I'm jeremy wade,
Freshwater detective, explorer, and angler.
I've been fishing the world for over three decades,
But it's the impenetrable amazon
That keeps calling me back.
Now i'm returning to south america
On the mission of a lifetime,
To spend an entire year going further,
Deeper, and more remote than i've ever been before
In search of the amazon's ultimate river monsters.
All along these remote rivers,
I've heard stories of a fish so huge
It can swallow a man whole.
Locals call it the "lau-Lau."
I've spent 20 years
Trying to hunt down a single, colossal specimen,
But so far this giant has eluded me.
It's left me wondering if there are any still out there.
My mission to find out will push me to the very limit,
But this time i'm not coming back
Until i catch one.
Oh!
— captions by vitac — www.Vitac.Com
Captions paid for by discovery communications
In 1913, president roosevelt ventured
Deep into the brazilian amazon
On a dangerous expedition to map
A previously unexplored tributary
Known as "the river of doubt."
He kept a meticulous journal,
Chronicling life in the remote jungle.
One entry stands out.
Two men were fishing on an amazon tributary
When, without warning,
A vast fish leapt from the water
And attacked them.
With wild slashes of their machetes,
They fought the animal off...
Until the river ran red with blood...
And the beast succumbed.
Described as a giant over 9 feet long,
The culprit could only be one of two
Legendary south american heavyweights.
I've wrangled huge arapaima many times,
But the other fish stands alone.
Looking more like a shark than a typical catfish,
The piraíba can grow to monstrous sizes,
With the anatomy, and some say, the attitude
To tackle human prey.
Also called the "lau-Lau,"
I've hunted this fish for 20 years,
But from brazil to columbia to peru,
The trail has gone cold.
A lau-Lau of man-Eating proportions
Remains the one glaring absence on my monster-Hunting résumé.
Do they really still exist?
But now there's news of a vicious attack by a large fish
On a young boy on guyana's esequiba river.
It's just the lead i've been waiting for.
I immediately make my way to guyana.
Lying just above the equator at the top of south america,
Guyana is a wild, little known place.
Almost the entire country is jungle.
I've been here once before,
But guyana's river system is so extensive,
I've barely scratched the surface.
It's the perfect place for a giant to hide.
My journey starts in the capital, georgetown.
I'm heading to the fish market
To see what the locals know about the attack.
En route, i reexamine roosevelt's journal.
President roosevelt was constantly warned
About this fish.
The local people feared it a great deal,
And he's pretty detailed in his description.
He says, "this is a grayish-White fish
"over 9 feet long
"with a usual disproportionately large head
And gaping mouth"...
It occasionally makes prey of man.
It's a claim that i still hear
Throughout south america over a hundred years on,
But the evidence i need,
A man-Sized lau-Lau,
Has so far proven impossible for me to catch.
All i want is some little lead, something to follow up.
Guyana is a melting pot of cultures and ethnicities,
But as a former british colony, english is widely spoken.
I pick my way through the market,
Taking every opportunity
To quiz people about this elusive giant.
You ever have lau-Lau come here?
Yes. The head of the fish...
This size, about.
And this is long time ago?
Uh, late last year.
So, he's saying he saw a fish last year
That was getting on for the size of this table,
From the end here
Up to pretty much where the woman is standing.
Very good news.
They're still around, big ones.
But i won't allow myself to get too excited just yet.
I want to know if anyone else has seen one of these giants.
Do you ever see them in here?
Not on the coast but inland.
You'd find them inland, and they can get really huge,
But the big ones are rare.
Are people afraid of them at all?
Yeah, they're dangerous.
Because they're catfish, they have a big mouth,
So they're just like
A really big one, like a 10- Or a 12-Footer,
Can swallow a human.
Have you heard any stories of people being attacked,
Being swallowed? Yes.
You hear about people getting attacked.
Recently two boys were fishing in a canoe,
Fishing with bow and arrow...
And something hit the boat,
And one of them was thrown overboard.
Grabbed him on his leg.
They had to rush the boy for medical attention.
He went back into his village probably about a week ago.
So it's possible that if i'm in the area,
Or if i ask around, i might even be able
To meet the boy or something?
Yes.
Well, i wasn't, to be honest,
Expecting an awful lot from that.
There weren't any lau-Lau on view.
People were saying, "yes, it's big. It's dangerous.
It can swallow you,"
But then this one story,
Which is incredibly similar
To the one in the roosevelt journal.
And in this case, the boy was physically grabbed.
Something which sounds totally outlandish,
Like it's a complete one-In-A-Million event,
But it turns out that maybe it isn't.
It's this apparent malicious intent
That sets the lau-Lau apart.
People say this is a fish
That actively targets human prey.
Hello. Morning.
To discover exactly what happened to the young boy,
I find a pilot willing to fly me
Into the heart of guyana's rainforest
To the boy's village of apoteri.
Down below me is an expanse of rainforest
So impenetrable
That it hid one of the world's biggest waterfalls,
Kaieteur falls, from outsiders until just 150 years ago.
If true giants are still to be found anywhere,
It's deep in the unspoiled tropical water below me.
But where exactly?
As we approach the small amerindian outpost of apoteri,
The jungle becomes blanketed by dense cloud.
I have to say i'm slightly bothered by all this cloud.
It's pretty well unbroken. Quite thick.
It could mean it's raining down there.
That could mean higher water levels,
And that is gonna make the fishing harder.
I learn that the young boy will arrive
With his father later that day.
I'm itching to get a line in the water,
So i head off with a fisherman named neville
To find some bait.
He leads me through the forest to a particular tree,
But it's what falls to the ground from it
That we're looking for.
We use these seeds for catching a bait.
We cut it, and then you find a worm inside.
A worm?
The insect just lay inside and then form up a worm.
So it's feeding on the nut?
They're feeding on the nut, all of them feeding on the nut.
So, do you want to open this one?
Ah, there's a hole.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
That's big.
Yeah, oh, it's trying to bite me, actually.
This is really sharp
'cause they actually cut through this hard nut.
It's just a sack of amino acids and goodness.
From a fisher's point of view, they're gonna love that.
One thing this really underlines
Is the importance
How to actually get started.
If i was going to work this out for myself,
I'd just be wasting time.
It's perfect bait to entice smaller fish.
Ah, and the fish are coming already.
That is quite incredible.
You could see the fat forming a sort of slick on the surface,
And these fish just came from nowhere.
Ah, first time.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
Look at that.
We're on the way.
This is, um, moving up the food chain.
From palm grub to miniature fish
To slightly bigger fish to top predator.
This is the essentials.
It's just a hook, little bit of wire,
Just to protect against piranha teeth,
Bit of weight on the line.
I'm gonna whirl that 'round my head a little bit out.
That's the one.
And then you're feeling with your fingers on the line,
Which is what i like to do with the rod, actually.
You get a lot of information
If there is anything moving down there.
Now it's a waiting game.
Oh.
There's something, there's something.
Fish.
Something bigger than i bargained for
Has taken my bait.
Only go in the water if it's tipped over like that.
I'm exploring a secret stretch of guyana's jungle waterways
On the trail of a giant fish
That's said to swallow men whole.
A really big one can swallow a human.
While hand-Lining for bait with my guide, neville...
Oh, fish.
I've hooked into something much bigger than i expected.
Get it in, get it in, get it in.
All right. Yeah.
That is just a beautiful, beautiful fish,
And, more to the point, it's very encouraging.
Incredible to think that a couple of hours ago,
A palm nut on the floor in the forest
Has turned into this.
Known locally as a basher,
It has a huge mouth for its size,
But they don't reach anywhere near the size of a man-Eater.
I don't want to speak too soon,
But if things keep on this trajectory,
Then maybe i will get that monster that i came here for.
With bait sorted for the following day,
We head back to the village
Where the young boy i heard about at the market
Is due to meet me.
His name is nenon.
Still shaken from his ordeal,
He's accompanied by his father, nigel.
Nigel, can you tell me exactly what happened to nenon
In the water?
He was playing in the water with his friends...
And something grabs him on his leg.
One of his friend who was with him shot the creature.
So he was holding onto a canoe
While this thing was trying to pull him into the water.
Yeah, he was holding tight on canoe.
His friends with the bow and arrow shot the animal.
Nenon shows me the scars on his legs.
That's something with some big teeth, isn't it?
I heard it was a fish, but this...
What was this?
Was a black caiman.
A big, black caiman.
The fact that the perpetrator wasn't a fish
Is a setback for my search.
My best chance now of finding a lau-Lau
Is to head even deeper into the rainforest,
Following the winding river
And setting up camp on its banks.
Stringing up my hammock on the edge of the village,
I rest up for the trip.
We leave at first light.
Don't know how long this rain's been going.
I woke up to the sound of it.
Uh, it's not heavy as is,
But it's pretty constant.
That's not good news.
At dawn,
Neville helps me assemble a crew from the village
And gather supplies for the treacherous journey ahead.
I'm dependent on the locals
To get me to the remotest parts of this river.
As i feared,
There's been unseasonably heavy rain,
And high water disperses the fish,
Making them much harder to find and catch.
Encouragingly, though,
We pass absolutely no other boats
Or habitation for the entire journey.
Perhaps here, lau-Lau really are free to grow unhindered.
We set camp with help from another man, josie.
Good to see you, jeremy.
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.
The next step is to locate the fish.
The thing about big fish is...
They get big by minimizing their energy outputs,
And where you've got a dip,
A fish can lie there out of the currents
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.
A very good rule when you're fishing —
Think like a fish.
Where would you be if you were a fish?
But lau-Lau are known to migrate
With the annual floods.
With this unexpected high water,
Are they still here?
33 foot off here.
Okay, just keep coming.
I use a sonar device
To help me decipher the structure of the river bed
And locate deep pools in which to place my bait.
That's a definite hole here.
I fish on well into the evening,
But with absolutely no interest in my bait.
There's absolutely nothing.
That's pretty depressing.
After dinner, my fishing crew and i share stories.
Surely if huge lau-Lau are to be found in these waters,
These lifelong fishermen will have had encounters.
What's the biggest lau-Lau that you've seen?
The size of the mouth of that —
You know, would you be able to put your head in?
Would you be able to put your shoulders in?
I've read something in an old book
About people believing
That this fish can actually swallow people.
Have you heard any stories like that at all?
That is lau-Lau.
So, an entire person inside.
And so these fish, they're right here in this river?
See, that's quite a thought. A fish that size.
So, be careful.
When it comes to river monsters,
It's an incredibly elite few
That have the potential to devour a person.
But can a monster lau-Lau
Really be capable of swallowing a person whole?
Never have i wanted to catch one more,
But as i try to drift off,
I hear something moving outside my tent...
And realize i'm not alone.
The answer is...
I'm deep in the south american jungles of guyana
Weeks into an exhausting mission
To catch an alleged man-Eater,
And where i've suddenly been woken by noises in camp.
There was a noise,
A sort of crashing-Around noise.
It's quiet now,
But i think something was moving around out there.
As the sun rises,
Whatever it was has long gone,
But i'm intrigued and concerned enough
That i decide to rig camera traps at the edge of camp.
I place three at different angles
Looking out over the water's edge.
Leaving the traps positioned and primed,
Neville and i set out onto the water
And find another deep pool with the sonar.
52, 52.
Neville shares with me the result
Of his early-Morning bait fishing.
We have four species of fish here.
Several fish, the pacu, piranha and dari.
Go with half a fish to start?
These here? Let's do that.
I'm here to catch an elusive giant,
But i'm not getting far.
There's very little doing.
I mean, there's nothing doing.
There's nothing really to keep the hope alive at the moment.
To make things worse,
Tropical storms are striking every few days,
Shedding inches of water in just hours.
If this carries on,
Then the water's gonna go up.
It's gonna start coloring up.
So, i'm really hoping that this is just a passing shower,
But no way of telling at the moment.
Even in ideal conditions,
Lau-Lau are notoriously difficult to catch.
High water not only makes the river harder to read,
It gives fish much more room to hide.
The uneventful hours roll into days.
Almost every waking hour, i have a line in the water.
After 20 years of searching for this fish,
I have to keep on battling and maintaining my focus.
I might just get one take,
And if i mess things up, then that's it.
There'll come a moment where it could go either way.
The elation of catching a fish
That i've been trying to catch for so long...
Versus the total despair if it's gone.
When, if that opportunity comes,
I just want things to go the right way.
I decide to change tactics.
I take a position on land to stake out the pools.
Is it possible to pull the anchor
And just go into the rock,
Just the quiet water?
If we go close to the rocks
We're slightly off the main current,
So the bait should just settle to the side
Rather than more in the middle of the current.
I've found an ideal spot at the perfect time of day.
I've done everything i can to maximize my chances.
Do good things really come to those who wait?
I'm on a remote stretch of river
Deep in the forests of guyana
Continuing a 20-Year mission
To catch a notorious south american monster.
All through this region,
I've heard that the lau-Lau can grow to mind-Boggling sizes.
A really big one can swallow a human.
But throughout my whole career
I've never landed one bigger than 70 pounds,
Let alone a man-Eater.
I'm hoping my fortunes are about to change.
Oh
It's off. It's off.
It's off, whatever it was.
Shoot.
So annoying.
All i can do is get another bait out.
There's another session
With no interest...
Whatsoever in the bait.
I could be fishing an empty river, pretty much.
But i decide to stick with my new tactic
Of fishing from land.
Neville takes me to a sandbar
That he suspects has some deep water alongside.
I just really like this spot here.
It's just perfect predator ambush territory.
This has to give us a better chance than everywhere else.
I'm gonna camp on a sandbar here
And actually keep a couple of baits out overnight
And sleep next to the rods.
Every day, i've been up at dawn and fishing after dusk.
Now, to maximize my chances,
I'm going to keep a line in the water through the night.
If i fall asleep, i might miss a take,
So i'll need some high-Tech gear to keep me on guard.
I'm pretty well attuned to these things.
Basically what happens,
The line is passing over a roller there.
And if the line moves at all...
It actually sends to this receiver here,
And this buzzes.
It also vibrates.
And this one quietly baits on.
If anything goes, it ought to be something quite interesting.
So it's now just a waiting game.
It's time, time, time, time.
Yeah.
Not really quite sure what time of the morning it is now,
But it's been very, very quiet tonight.
Nothing really doing, though, until this.
Apparently call this a blinker locally.
Pretty as this fish is,
I'm after something that could
Actually swallow this thing easily
And possibly even swallow a person.
The thing i'm after is more predatory,
More monstrous than this by a long way.
At daybreak, we head back to camp.
My thoughts turn to the camera traps
That i've left near my hammock
To investigate the noises
That have been waking me at night.
All right.
Oh! Ah, good grief.
That is a flash of open mouth and teeth.
Yeah, that's a caiman.
This is a point of view
Of having your face bitten by one of these things.
Quite disturbing.
Oh, he's got something in his mouth.
Just a few bites.
That's it. It's gone.
Oh, what's going on there?
There's other eyes in the background.
What a — gosh.
That's incredible.
No wonder i've been hearing noises.
My hammock is just a little way in that direction.
All right, okay.
Maybe i shouldn't hang around here too long.
The black caiman's intrusion into camp
Is a sobering reminder
Of the dangers in this wild place.
I'm glad to make my way back onto the water,
But as more days pass,
Maintaining my focus is becoming a challenge.
I have to dig deep.
This is a fish i've been on the trail of
For 20 years now,
Since i first came to south america.
Trying to work out where the big ones are still to be found.
In most places, the trail has gone cold.
This place that i thought was unknown to outsiders,
I might have left too late, too late.
Fishing daytime, nighttime, evening, morning.
I'm starting to lose track of time.
What day is it?
While i'm in this sort of in-Between state —
It's not exactly awake, it's not exactly asleep.
Somewhere halfway between the two.
The place gets to you.
I must keep my eyes
A man-Sized lau-Lau.
After resting up into late afternoon,
I head back to the rock where i lost the fish
Just a few days ago.
The water has definitely dropped.
Oh, there's something, there's something,
There's something.
I've embedded myself
Deep in guyana's dense tropical forest
To catch the fabled, man-Eating fish
They call the "lau-Lau,"
The giant that's eluded me for 20 years.
I've got a local guide,
The perfect, untouched habitat,
And specialized equipment from around the globe,
But the water conditions have been far from perfect...
Oh it's off.
And my relentless fishing campaign is wearing me down.
I cast into a promising spot near camp.
Oh, there's something, there's something, there's something,
Got a deceptive amount of line out here.
That's a good sign. First cast.
Fish has woken up.
All right, there's the leader in sight.
That's a redtail catfish.
Whew.
Well, i'm hoping that's not a... Just a one off.
That's almost like the switch has been thrown.
Incredible to get a take on the first cast.
It's just blowing air out the gills.
And that clicking noise, the squeak,
Is the pectoral fin.
It's a small redtail catfish, but it's activity.
There's finally some activity here.
Not a huge fish, but could be quite a good sign.
If the perfect-Sized prey have become active,
Perhaps the lau-Lau isn't far away.
The weather is also clearing,
And telltale tide marks begin to appear on the boulders.
As the water recedes,
The fish should become more concentrated.
Today i saw a rainbow,
And that lifted my spirits.
Maybe i'm clutching at straws,
But i'm possibly feeling a little glimmer of hope.
I awake to the calls of howler monkeys...
And for the first time in over a week,
Set out into a bright, clear day.
So, maybe just here?
I position a bait in the middle of the pool,
Then pay the line back to the rock.
It's when the fish takes, particularly a big fish,
It can go to just complete chaos in
Fraction of a second.
If you don't do everything right,
That's when you can get human error.
A lifetime of observing and refining my skills
Has brought me to this place.
The trap is set.
I'm bringing about 150 yards of line here.
It's a truly bizarre-Looking fish
Known as a
It's just so quiet at the moment.
I'd actually rather not be catching, to be honest.
I wanted the bait to sit there until a lau-Lau comes along.
What it does mean, though,
Is i've got to get the bait back out there again,
Get the boat out.
Oh!
I'm just gonna take up slack on here.
I'm gonna put that down until something decisive happens.
That's more serious.
This time i have no doubt about what's on my line.
That's gone solid.
Harness round my waist.
Can i get the light out of my face, please?
I need to — thank you.
Got to get out of the way, please.
Neville?
I'm on the trail of a legendary freshwater beast.
After a lifetime of dreaming, 20 years of searching...
That's more serious.
And months in the jungle, now i have one on my line.
That's a lau-Lau. That's a lau-Lau.
This gear is designed for the heaviest ocean giants,
But is it strong enough?
It's around a rock.
I'm using thick, monofilament line for just this reason,
But it's being tested to its limit.
I can't let that line break.
Can you get out of the way, please?
We need to be careful with this.
That's good. It's out of the rock, whatever it was.
But this fight is not over yet.
The fish is nowhere near tide yet.
Neville?
Keep on the rope, please.
There it is.
Just be very careful, neville.
The fish could kick off with nerves like this.
Can someone cop me around the waist?
It's an unbelievably muscular animal
Built for speed and power.
What i might try and do is get that hook out first.
And there's
That enormous mouth.
Ow!
It's got a bit of a bite.
I want to bring it somewhere where there —
It can't, if it kicks, it's not sloping down.
I have to work quickly to remove the hook...
Good.
And measure this enormous beast.
I don't want it to be out of the water
Any longer than absolutely necessary.
In inches...
And girth in front of the dorsal fin is... 50.
I'm having to use scales
Designed for lifting concrete blocks.
Okay. Lift, lift, lift.
Oh. 258, 256, 257, 254.6.
I think, guys, you can put it down.
So it's a 250-Pound fish.
My whole life i've longed for this moment.
Ahh.
Only just starting to be able to think straight.
This is wonderful. This is absolutely wonderful.
This i'm gonna remember.
The size of this fish
And just the drama of getting it in.
What a beast this is.
Lift.
Well, i came here with a very simple question
I wanted to answer.
Can these fish grow big enough
To be potentially dangerous to humans?
Can they engulf a small human?
And i'd heard stories.
President roosevelt's account inspired me to look for one.
He never actually saw one, but here it is.
This moment is actually very short for us.
I think it's got to go back in,
And we'll let it swim back down into the depths.
Whew.
I really actually wanted to sit
And just look at it and look at it and look at it,
But you can't.
I think there's every chance
That fish will never be seen by anybody again.
There's bigger ones down there, believe it or not.
There are bigger ones down there,
But maybe that's big enough for me for now.
If ever something was worth
The river monster of a lifetime.