River Monsters (2009) s01e04 Episode Script

My name is Jeremy Wade.
I'm an explorer, a biologist and a fisherman.
Look at this! There it is! I've caught many extraordinary fish from rivers all around the world.
Back! Fish that can be described as real monsters.
Normally I have to travel halfway around the world to find my quarry Here we go! the biggest, some would say baddest, freshwater fish on the planet.
It's not often I hear of a river monster in my own back yard.
But this is exactly what's happened.
A report in a German newspaper says swimmers are being attacked in a lake outside Berlin.
This isn't a far-off exotic place.
A river monster within ten miles of a 21 st-century European capital! Can it really be true? It's an opportunity not to be missed.
I'm already packing my equipment.
I have my suspicions as to the identity of the culprit.
And if I'm right, it's a fish with a monstrous reputation, chronicled since medieval times.
There it is! There it is! There it is! The wels is Europe's largest freshwater fish, capable of reaching over 200lbs.
I've been doing some research into this predatory member of the catfish family.
And I'm finding that ever since records began, Europe seems to have had its very own well-documented freshwater maneater.
It appears the wels catfish is actually no stranger to making front-page news.
There are stories about this species going back literally for centuries, portraying it as a man-eating monster.
I've been doing a bit of research.
Quite frankly I had no idea it had such a reputation.
Back in the 1500s, a human head and a hand with gold rings found inside the stomach.
1630, the corpse of a seven-year-old child, body of a woman, two girls devoured.
It just goes on and on.
But all this is just so tantalising.
There are no hard facts and figures.
Unless, you know, you count something like that.
If that was the equivalent of your front-page story in the 16th century, would you go in the water? It would be too easy to dismiss these tales as the work of superstitious, unscientific medieval minds.
Attacks and human body parts turning up in wels's stomachs have been reported across Eastern Europe from Russia to Poland, through the ages, right up to the present day.
I recently came across this report in a German newspaper of swimmers in a lake being attacked by what is thought to be a large wels catfish.
I'm on my way to Germany to investigate these attacks and maybe solve the mystery of a serial killer with its roots in Europe's medieval past.
Germany is at the forefront of urban expansion.
Although steeped in history, it is now coated in glass and steel.
Hardly the place for a man-eating monster.
Schlachtensee is a lake just ten minutes from Berlin's city centre.
And it's just become Germany's very own Loch Ness.
This is where the attacks are happening.
Over a mile long and up to 700ft across, the lake was formed in the last ice age.
It's where literally thousands of Berliners come, when the weather gets hot, to cool off and swim in the water.
But for those of them who haven't read the newspapers or seen the news reports, they could be in for a nasty surprise next time they dip their toe in these idyllic waters.
These cold waters have always been a refuge for wels catfish.
And falling to over 25 feet in places, it's plenty deep enough to hide an absolute monster.
The attacks were localised, concentrated in two small areas, strangely, areas according to local fisherman, not traditionally the places to hunt for wels.
So just what happened? I'm going to ask one of the victims, Jonas Vegg.
What exactly did you do when you came down that day? Maybe two or three months ago, I was swimming 10 or 20 seconds in the lake.
Suddenly something big bit me.
I don't know what it was but it was a very big shock for me.
Pain and shock.
It hurt very much of course.
- Almost exactly here? - Yes.
Right here.
In a freshwater lake so far from the sea, the last thing you would expect is to get attacked by a fish.
It's just not supposed to happen.
Being bitten by a wels is to experience the power of two hard plates packed with hundreds of needle-sharp teeth.
Huge jaw muscles create a crushing force.
A bite is like being grabbed by a vice covered in coarse sandpaper.
Before this happened, you used to enjoy coming here? Of course.
Every day we were swimming here.
But after that, I don't swim again.
Normally there are about 100 or 200 people that are swimming here.
- So definitely people have been put off? - Yes, yes, of course.
But Jonas wasn't the only victim.
In almost the identical place, Katarina and her friend Klara had an encounter that has spooked them out of the water for good.
Just on a normal summer day.
And we wanted to swim a little bit and meet friends.
So we went to the lake.
(Conversation in German) We were swimming in the water, just treading water and talking to each other.
And there was something swimming around our legs be we couldn't really define it.
- I think it was like a snake in the water.
- Yeah.
Then suddenly - (Squeals) there was something on my leg.
Then there was a wound on my leg.
There was blood.
There were two parts.
That part here and the other one on the other side.
I went to hospital with my mother.
They reacted really shocked, the doctors, because they've never seen anything like that before.
And there were other attacks, the same pattern each time.
Swimmers bitten on their legs, sent terrified out of the water, bleeding.
Will these 21 st-century attacks prove that this European river monster is no medieval myth? From what Jonas said, the obvious conclusion is that this was aggression.
The catfish can be quite territorial.
It builds a nest.
You come too close and, you know, you get a bite.
However, from what Katarina and her friend said, there's another possibility.
I think it was like a snake in the water.
Very smooth and slippery? I think in the catfish's world, something long and waving around in the water, you know, they don't see it as a leg, it can only be another catfish.
And they do tend to be quite rough when they're breeding.
And this is breeding time.
So maybe it's not aggression but possibly something else.
What I want to find out is what provoked these attacks.
And are wels catfish really capable of what they stand accused of? To find out what's going on below, I'm working with my cameraman Simon and a mini-submarine.
We have also enlisted the help of Dr Christian Wolter from the Berlin Fisheries to give me an expert opinion.
We're here to examine the scene of the crime and see whether knowledge of the biology of the wels could explain what exactly happened to trigger such aggression.
That's about ten metres out, isn't it? That is about where the boy said he was attacked.
What we could do is take it down there.
So just over a metre Yeah, you're straight in weed at a metre down.
Yeah, that's OK.
I'd have thought you'd be out of your depth but you could stand up in that water almost.
So it's weedy and shallow.
But for Dr Wolter this is just the information he needs to understand what is going on.
The wels were just doing what every parent does.
Protecting their offspring.
The swimmers had trespassed into their nursery.
So is there anything special or unusual about where they took place, do you think? These are common spawning places.
That's why it might be the reason why it occurred so close to the bank.
The place that we've heard about the attacks happening, that would be a potential spawning place? Catfish is a plant spawner.
They build nests in the plants where they lay their eggs and then they guard their nest.
Then it's the only explanation that it was during the breeding time that they had the nest there.
They were guarding the nest and attacked something which comes too close.
For this particular catfish, it was a huge stress to guard the nest when you have all those swimmers around.
So it was actually a provoked attack.
It was protecting the nest.
Freshwater crayfish and other fish will eat eggs from an unguarded nest.
To prevent this, the male catfish sits over its 300,000 yellow eggs, protecting them from all-comers, large or small.
There are two essential qualities that make a maneater.
Wels catfish certainly have the attitude.
But do they have the capacity? Do they literally have the stomach for the job? As a younger angler, I caught smaller wels.
But how big do they need to get to pose a serious threat to a human? There's no point fishing over the attack sites.
Breeding is over.
I've hooked up with local fisherman Horst Statachy.
He knows where the wels are likely to be now.
(Speaks German) Need to But first we have to get over the language barrier.
- (Speaks German) - Yeah Um Erm Ah, oh, right, I understand.
He's a butcher.
OK.
So not just fishing? Fishing? Ah Right.
(Speaks German) OK.
One glove, no good, not enough.
Always with two.
One glove, the fish can twist and twist you round, so we have two gloves.
Finally with the best spots pinpointed, we want to start fishing at dusk.
So this is the place to fish.
Wels are night stalkers.
Their bodies are bulging with sensory receptors.
The lateral line that all fish have allows them to sense water vibrations, but catfish also have extra receptors in their skin.
Those tentacles are more than just feelers.
They can taste the water for slight chemical changes.
Any clue that leads them to a meal.
Which can be anything from fish to crustaceans.
Even water birds.
(Yodels) When you're up against these super-senses, fishing gear for wels needs to be tough.
But you also need a bit of delicacy.
I've got very strong, like 80-kilo breaking strain, braided line there.
So you can literally just hang on.
You don't have to let them take any line at all.
You just hang on and try and stop them getting anywhere near that wood.
A float that slides but only up as Oops.
Only up as far as the knot, going down to a fairly big single hook.
And something on that hook that smells tasty, so a dead fish as bait should hopefully draw a large catfish in.
The Schlachtensee catfish prove elusive.
But my trip has not been wasted.
I have confirmed that these fish have an aggressive attitude.
It seems that these attacks in Berlin weren't predatory in their intent, but defensive, territorial behaviour at breeding time.
But that's academic as far as the victims were concerned.
They came away with bleeding wounds on their legs, which underlines the chilling truth.
A large wels catfish has both the size and the fearlessness to be a potential maneater.
And I have heard of a place where wels are reaching the sort of size that could fulfil the nightmarish claims of those medieval chroniclers.
If there's one place where I'm going to find out just how big the wels catfish grows, and how potentially dangerous it is, it's here, the River Ebro in Northern Spain.
The fish is introduced.
It's been here little more than 30 years.
But in that time, you know, they're catching fish bigger than I am.
I mean, they're growing massive.
So, although part of me is a little bit dubious about coming here, because it is an artificial situation, I'm also quite excited because there's a very good chance that in the next few days I'm going to see a seriously big fish on the end of my line.
Northern Spain, the River Ebro.
In 1974 a German scientist came here and released some wels into this river.
Ever since, not only have they grown in numbers but also in size.
The wels has become Spain's very own Frankenstein monster.
There are three reasons why the wels catfish are growing so big in this river.
It's a mixture of man-made and natural.
For a start you've got three of these huge dams and it means there's so much more water, more space for the fish to live in.
On top of that, this water is hot.
The fish being a cold-blooded animal can just feed and grow for more months of the year than they do in Eastern Europe and in Berlin.
This place was stuffed with fish anyway, particularly carp.
The anglers are coming in, throwing in huge amounts of bait and just sending the whole system into hyper-drive.
This river has a policy of catch and release.
So every year the biggest fish are even bigger than the year before.
Monsters of over 200lbs already prowl these waters.
Wels can live to 80 years.
Such fish are a massive lure to fishermen from all over the world.
There's a story here about a wels catfish regurgitating a cat after it was caught.
And nobody actually saw the cat taken but it could have been a dead cat floating on the surface, a bit like this dead puppy here.
So these catfish will eat anything that falls in the water.
And it's fair game.
It's how they pack on the weight and reach such enormous sizes.
Wherever you look in the Ebro, there is food waiting to be snatched up by a catfish.
Come here! Come here! Got him! And it's actually still alive! These fish, floating on the surface There's one.
There's another.
A little bleak.
Ah, come here.
That's a baby zander.
And it was just floating on the surface.
I thought it was dead.
We're just down from the dam.
But I think what it is, this water - I put my hand in here - is really cold.
The main river water is like a hot bath.
And I think what it is, the cold water hits the hot water and it's heat shock.
You know, these fish are just floating belly up.
There we go.
It's alive.
I'll put it back in but it's a baby zander.
And there are quite a few here.
And as I actually came along, just a few minutes ago, there was something snapping at this flotsam.
I thought, oh, it's a carp.
It was a catfish.
It was about 10 or 15 pounds.
And they obviously know this is a place to come for food.
Maybe sometimes these come through the turbines, ready minced up.
Another example of just how rich this river is.
It's a man-made thing.
We've got a dam here.
And it just provides a source of food for Mr Catfish.
Back he goes.
He might recover.
I think he might recover.
Amazing food source, all as a result of the dam.
The Ebro might be an artificially created environment, but it is far from barren, with wildlife drawn to it from all over for its rich pickings.
We've got a very rare white vulture.
There's just loads of griffon vultures nesting in this rock here, which is purpose-built, like a block of flats for vultures.
You can almost smell the haddock pellets that the fishermen use here as bait.
And I seem to be giving off some confusing odours of my own.
I've been fishing in the sun for a few days.
I didn't realise I smelt that bad but it's bringing the vultures in.
- Every few seconds - Oh.
Jürgen, my guide, has witnessed the continuing growth, and aggression, of these catfish.
Every fourth or fifth fish now is over 100 or 120 pounds.
And they're catching hundreds of them over the year in just a little stretch of the river.
So the population is so big that never has it happened before, not in Spain.
That's what I mean.
- So be careful if you're going swimming.
- We had some attacks.
Especially releasing catfish.
Sometimes they really bite.
And then you see things like a big U.
A big C.
You know, the mark of the catfish.
It had you for a second.
Oh! Bring back the fish rod.
Really great.
It's a fish.
A zander.
A nice fish.
Not what I'm after but some of the fish that are in here, that'll go in sideways.
This is the adult version of those small fry that we saw earlier.
Although spiny, they are still food for catfish.
Off he goes! And if wels can live to 80 years, those first fish to be introduced to this river may not even be middle-aged.
To test just how voracious these catfish are, I head into one of the Ebro's swollen tributaries.
My guide tells me the fish are lurking right in at the margins.
They are waiting to ambush fish in the current and also to grab anything that drops in from the banks.
Very energetic, active fishing, this.
Quite precise as well.
On the move, not sitting around waiting.
And you're left in no doubt if you've got a bite.
You're going to see it, feel it, hear it as something just launches itself at this and sort of wrenches on the rod.
- Ah, yes, yes! - Very good! Wee! Going downstream.
Watch the oar.
Watch the oar.
Right.
Ah! Gone, gone, gone.
Hey! I'm not doing very well.
Everything's happening too quickly.
This is the last place I'd expect to find a fat wallowing catfish.
But it shows how you can misjudge these guys.
I'm learning that there's more to wels' behaviour than I thought.
Ah, yes, yes, yes, yes! Good one! Open the reel.
Open the reel.
Off, off, off, off, off.
It's off again.
Da It's off.
Literally took within about a second of the lure hitting the water.
About six inches from the bank.
This water is cracking along at such a rate.
This is like a fast running pace.
That's the place.
Let it sink a little bit and then twitch a little bit.
The attack's coming direct.
The fish is in the water, let it sink and pow.
Absolutely! Two strikes, no fish.
Damn! The wels have made themselves totally at home here.
Not just in the main channels but throughout the whole river system.
As apex predators, they have a confidence that I'm about to witness first-hand.
These fish are scared of nothing.
(Whispers) Look at this! That's a big fish! I could almost reach down and grab its mouth! Do you have a calamari? There's a catfish here.
It's big.
It's 140 pounds plus.
It is two feet beneath me.
The bank goes down here.
I am looking into its mouth.
I could almost reach down and touch it.
The fish has backed off.
I think he could see me.
I'm going to throw this really hard.
No reaction.
No reaction.
The fish is just melting away backwards.
This is a really rare sight.
That fish is seven foot long.
It's about 140 pounds at least.
And it was in the margins.
And I could see the whole fish.
There it is! That's a sight.
That is a rare sight.
That is a big fish.
If I'd got down on my knees, I could have patted him on the head.
A mouth like that right underneath me.
And looking down on its back, this wonderful camo pattern.
This disruptive sort of black and white.
Throw a stone to see if there'd be a reaction.
No.
He just reversed back.
And then under the boat and away.
I really like seeing a fish like that.
It's fantastic, really good.
Any other fish would have been spooked off by that stone.
It would have disappeared in a flash.
And that guy is not even a really big one.
But enough of the small fry.
Now it's time to tackle the real giants.
I'm on the banks of the River Ebro in Spain, hunting down giant wels catfish.
They're estimated to put on up to ten pounds a year.
If that's true, it won't be long before an Ebro wels reaches the man-eating proportions of medieval folklore.
If I'm after a maneater, I need to catch, at the very least, a man-sized fish.
One that falls on the fat side of 150 pounds.
It's time to rig up.
Rather than casting, we drop our baits over 100 yards out.
Just short of the sunken trees along the flooded river channel.
Take up the slack.
Then, with the hi-tech alarms set, I can enjoy the Spanish sun.
And now we wait.
This is not my preferred fishing technique.
I like to feel the line, be in contact with the bait.
But wels are not delicate feeders.
And besides, it's hot here.
(Bells ring) Yes, here, here! And it's about to get hotter.
That's taking line, that's taking line! That's taking line! This is my first super-sized Spanish wels and immediately it feels seriously big! This is physical, physical stuff.
There was a serious burst from that fish when it first took.
It was actually taking line.
Just take your time.
My forearm is almost cramping up Take your time.
We've got the fish and that is - He's like, "Don't bring me back.
" - Yeah.
These Spanish wels are hunting in broad daylight.
They really are breaking their programming.
And these fish even seem used to being handled.
My first fish is 140 pounds and measures six foot nine inches.
If these fish are putting on ten pounds a year, then in 20 years this already massive creature could weigh as much as 340 pounds! More than double its present size.
And if they do live until 80 years, I'll let you do the maths.
The only thing that will restrict them is food.
But there is one food supply here that is in huge quantities.
Other catfish.
The wels is not just a maneater, it's a cannibal.
I was fishing on the upper lake last year with three gentlemen and we hooked a fish.
It vomited.
It was sick.
This fish was about 160 pounds.
I returned to where he was sick and pulled out a catfish skull and the actual ribcage still attached.
And we estimated this to be a catfish of between 40 and 50 pounds.
So it goes to you show the eating capacity of the catfish.
Just get a sort of a cool scientific look at this animal.
First Obviously the thing to do is start at the business end, the head.
You've got I mean, the main thing is just this very, very wide mouth.
About ten inches across on this animal and you've got needle-like teeth.
They are sharp as well.
Put your hand in and they'll draw blood.
But in terms of getting a grip, just perfect.
If they clamp down tight with those jaw muscles, you're not going to get out of that.
They're purpose-built for lurking on the bottom and grabbing stuff that comes above them.
And they're going to know that's there because their eyes are on top of their head.
But more to the point, they've got these.
And this is like extrasensory perception.
You can tell what's going on in the water.
These will pick up vibrations and also chemicals.
Very, very sensitive.
Very small quantities in both cases.
On the side, very pronounced on this animal, you've got the lateral line.
And this is their super organ.
Super-touch organ.
It just picks up vibrations in the water.
Often again at a very low level.
And also you can see here these marks on the skin.
Now, I think these are probably wounds from another fish.
Possibly when this fish was spawning and they got a little bit too rough, a little overenthusiastic.
Stomach here.
That's the vent there.
So actually if it swallows something, they can This fish could potentially swallow something that long.
It goes to the back of the throat, here.
It opens up this sort of sphincter muscle there and it could swallow something about two foot long.
So no problem accommodating those medieval accounts of babies and small children in the belly of the beast.
It looks like wels catfish can swallow prey roughly a third of their own body length.
So if these fish in the Ebro keep on growing, it's possible that they could reach a size where they will have man-eating potential.
Fact is following close on the heels of what was once thought to be fiction.
Looking at this fish, it is the perfect predator.
I mean, they do eat literally anything.
But they are perfectly equipped to predate.
And also to come from underneath.
Yeah, that is just a mouth on the end of a solid, sinuous piece of muscle.
I can't hold him much longer.
Wels, like all catfish, can live quite a long time out of water if kept cool and wet.
This guy seems quite reluctant to leave.
Shall I leave him there or just Just rub it gently.
In a split second the fish turns.
I'm just quick enough to escape.
That was the first catfish attack on a human on camera! I was just wondering, "Is he going to move?" And he did sort of double round.
I have heard stories of them having a bite of somebody who's caught them.
That's not going to happen to me.
There's no mark there but it has happened.
I fish on into darkness.
And I get another surprise.
It's just pulled me on my arse.
Fish on.
Me pulled towards the water.
I thought I was going to go in then.
There was nothing like this That's a sizable fish.
Sizable fish.
With so many fishermen around, the only inconvenience these fish suffer for their midnight feasts is a little bit of man-handling.
Imagine being in a river at night with one of these things swimming around your legs.
I don't know how big it is yet.
I can see it's big.
- All right? - Get a good grip on it.
148, I think.
147.
I'm a little bit shell-shocked.
I've got gravel-rash on my backside.
I hit into the thing and I was just sliding towards the river, on my rear end, and managed to stop myself against a bit of a slab.
And it was a real tug-of-war.
A real tug-of-war.
But, I mean nice to see a fish like this.
It really is And they grow bigger than this.
They are getting on for twice this weight in this water here, which is something to think about.
I mean, what that must feel like on the end of a line, I don't know.
How wide? That's about nine inches, isn't it? Mm-hm.
This fish is almost as heavy as I am.
I mean, it is This is quite a monstrous beast.
And the power as well.
The thing nearly pulled me in the river.
So, you know, definitely a fierce predatory animal and some of these stories about them maybe attacking swimmers, I can believe them now, having actually seen a sizable one of these things up close.
I'm still short of my target 150lb beast.
These creatures really are ugly out of the water.
I want to see them in their natural element.
But that means getting into the water.
The tables are about to turn.
Cameraman Simon and I are going to try an experiment.
I want to see and film a wels catfish underwater.
I want to see exactly how Europe's biggest freshwater predator operates in its element.
What I really want to see is the moment when the wels gets to strike its prey.
It isn't going to be easy.
This is something that very few people get to see.
But I do have a few ideas about what I can use to tempt the fish in.
This is the camera and this is what's going to be behind the boat and about three feet behind this is going to be the lure.
So it's going to be looking back.
The thing is, this is quite a lump of a camera, even though it's a small camera.
So I think here we go.
Si's got - here we go - a flotation.
Two if we need them.
Two tanks and to stop it wibble-wobbling around a little bit because we're angling, there we go, one of those.
And that will just keep it flying straight and level.
We'll lob it off the back of the boat and we'll see the lure and hopefully we'll see something come up and grab the bait.
I'll need to hang on.
You know, if something big takes this, you know, the whole monitor could go overboard.
This is working really well.
I've got the lure in picture.
It's bang in the middle of the screen.
I'm actually watching.
You know, normally it's just there and you've no idea what's happening.
I can actually see my lure out behind the boat.
A fish.
I think it was a carp.
Yeah.
Oh.
We're bumping over the bottom.
Oh, dear, what's going on there? In a bit, in a bit, in a bit.
No, it's bumping, it's bumping.
I've lost the lure, haven't I? I've lost the lure.
I think the camera might have been bashed around a bit, though.
Agh.
Not robust enough, unfortunately, to withstand being bashed along the bottom.
But other than that, actually doing very well.
Before that, there was this grey shadow that appeared from nowhere, which sort of came and went.
And it could have been a catfish investigating it and shying off at the last minute or it could have just been a rock going past.
What I'm about to see is another unexpected aspect of these fish's behaviour.
What we're doing is we're doing something called "clonking" and it's making a sending a soundwave down into the water and we can see on the sonar Oh, yeah! Yeah? Oh, yes, yes, yes! - Yeah.
- It's directly under the lure.
There it is! I've got it! There's a catfish, a catfish! - See him? - It's right under the lure! Fantastic! - I see him on the sonar.
- Yeah, yeah.
There he is.
There he is.
Tentacles.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Right, what's happened now, and it's coming up, in the middle of the screen.
Fantastic.
It's attacking the camera.
What this has just demonstrated is that when you've got splashing, commotion on the surface, the catfish, which live on the bottom, they will come up to investigate.
Ah, yes! Yes, yes, yes.
Bottom of the screen.
There it is, there it is! Look at that! There it is! Oh, he's come off.
Come off.
This is amazing, getting a fish on camera taking a bait, attracted in by sound and vibration.
Like sharks to a plane crash, these fish fear nothing.
It even attacks the camera.
It's been really good, though, just to see what I've seen on the screen.
Very, very rare to see this fish behaviour.
So I feel sort of quite privileged to have seen that.
Although we didn't get a fish into the boat, I actually feel it was a successful day.
Because I feel that I've actually learnt a lot about the behaviour.
Particularly how they react to vibration, to commotion on the surface.
Here's this fish that lives on the bottom, but if it hears something it comes up and the tentacles are waving.
And it investigates.
Without the camera under the water, you'd assume nothing is happening.
As soon as you put the camera there, dangling under the boat, you're making the noise with the clonk, they're coming up into the middle of the water and they want to know what's going on.
Everything I've seen, the reaction of the wels catfish to a bait in the water, confirms its aggression as a top predator and also its fearlessness.
Combine that with supersizing and you've got a creature that you really wouldn't want to get too close to in the water.
What I want to know now is just how big a wels would need to be to tackle me in the water.
I've said they look like giant slugs but in their element they are like supersensitive sharks.
Time for another experiment.
Like most people, if I jump in the water, I don't sink, I float.
Even after a heavy lunch.
And it's not too difficult.
I'm flapping my arms a little bit and my legs.
But the question is, how big would a fish need to be to pull me under? Right, I've got one dive weight on, four and a half pounds, and I can support it actually.
That's harder.
It's harder.
Nine pounds now.
Doubling the rate of paddling.
But I can still just about keep myself on the surface.
Right, I can support nine pounds with a bit of flapping and flailing of my legs.
We've just weighed this rock.
This is going to make it up to 20 pounds.
I'll just see how I do against that combined weight in the water.
That was actually very interesting.
20 pounds of weight attached to me.
I could just about keep my head above water.
It was a struggle.
I reckon another five pounds and I'd have just gone.
No matter how much my arms and legs would have been flailing around.
And that's interesting.
Because if you ask most people how big a fish would have to be to pull a body underwater, they'd say probably something about the same size as that person.
Now, I weigh about 175 pounds.
And on land I can take care of myself.
But in the water, a fish would just have to exert a pull of 25 pounds, about a seventh of my body weight, and, you know, I wouldn't stand a chance.
I'd just be gone.
And if I took a lungful of water underneath there, then nobody would ever see me again.
OK, that just goes to show that it doesn't need to be a huge fish to pull me under.
Let's have a closer look at pulling power.
That 147-pounder pulled me off my feet and almost into the water.
How much force can I generate? I couldn't even pull in our director, and she's half my weight.
She's a match for me, even one-handed.
So I could be pulled under the water by a fish just half my size.
75 to 100 pounds.
And the thing about the Ebro is that the river is just full of fish that size and much bigger.
Which possibly explains why you don't see very many people swimming.
And I'm starting to get seriously worried.
Even on land, how am I going to do, in a one-on-one fight, against a 200-pounder? With only a few days left in Northern Spain, I'm trying to break the 150lb marker that I have set myself.
My respect for these fish over the past few days has really grown.
Oh! Oh, oh, oh! Agh! Argh! (Chuckles) If this one pulls me over, I'm in real trouble.
Nearly tipping forward over that edge now.
My groin is starting to ache.
This is a strong fish.
The rod's jammed in.
This is physical stuff, physical work.
- (Thunder) - It's coming up.
Strong fish.
But I think it's tiring.
Tiring.
Tiring.
There it is! There's the fish! Hey! Good grief! My crutch is killing me.
And there it is.
But does it weigh more than 150 pounds? Get the measure of the beast.
That is seven foot, one, two, three, four.
Seven foot four inches.
And then you open the mouth.
I can actually hear the echo coming out of the mouth there.
Hello, hello! I can see its gullet opening and closing.
If I was so inclined I could put my fist down there quite easily.
That is an eating machine.
The whole thing is nearly eight foot of just solid rippling muscle.
If it grabbed hold of your leg an unpleasant enough thought but if that decided not to let go and you were swimming, you'd be history.
I'm about 175 pounds on a good day or a bad day, depending how you look at it.
This fish could be more than that.
Yeah.
74 kilos.
That's about 163 pounds.
Not quite as big and fat and ugly as I am.
What I find really hard to credit is that I was doing those experiments where I was trying to see how much force I could exert in the water.
And there was somebody on the bank with a spring balance hooked round their finger reading off, OK, 30 or 40 pounds.
This thing in the water was almost pulling me off the bank.
I was having to dig in and really act like I was in a tug-of-war.
How something with nothing solid to grab hold of can exert that force in the water you know, I find quite mind-boggling.
It is very, very impressive indeed.
And now it's time to let this guy go.
Let's see how he reacts.
The fish has recovered a bit.
Maybe a bit more than I have.
I'm going to put it back in the water.
If it does have a go at me, I'm going to stand my ground and see if A bit like an elephant.
See if it's a false charge, or will it go and grab my leg? I'm trying to remember this fish is bigger than I am.
It's got a few inches on me.
I've got a few pounds on this fish but I'm in the water.
My extra weight actually counts for nothing.
It's the fish's environment.
It's sinking down towards my foot.
I think my reflexes overruled what I was wanting to do, which was stand my ground.
But I can visualise it too much, what might be going on down there, what might be going through its mind.
So don't tangle with these guys in their environment is the message.
Wels catfish are predators with a lot of attitude.
Two of the fish that I caught turned on me while was releasing them.
Back! But as far as eating people? A wels will swallow anything that fits inside its monstrous gut.
Ah, yes, yes! And if that includes you, well, it's no respecter of species.
It seems that if they ever went away, these medieval monsters are now back, alive and well and still growing in the River Ebro in Northern Spain.
This is quite a monstrous beast.
If I came back here in 20 or 30 years, I think it's possible there could be something in here that is bigger than anything that's ever existed before.
And in the not too distant future, a baby-snatching, man-eating wels could once again make the front-page news.