I'm jeremy wade — explorer, biologist,
And aquatic detective.
Fight it! Fight it! Fight it!
I've fought battles with river and marine monsters
All over the world,
And i've been pushed to the limit time and again,
But one extraordinary encounter stands out.
It's in the fast water.
I'm trying to relax and keep a bit calm.
On my first-Ever "river monsters" shoot,
I landed a rare goonch catfish as big as me.
That is a big fish!
Since then, i've heard little about the goonch.
I feared that they were gone for good.
But now, from india's neighbor, nepal...
Do you have any scars?
Intriguing stories are surfacing
Of fishermen dragged into mountain rivers,
Never to be seen again.
But after that, he's just so terrified
Of what's in the water.
He's now a farmer.
Might need the boat.
Is my old adversary, the deadly goonch catfish,
Back from the brink and back in business?
— captions by vitac — www.Vitac.Com
Captions paid for by discovery communications
A decade ago, in my first-Ever "river monsters" investigation,
I spent six grueling weeks on india's kali river
Trying to unmask the elusive monster
Behind a series of deadly attacks.
I was exhausted and close to giving up
When i was propelled into a raging river
By an underwater beast.
After an epic struggle, i finally caught the culprit —
A 161-Pound underwater ogre
With a taste for human flesh —
The giant devil catfish known as the "goonch."
Catching this ferocious fish made my reputation
And launched "river monsters."
Since then, the kali river has experienced rapid development
And population growth.
Parts have become so polluted, they've been declared
A health hazard.
I feared that big goonch had disappeared
From the region's rivers.
But now, an unexpected report
From the himalayan country of nepal —
A mysterious incident
That feels strangely familiar.
A lone fisherman on a mountain river dragged off his feet
And into the water by an unseen creature,
His body never recovered.
Could this be the work of the goonch?
I have to find out.
I'm heading 4,500 miles to asia
And the mighty himalayan mountains.
The top of the world is new territory for me.
My destination, nepal,
Is home to eight of the world's 10 highest peaks,
Including the highest of them all, mount everest.
These mountains are the source of many great rivers.
I'm curious to find out what lives in these remote waters.
Nice to meet you.
Kathmandu is the spiritual and cultural heart of nepal —
A place of gods, ghosts, and demons.
Looking at all these amazing carvings,
It's not hard to imagine that this could be a place
Where you might find some strange monsters.
The first step of my investigation
Is to meet my source for the recent story...
Monsoon is disappearing fast.
Colonel mike allen.
Mike spent 40 years as a soldier
With the elite gurkha regiment
And many decades fishing the country's rivers.
Like me, he has a fascination for the beasts
That lurk in them.
One hears reports of huge fish tucked away
In some very deep pools.
Mike still keeps his ear to the ground
For interesting stories,
And he's able to tell me where the mysterious case
Of the disappearing fisherman took place,
On nepal's longest and wildest river, the karnali.
Getting there won't be easy, so i've enlisted
An experienced driver, mahesh.
The journey takes me through the foothills of the himalayas,
Where rockfalls and landslides are common.
This road, if you can call it that,
Is literally scratched into the side
Of a very unstable mountain.
And every monsoon, huge bits of that mountainside slide down
And end up in the river.
Mahesh warns me that the devastating earthquake of 2015
Made many roads here impassable.
Look at those boulders the size of a house.
So, at this stage,
I'm not actually sure if i'm gonna make it through.
We finally make it to the village of kino,
Where the fisherman who disappeared lived.
The villagers are aware of the case.
Anybody else here who might know more about it?
Thank you.
I'm directed to the owner of the local teahouse.
Nawal was once a fisherman here on the karnali river.
He was friends with the man who disappeared
And has agreed to talk about the incident.
Can you tell me exactly what happened to this man
Just recently?
What happened to him?
As i question him about the mysterious case,
I can start to see what happened.
The incident took place just downstream from the village
At a popular fishing spot.
Ali, an experienced fisherman, was throwing a cast net
From the shallows.
His morning had been slow,
So he stayed on after the other men had headed home.
He was never seen again.
According to nawal,
Ali was a strong swimmer and unlikely to have drowned.
And if he had, a body would've turned up somewhere downriver.
But despite a search that went on for 20 days,
No corpse was ever found.
The consensus among the villagers
Is that ali was dragged in to his death.
What creature could've been powerful enough
To drag a man into the water and devour his body?
A big goonch catfish would have the power,
And i know it has a reputation for disposing of the dead,
But would it attack a man who's fighting back?
I can't just assume a goonch is guilty.
I need to consider other big predators
That haunt nepal's rivers.
There's one i have in mind.
But when i ask around, i don't get the answers i'm expecting.
When you hear about people disappearing in the river
In this part of the world where, possibly,
Some large underwater creature is involved,
Top of the list of suspects is normally crocodiles.
The thing is, if you've got crocodiles in the water,
You're gonna see them from time to time
Out of the water, as well,
Because they have to come out
Into the heat to warm themselves up.
And the people here just don't see them.
I have a hunch why the locals don't come across crocodiles
On this part of the karnali.
Rivers here are either rain- Or glacier-Fed,
And this affects the water's year-Round temperature
And, ultimately, what lives in it.
The cloudy gray color of the water,
The result of sediment known as "rock flour,"
Tells me that this is meltwater from the mountains
And will remain cold all year.
Crocodiles dislike cold water, and since they've not been seen
By the locals —
Who've fished this river for centuries —
I've scratched crocs from my suspect list.
There must be something else
Large enough to drag a man into this river,
But what is it?
I've got more questions for nawal...
And this time, he reveals more.
There was another incident on the same stretch of river,
And nawal himself was the victim.
I'm in remote western nepal on the trail of a river monster
Reported to have dragged a fisherman to a watery grave.
Is it fairly close to the side of the river,
And how deep was the water?
I've just uncovered a second story
With intriguing parallels to the first.
A few years ago,
Nawal was out fishing with a group of friends.
They had fished this spot before
And knew the waters well.
Suddenly, something very large
Became entangled in nawal's net.
He tried to hang on but was being dragged away downstream.
Even with the help of his friends,
Nawal was unable to control whatever was in his net.
He was pulled, he told me, about 100 yards downstream,
And it was only because these other guys
Stopped what they were doing and came to assist him
That he survived.
The original victim, ali, didn't have people around
To help him.
But why didn't he simply let go of the net?
Nawal tells me that fisherman loop the cord to the net
Around their wrist so they don't lose it.
This isn't normally dangerous,
But if something really big gets in the net,
The cord becomes a deadly noose.
Nawal believes that this is what happened to ali.
And one extra little detail —
Nawal himself, he doesn't fish anymore.
He said, after that, he's just so terrified
Of what is in the water,
He's now a farmer, doesn't go near the water.
Both these stories remind me of my own experience
10 years ago in india.
I, too, was overpowered, forced into a river,
And could have drowned.
But i can't blame a goonch without proof.
There could be other suspects here on the karnali.
It's a major river and flows all the way
From the high himalayas to the mighty ganges.
It contains many species and, no doubt,
Some surprises under the surface...
No, that's not what i came for.
But things are bumpy from the start.
This is the second cast.
Two casts, one snag.
It's just the nature of this kind of fishing.
You've got to be philosophical about it.
You've got to have plenty of spare gear, as well.
After hours of trying, my frustrations begin to mount.
Slightly revising my opinion of this place.
I haven't got that gut feeling.
I haven't got that sense of anticipation,
Of "something could happen at any moment."
I switch up my gear just to try and get something on the line.
Yep, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yes.
It's stuck on something.
It's got snagged. That's not moving.
It's a line or a net.
Damn.
I've lost my lure on something in the river.
Yeah, that's the line gone.
That would've been...
That would've been at the knot to my swivel.
This is a bad sign.
I'm hoping the fishermen can tell me
What's preventing me from getting to the fish.
Here, big fish now?
- Fifteen kg. - Fifteen kg?
Mm-Hmm. Fifteen kg.
It quickly becomes clear that there are two problems here.
So, now, a lot of people fish in this river?
The river is overfished,
And the equipment being used is left hidden in the water
For days and sometimes even discarded there.
So, it's probably something like that that i got caught up on.
Mostly, this is gonna be under the surface.
I'm gonna discover one of these when i hook up on it.
A single rod and line in this place,
I'm just not gonna get anything of note at all.
I need to find a stretch of river
That's not riddled with nets and lines
Waiting to snag my gear —
A place where fewer people are fishing.
When briefing me on the region, colonel mike told me
About an area he's fished before.
In the lower part, which is the babai river, which...
He said the babai river is isolated
And difficult to access,
So this should mean less fishing activity.
From a nearby high point, things look promising.
Little evidence of habitation.
On the river's edge, there are other encouraging signs.
These marks were made by a suckermouth fish
Swimming over the rock and feeding on algae.
Here we go. Here's the head of the fish.
The sucker is here, and it's just moving along,
Slowly sucking up algae.
And what these marks tell me is three things —
First thing is that, a couple of months ago,
The water level was somewhere up here.
Two, there are small fish in this river,
And we're talking about something this size
That would've made these marks here.
And three, normally, when you've got small fish,
You're gonna find something bigger
That wants to feed on them.
After my frustrations on the karnali,
I'm eager to get a line in these pristine waters.
Now i have a real chance of tracking down the monster
That's stalking this region's rivers.
Yeah, there's something pulling there.
There we go.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah! Got a fish!
I'm in western nepal
Investigating mysterious incidents
Where fishermen were dragged into rivers —
One to his death —
And i finally got a fish on my line.
Look at that. Look at that.
This is a mahseer.
I think the first thing to be said about this
Is that it's a very pretty fish —
These large golden scales, a very streamlined body.
This is what, back in the days, the british empire,
The colonial gents in their time off,
Used to come and fish for.
These potentially grow to over 100 pounds —
Some stories even maybe 200 pounds.
I've caught large mahseer myself.
I caught one over 90 pounds.
So, this is certainly a fish that,
If somebody got it in their throw net,
This is absolutely capable of pulling you in the water.
Although it doesn't look like it, this is actually a predator.
It has a very muscular mouth, which is sort of telescopic.
It's quite capacious there.
It feeds on the bottom, going over rocks,
Feeling with these.
But that's capable of taking quite large prey.
And it does have teeth, but the teeth are not in the normal place.
They're throat teeth. They're in the back of the throat.
Oh!
A large mahseer can be a formidable fish,
But i'd need to see how big they grow here
To be convinced it's a serious suspect.
The babai river is clearly worth investigating.
I'll need a boat to travel downstream.
When i explain what i'm looking for and why,
I'm directed to a man named firalal.
He has a remarkable story.
A couple of years ago,
Firalal was walking by the river.
It was late in the day and getting dark.
He noticed something at the water's edge
And went to investigate.
He couldn't see what the creature was...
But it was large and semi-Submerged.
Firalal thought it was dead.
It wasn't.
He had to tear himself free.
So, it's here?
Do you have any scar, any mark?
The scars extend from his shoulder to his wrist.
This animal was big.
When i ask him what he thought it was,
He uses a word in his local dialect
That i'm guessing means "crocodile,"
But this doesn't add up.
If that had been a crocodile,
Either you don't get your arm back,
Or you're not around to tell the story,
Or you've got great big holes
In your arm, and i've seen crocodile bites.
That's not a crocodile bite. That's something else.
I really need to find out what, exactly, that was.
Could this same monster be responsible for the incidents
On the karnali river?
Firalal's terrifying encounter happened downstream
Inside a national park where no one is allowed to live.
I need permission to go there.
At the park office,
The ranger warns me about potential dangers
On the babai river.
So, the water was all the way up to the bridge, to the road?
Yes, yes.
Just two years ago, there was a massive flood.
Few people have ventured here since.
To help me navigate safely downstream,
I'm assigned two guides, gandhi and kotok.
They explain that the river has narrow sections
Of fast water punctuated by wider,
Slow-Flowing pools which will be best for fishing.
I think this could be a good position to fish from.
Right here?
Yeah. I think i'll try here.
The river takes us through alluvial grasslands
And thick, subtropical forest.
My guides warn me there are rhinos and tigers here,
So i'll have to watch my back as we continue downriver.
For gandhi and kotok,
Every trip down the babai is a new challenge
Because the river's course is constantly changing.
This is just the fact that the river floods every year,
And every year, it'll subtly rearrange the river.
But sometimes, it'll rearrange it
In quite a dramatic way.
The recent massive flood may also have changed
The underwater geography of the river
And displaced some of the fish,
Which could make tracking down suspects a tougher task.
Tie it here.
Oh, yeah. All right.
Throw it, and i will tie it on the...
There?
I'm eager to get down to the scene of firalal's attack,
But my guides advise that we stop and make camp.
It's a good thing we did.
That's pretty definitely an elephant crossing place there,
Just at the bottom of this pool.
And they come out 75 yards away from our camp,
So, good job we didn't put the camp
A little bit further down.
They might have got a bit upset,
And you don't want to upset these guys.
Wild elephants could tear apart our camp
If they stumbled on it in the dark.
My guides tell me that, every year in lowland nepal,
People are killed by elephant herds.
The next morning, i'm itching to get on and get fishing.
What about this, though?
Crocodile tracks. They indicate the water must be warmer here
On the babai than on the karnali,
So crocs have to be on the suspect list
For any attack here.
But firalal's scars were like no crocodile bites
I've ever seen.
They were made by a narrower-Jawed monster,
More like an alligator gar, maybe — a fish i know well.
Actually laying hands on this prehistoric beast.
But gar are not native to these waters.
There's got to be something else out here.
We continue downstream
To the area where firalal was attacked.
Yeah, let's try one from just here.
With tigers and crocs on the banks,
I'm staying in the boat.
I'm not sure what attacked firalal,
But it's in here somewhere.
Oh. There we go. Yep.
Whoa.
I'm in remote western nepal
Investigating three mysterious cases,
And i've got a fish on.
There it is.
I've no landing net or anything,
So that might impede me just a little bit.
There. That is a snakehead.
I've seen snakehead in the indian subcontinent,
Normally just a few inches long.
I've used them for bait. But this thing,
This has got to be, i don't know,
Around about the 10-Pound mark,
Something like that.
Well, i have it on good authority
That these grow considerably bigger —
A reliable estimate of 90 pounds —
And if you got one of those in a throw net,
Particularly when one of these is fresh, full of energy,
That could well pull you in.
I wouldn't want to be in that position myself.
A big snakehead could have been responsible
For the dragging incidents on the karnali,
But what about the attack on firalal here on the babai?
It's one of the very few fish
That will actually go for a person,
Knowing that it's a person.
You know, it's not poor visibility, mistaken identity,
Reflex grab, anything like that.
This is one fish that really does punch above its weight.
Putting on a bite-Proof glove here,
I'm gonna try and have a look at the teeth.
A lot of predatory fish swallow their prey whole.
Some predatory fish,
Such as piranhas, bite lumps out.
And you can look at their teeth, and you can tell that's what they do.
This is a bit misleading.
They don't look like cutting teeth.
They look like gripping teeth.
They're like — they're like needles.
But, in fact, what they do is, when they grip their prey,
If they shake the head,
Those teeth act rather like the teeth on a saw blade,
And they can actually cut a small fish in half
In a fraction of a second.
It looks like this has been injured by something.
On the other side, as well, it looks like something's
Had a go at it.
Anything that attacks a 3-Foot snakehead
Is going to be a serious predator.
And the tooth marks, again,
Suggest a narrow-Jawed assailant.
Whatever bit into this snakehead
May be what attacked firalal.
Half an hour downstream, i spot something way up ahead
At the water's edge and decide to investigate.
It's a long, dark shape.
It's hard to make out at this distance, though.
The creature emerges, but it's not a croc.
The knob on its long, thin jaw is unmistakable.
I can hardly believe what i'm seeing.
This is a gharial,
Possibly the rarest river monster of them all.
This is one of the scarcest predators in the world.
There's barely more than 200 of them left.
I am now close enough
To get a real appreciation of the size of the animal.
It's at least 15 feet, but also, i can start to see those jaws,
The jaws and the teeth. And i'll tell you —
Although scientists say these are specifically
Designed for catching and eating fish,
When you're this close to one,
The adrenaline is definitely pumping.
For me, it's the encounter of a lifetime.
Because of hunting and habitat loss,
The gharial is critically endangered in the wild
And is now protected.
I have no doubt that this was the narrow-Jawed animal
That scarred the snakehead,
But is the gharial responsible
For the attacks i'm investigating?
It's time to take stock.
Well, the suspect list i've managed to assemble so far
Contains some pretty impressive beasts,
But somehow, i don't think there's a particularly
Compelling case for any one of them.
The mahseer can grow big,
But i've not seen large enough ones here.
The snakehead can do some real damage,
But i don't think it's aggressive enough
To actually kill someone.
And the gharial — it's certainly big enough
And has the power and weaponry to be seriously dangerous.
And with a jaw much narrower than a croc's,
I'm pretty certain this is the creature
That scarred firalal.
But what about the incidents on the karnali river?
In this case, water temperature is key.
Since it's too cold for crocodiles on the karnali,
I don't think gharial would be there, either.
I've been trying to keep an open mind,
But every sign points to the beast
That drew me here in the first place.
Possibly, of all the monsters i've tangled with in my career,
The most memorable, the goonch catfish.
The goonch ripped me from a riverbank
In just the same way that nawal was overpowered,
And its taste for human flesh
Could account for ali's body never being recovered.
The goonch has the means and the motive,
And i know this fish is capable of the crime.
It's now my prime suspect.
Might need the boat.
Time for a showdown with the original river monster.
I'm in western nepal
Investigating three mysterious cases.
I believe i've solved one, but two incidents
In which the victims were dragged into rivers —
One to his death — remain open.
After fishing two rivers extensively,
I've narrowed my focus to the goonch catfish.
A decade ago, it took me six tortuous weeks
To track down a big goonch,
And such beasts are now even rarer.
I think i need to give this a closer look.
My journal from the original expedition details the depths,
Water flow, and river conditions
That led to a successful catch.
I'm hoping this hard-Won knowledge
Will help fast-Track me to the fish.
Going after goonch requires patience, persistence,
And preparation.
As long as that be fresh.
But the good thing about catfish, such as goonch,
It's gonna help them locate it.
And they're not fussy, really, in terms of the freshness
Of the stuff that they eat.
With any luck, the pungent bait
Will prove irresistible to the sometimes fickle goonch.
A lot of people think you've got to hide the hook.
You hide the hook, you're not gonna get that hook
To penetrate in the mouth of the predator.
So, the hook points have to be visible.
And what i've done to hold it all,
Particularly holding the mouth shut —
When that mouth is open, the current's going to pull the whole thing apart.
So, i've used bits of luggage tag,
And that's holding everything nicely together.
Now to scope out this pool.
What i'm gonna do before starting fishing,
I just want to get an idea of depths.
So just a bit lead on a bit of light line.
Just gonna drop it off the side of the boat.
What i'm looking for is deep water,
And what the goonch like is,
When the current pushes into a rock
And then excavates a bit of a hole.
But sometimes what looks deep isn't.
You cast out, and you're just in a few feet of water.
I'll even do it here.
3 foot, 6, 9...
That's 12 foot.
This is 12 foot of water.
This could be a good spot here. This could be a good spot.
Goonch use their whisker-Like barbels
To check out potential food,
So a bite may not be the first thing
I'll feel on my line.
Goonch, very often, what they do is, they investigate beforehand,
And you feel this sort of, a bit of a jarring.
It's almost a sort of metallic...
Sensation. It's very hard to describe.
You feel a bit of a rattling on the line.
Fishing like this requires complete concentration,
And experience counts.
I think this is, possibly, my favorite form of fishing —
One rod, and you feel the line,
And it's amazing what information you can pick up.
Every time i cast, i'm helping to build this mental picture.
Oh, that is something. That is something.
That was definitely just a little bump, bump.
The tantalizing tap on my line is followed by hours
With no further sign.
But i know that the elusive goonch
Is rarely caught in a day.
For the next week, i fish every hour i can.
Maybe first in here.
Goonch are easily spooked and slow to shed their suspicions.
So, once i've fished a pool,
We leave it and head further downstream.
Much clearer sky today.
It will only be a matter of days before we leave the park
And run out of unspoiled river.
After a week of frustration, i've caught nothing.
Actually, the water conditions couldn't have been better —
Some really, really classic goonch spots.
Okay, they can just sit and not feed for a long period of time,
But, you know, it just is so odd
That i spent so much time
Without even a touch from a fish.
It feels like there's hardly anything here.
The recent big flood may have washed many fish
Out of this area,
And although i've seen a fish-Eating gharial,
It's only the one.
I'm really starting to wonder if there are any goonch left
In this river.
My failure so far is making me question my approach,
And, inevitably, i'm starting to compare this experience
With my first goonch expedition 10 years ago.
The time that has past since i last fished for goonch,
Have i changed in that time?
Am i a better fisherman? I don't know.
Is my ability to see below the surface better?
It was one of the greek philosophers
Who said, "you never step into the same river twice."
I could modify that slightly.
You never cast into the same river twice
Because it is not the same river and you are not the same person.
But one thing is the same —
My determination to catch my quarry.
I'm going to fish 'round the clock.
Gharial hunt during the day.
Maybe the goonch will be more confident to feed after dark.
Somewhere down there is the fish i'm after.
I'm just trying to imagine what it's doing right now
At this moment.
The chances are, it's picked up the scent of this bait.
Maybe it's just moments away from taking.
I don't know.
It could be very close to the bait.
Oh. Yeah.
It's coming in!
There's something there. I'm gonna swing it up here.
Ah, it's a turtle.
I've got to be a bit careful with this thing.
It's not what i was hoping for, but this turtle
Isn't a complete disappointment.
When i caught that big goonch, from the same pool,
I had one of these fellows.
This one's probably about seven or eight pounds.
I had one of these about 200 pounds.
A turtle could be a good omen, and it better be.
Tomorrow will be our final day in the national park —
My last chance to catch a goonch.
My guides say there are just two fishing pools left
Before the river returns us to civilization.
I plan to fish this one through the morning
And move to the second this evening,
But i hadn't bargained on company.
These are tiger prints coming along this direction.
And this is a big animal.
And the other thing is, this is very fresh —
Probably this morning,
Probably a matter of just hours.
So — and with this long grass here, you know,
It might not be that far away even now.
With a potential man-Eater on the prowl,
It's maybe not a great idea to fish here,
So we're moving downstream to the final pool.
I want to fish from that rock.
I have one last opportunity for a showdown with the goonch.
A high casting position could help prevent my line
Wrapping around any large underwater boulders.
The hours tick by.
It's looking like another day of promise
Followed by disappointment.
Oh. There we go.
A distinct tap on my line.
I've hooked something...
Come here.
But i'm struggling to control it.
This feels a bit different.
Might need the boat.
I'm on the babai river in nepal.
There's something on my line, and i need to react fast.
Might need the boat.
The fish is still on, but i'm in danger of losing it.
Okay, got it.
Let's go out.
In the confusion,
The fish has taken the advantage and found a snag.
The line is around a rock.
Damn. It's gone.
It's gone.
Aw, no.
I had it hooked, and yet, somehow, it snagged.
The position of a rock in the wrong place...
I've been here before.
It's in the fast water.
An ominous tap on my line...
A big fish forcing me into the water...
And with me out of my element,
Everything in the balance.
That time, victory.
This time, defeat.
I've reached the end of this investigation.
My experience just now makes me think a goonch was responsible
For what happened to nawal and ali.
Of course, i'm disappointed not to catch my culprit,
But perhaps this is the right ending
For the story of my greatest adversary.
After nine years of catching all manner of river monsters
All around the world, perhaps it's appropriate
That it was finally the goonch
That reminded me of my fallibility as an angler.
And, of course, in the broader context, this is a draw.
It's one-All.
I'm sort of happy to call this quits.
And, in fact, not always am i actually fishing for the fish.
I'm fishing for the answer, and i did find the answer.
I came here looking for a culprit
That i feared was gone for good.
I go home with some satisfaction, at least.
It seems that the giant, outlandish goonch —
The original river monster —
Is still out there.