in the world.
It's a long way from my normal fishing.
But after my struggles in India,
this could be the change I need.
I know they're in here, and here in Thailand,
the fish doesn't have the supernatural power
that it's supposed to have in India.
So, I'm back to what I'm used to... just me against the fish.
But even here, I'm not taking any chances.
I'm fishing like I've never fished before...
With four heavy rods...
bomb-proof line, professional fishing guide Scott,
and electronic bite alarms.
It's like an angling mid-life crisis.
The bait had hardly hit the bottom.
But it's working.
That could be an Asian redtail.
I must be doing something right.
I'd almost forgotten what it felt like to catch a fish.
It is a redtail catfish.
Not what I came here to get, but an interesting fish to see.
This is a native of these waters,
native to Southeast Asia.
A large native catfish
swimming in the same waters as the sareng.
It's tantalizingly close to what I've come to catch.
Ooh.
That looked like a catfish of some description.
That's an Amazon redtail, I think.
The fish are getting bigger, and this one is proof
that I'm fishing a unique aquatic sanctuary.
The Amazon redtail catfish are actually quite different.
The Asian redtail has a smoother skin
and a slightly different shaped, more deeply forked tail.
I'm used to seeing this in the Amazon halfway around the world,
and here it is thriving in Thailand.
This lake really is a place of surprises.
Time to go.
After all the frustrations in India,
part of me feels like I've died and gone to angling heaven.
But another part of me wonders
whether hooking a sareng like this is cheating.
Has my goal of catching this fish
turned to an unhealthy obsession?
But as the next day dawns, the promise of a sareng
and all the other remarkable fish in this lake
is too much to resist.
What is that?
Lovely.
That is a very, very rare fish.
Scott tells me there are over 100 sareng in this lake
but only eight of these.
This is a Chinese seerfish.
This fish is so unusual, I know next to nothing about it.
I don't know.
I'm gonna have to look this one up,
find out exactly what it's related to.
You know, it's almost like this place is mocking me.
"Here's a rare fish. Here's another rare fish."
The one I want is just eluding me,
and there are more of those in here
than there are things like that.
Those Indian warnings are still playing on my mind.
Could sareng bring bad luck even here,
thousands of miles from the haunted Himalayas?
This is even starting to feel like India.
But as the rain clears, I'm into a fish.
Good-size fish.
And this one feels different.
It's just going, going, going.
I've just gained a bit of line...
The first bit of line I've gained.
Gently. Gently. Gently. Oh.
Ooh. Oh!
Silvery fish jumping out of the water.
For a second, that looked like a sareng,
but it sliced straight through my super-tough leader.
So, I was hoping that here
I wouldn't get these sort of random things happening.
Something's bitten that through.
But I might just have a second chance.
I've hooked another fish straightaway.
Oh, massive bubbles over there.
I think that was... don't know if that was it or another fish.
Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
Could this be the one?
I'm gonna come over there. I need to come there. I need to come there.
At this angle, the fish will snag my line.
With no room to maneuver, I have to get into the lake.
This is a hell of a fish if this is hooked in the mouth.
I'm not sure if I'm playing the fish or it's playing me.
After a full half-hour, finally it begins to tire.
Gosh.
Incredible fish.
This monster is a catfish but the wrong one.
Mekong giant catfish.
It's still fighting me.
It's still fighting me, this fish.
Mekong giant catfish.
This fish is known to grow over 600 pounds.
650 pounds is the biggest one authenticated.
But this one actually rose
and took a piece of maize dangling under a float...
Took something about the size of my fingernail.
Can you imagine?
Turned into a fish like this.
Incredible, strong fish.
After all this intense fishing,
catching everything but the sareng,
it's dawning on me that by coming to Thailand,
all I've done is run away from my problem...
which is with those gods back in India.
If I'm ever going to catch this fish,
I need to face my demons and make my peace with them.
I've got a new plan, and I'm taking it back to India.
If I can somehow make it clear that I mean the sareng no harm,
that I just want to catch it, examine it, and let it go,
perhaps the gods will let their guard down.
First stop is a temple dedicated to the river gods.
This temple is on the confluence of two rivers.
Now, in Hinduism, rivers are sacred
and confluences are doubly sacred.
Now, I'm not sure
if I totally sort of buy in to all the belief,
but, certainly, with all these people here,
you don't get this amount of smoke
without some kind of fire.
It's time for me to make a leap of faith.
Pilgrims flock here seeking blessings and good fortune.
I'm here to lift the sareng's curse of bad luck.
The priest gives me a blessing and a bag of sacred rice,
an offering to the gods and the fish in the river.
And where before these Indian rivers seemed empty...
suddenly, they spring to life.
If I'm here to make friends with the local fish,
it seems I'm doing something right.
This is what fish do if you leave them alone
and if you feed them occasionally.
You know, the water just teems with them.
Compare that to what rivers are normally like.
You know, you're normally struggling to see fish.
But here we are, very popular spot of India,
and they leave these fish alone,
and the water's just full of them.
But can this charm offensive
translate into a sareng on the end of my line?
I head back to the river, now swollen by monsoon rains.
The weather's actually brightened up,
which is nice to see, but the effect of all that rain
has been to make the river rise a bit,
but more to the point,
it's very, very colored, very murky now.
So, I'm gonna have to change tactics again, improvise,
dig into my equipment box
and fish something static on the bottom
where something at least has half a chance of finding it.
A predator won't see my bait,
but I'm using rotten fish, so it will smell it.
I take my place in the middle
of this playground of gods and spirits.
I can't shake the feeling that I'm being watched.
Yeah, that could have been a knock.
Something actually knocked the line there,
and it could have been a fish.
It might have just been shifting in the current.
It's a very turbulent sort of whirlpool down there.
Was my leap of faith at the temple enough
to let me finally catch the sareng?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that is something.
Yeah.
That's a fish.
Ohh!
That's gone, whatever it was.
135-pound line sliced clean through on a rock.
I've never seen anything like it.
That was a fish,
and that took moments after the bait was in the water.
I think the bait was actually in a shallowish bit of rock.
It bumped down into the depths,
and then there was a real knock, knock, knock, knock.
And then the line tightened,
and there was a real weight on the end.
That was a sizeable fish.
I was really leaning into that, and that's just...
that's a fish gone.
After all my traveling, planning, and weeks of fishing,
maybe I've finally met my match.
That could be...
the net result of my return to India... a broken line.
Perhaps I'm just not worthy
of catching an instrument of the gods.
Or maybe it's something else.
Either way, my battle with this enigma
that swims between this world and the next
and through holiness to violence is far from over.
It took me 25 years to catch my monster goonch...
and the same time to land that goliath tiger fish.
Ah, those teeth!
Whoa.
Some river monsters are worth the wait.