River Monsters (2009) s01e06 Episode Script

The Amazon River is known for containing an evil collection of murderous beasts.
There is one family of fish living here that could write a serial killer's handbook.
Their methods are so bloodthirsty and varied.
I can see, from here, the way they are just literally drilling their way into that fish.
Members of the catfish family have reportedly swallowed people whole.
They have eaten them alive from within and even gruesomely penetrated individuals in the most intimate of places.
Aargh! - I'm Jeremy Wade - Fish on! biologist and extreme angler.
And I'm on the hunt for these killer catfish to determine if this family are the Amazon's ultimate river monsters.
Now imagine that in an orifice.
In the heart of the Brazilian Amazon, a truck makes a solemn path towards the local police station.
It carries a macabre load - the corpse of a man.
But the circumstances of his death were bizarre in the extreme.
Fearing accusations of murder, the fishermen have taken the corpse to the police station, in the exact state in which they found it.
Just a pair of legs protruding from the mouth of a vast catfish.
Could this wild tale, emerging from the Amazon, really be true? Or is this just a made-up fisherman's tale, and no more real than this photo recreation of what it might have looked like? I've faced many of the largest and most feared creatures in the waterways of this world.
I've discovered that you don't need to swim in the sea to encounter a man-eater.
Rivers harbour just as many monsters.
Ask people what is the most feared fish in the Amazon and they will undoubtedly say piranha electric eel or even stingray.
But I've come to Brazil to find out if catfish are actually the worst of the lot.
A true Mafia style family of killers at large.
And I've tracked down Seu Walmir, one of the witnesses to this bizarre murder to hear his story.
(Speaks Portuguese) Basically, there was a bit of a frenzy of fishing activity going on.
One of the nets got stuck on a rock and, in that situation, the only thing you can do, to not rip the net, is go down and get it off.
So this one fisherman dived in to free the net.
However, what happened was that he didn't come up.
(Speaks Portuguese) The net came up.
No fish in it.
No fisherman.
Nothing more was seen until about four hours later.
Suddenly this huge fish appeared on the surface.
It was thrashing around, because the fish was actually itself in trouble.
It was actually choking.
The fisherman was half inside the mouth of the fish, just the legs of the fisherman were sticking out.
What happened then was that the fishermen all went to try and get the fish to net it.
Because it was quite tired, it was quite easy, just one net.
They got it in and clubbed it to death.
They left his body inside the fish and then went to Manaus as fast as possible.
Obviously, get it to the police station to make sure that there was no suspicion that it was a case of murder or anything like that.
The murderer was identified as a piraíba, the largest species of catfish found here in the Amazon.
So that fish could have been about 500 pounds.
We are talking some seriously, seriously big fish here.
(Speaks Portuguese) The mouth about 40cm across, so that's a couple of foot across, but he says it opens up more, so maybe two and a half foot.
This was a a pretty monstrous fish and a pretty horrific end for that fisherman.
(Speaks Portuguese) He says there are people disappearing all the time and you never find a trace of them.
You don't find the body.
You don't find bones.
You don't find anything.
Even having heard this horrific story from an eyewitness, someone who was actually there, seeing this monstrous fish with the fisherman's feet just poking out of the mouth, I still find it really hard to believe that there are fish here capable of doing that.
What I want to do is actually see with my own eyes how big the fish are in these Amazon rivers.
I think the first thing I've got to do is go back to where this story all started and actually go myself to the scene of the crime.
Walmir talked of seeing a 500-pound piraíba, which seems extreme, but photos do exist of some pretty large catfish.
There are three species of giant catfish found here in the Amazon: The jau, the red-tailed catfish and the piraíba.
This catch was reported to be nearly eight foot long and some 350 pounds, but maybe, as Walmir suggests, there are even bigger monsters out there and, if I follow his leads, perhaps I'll get to catch a man-eater of my own.
After travelling for 12 hours, I reach my destination, a river junction, up a tributary of the Amazon.
As far as I can gather, this is the scene of the crime.
What is interesting is that this is a very obvious meeting of the waters.
You can see it so clearly, because the two rivers that meet here are different colours.
One is muddy white water.
One is black water.
According to the locals, large catfish wait in ambush at river junctions like this to predate on smaller fish travelling downriver.
Because I'm after a pretty monstrous fish, I'm using monstrous tackle.
I've got a huge, forged-steel hook on the end, attached to a length of wire.
And then I've got about 300 yards of very strong line.
And this rod, you'd normally only see this on a boat out in the open ocean, the kind of thing you'd use to catch marlin, tuna, that kind of thing, but I'm using this stuff in fresh water.
People only think of predatory fish living in the sea, but here I am, about 1,000 miles from the ocean, staking out a crime scene to catch a man-eater.
There's something down there.
It just grabbed the bait, bent the rod and then let go.
That's a fish on.
That's a fish on.
It's taking line.
It's taking line.
It feels pretty sizeable.
Got to be a little bit decisive and brutal now.
The fish doesn't want to know.
It doesn't want to know.
Going down.
The fish is coming up in the water.
Up in the water.
There it is! It's a jau.
It's a good size.
This fish is not the piraíba I was hoping for, but the jau is a catfish and some fishermen claim it can be just as dangerous as the larger piraíba.
But it's not finished.
It doesn't like the sight of the boat, at all.
It has a reputation for being so strong on the end of a line that some people will tell you that it has dragged fishermen down into the depths.
This is about 80 pounds, 80-90 pounds.
It's a good-sized fish.
The hook hold looks good.
I might even be able to land it on land.
After 20 minutes of hard struggle, I have the better of it.
And, my goodness, feeling the strength of this thing, I wouldn't want that round my ankle or I wouldn't want to be head first down the mouth of something like that, either.
There we go.
It looks a really sinister fish.
That dark black colour and it gets that from It gets that from living down in the lightless zone, deep in the rocky pools, where it just blends in with the background.
And particularly, looking at it from here, just the shape of it.
A great big mouth, a large head, a very muscular midriff.
And then just tapering off into this very chunky, powerful propulsion unit.
Just looking at these long whiskers that they use to probe their surroundings, it's pretty obvious where catfish get their name.
So this is a real, you know, this is a fish that's adapted for strong water.
A very strong fish.
And if one of those was to grab you there's not a great deal you could do about it.
(Grunts with exertion) Time to release this animal.
So the scene of the crime may not have yielded the man-eating piraíba I was after, but this impressive jau shows that there are some large catfish down there.
Oh, wanting to go already.
Wanting to go already.
That's good.
That's good.
There it goes.
Ooh.
Quite a fish.
If I can get a big catfish, here at this minor river junction, then perhaps if I fish the largest river junction in the world, the meeting of the waters near Manaus, I'll land the mother of all catfish.
I want to prove that the stories of them swallowing fishermen are more than just fisherman's tales.
And after catching a large jau at a river junction, I think I know just the place to catch a monster.
This is it.
This is the meeting of the waters.
This is the black water of the Rio Negro coming down here, mixing with the white, muddy water of the Rio Solimoes and, together, they form the mighty Amazon.
This has to be, probably, the biggest river junction in the world.
Everybody says that the big catfish love river junctions.
So this place has to be a good bet for the mother of all catfish.
The point where these two rivers meet is more than a mile wide, over 200 feet deep in places.
And for almost another four miles, these two massive waterways refuse to merge, due to their different speeds, temperatures and sediment contents.
Julio Cavalcante has caught a 211-pound piraíba at the meeting of the waters.
But, on another occasion, he nearly died here, when the line wrapped around his body and started to pull him out of the boat.
He had to cut himself free with this knife.
This is the very knife that saved Julio's life on that occasion and he is lending it to me.
Julio credits his fishing success to a secret-bait formula that he wraps around a hook, seals in a tin can and leaves to bake in the sun for three days.
Oh.
Oh, dear.
Ah.
I think most of the fish in this river will know that stuff is in there.
- Look here.
- Right.
That Mm! That just looks so Oh.
I have never seen anything quite like that.
(Speaks Portuguese) Right.
The fish The fish like it.
The fish like it.
This is the guts, the by-products of eight chickens.
So the entire intestines of one chicken is about that long, wound round, and you've got eight entire intestinal tracts of chickens to make up that bait.
I think, with this now, I have to be ready to go fishing.
Julio reckons that once the sun sets and night falls, the catfish come out to feed.
That's the bait on a huge hook, a lump of lead to keep it down.
I'll feed this over the side.
I've got 30 foot of iron cable.
It feels good.
The monsters could be on the move.
How's this for float fishing? I've got a barrel on here.
I mean, this is a Jaws moment, if ever there was one.
The bait's out.
The engine's cut.
It's now just a case of being quiet and just drifting down with the current.
But being out here after dark also increases the risks.
Here, you've not only got a very powerful fish that might hang on the end of the line, you have also got to keep an eye out for the weather.
And, also, this is a very, very busy waterway.
There's going to be boats, big barges, all sorts of stuff.
They will just run you over if you don't get out of the way, and 30 foot below all that is my bait.
The current here is very far from straightforward.
I am just being spun round by these huge eddies.
They are so big, you're not aware that you're in one.
Also, you get waves coming out of nowhere.
It looks like it's a wake from a boat.
It's not.
It's just something to do with the current.
So it's just changing the whole time and this is in daylight.
At night-time, all that is just going to be magnified by ten.
The water underneath me could be 200 feet deep.
But the piraíba, whose name means "mother of all the fishes", is totally at home here.
With a lightning-conducting rod in my hands, I'm easily the highest point in this wide stretch of river.
So I decide to call it a day, before that storm gets any closer.
Well, nothing Nothing Nothing came for that bait.
And er I don't know, maybe I can't blame them.
Either it's just not my night or the fact that it is so close to a big city means that the fish have all been fished out.
There is a huge fishing fleet operating from Manaus and this is right on the doorstep.
Perhaps I need to go further away from civilisation if I'm to get the mother of all the catfish.
I head into the dark heart of the Amazon, up a distant tributary of the main river, to see if that tactic changes my luck.
Maybe here I'll catch my man-eating piraíba.
Head down.
Head down.
Head down.
Head down.
Head down.
Fish on.
Could this be the river monster I'm after? But who will win this battle? Me or the fish? I'm here in the Amazon, investigating a family of killer catfish.
It's taken line.
It's a strong fish, this.
And I think I've hooked a piraíba.
Got to come round.
Got to come round.
It's the largest catfish species found here.
It's a good-sized fish.
Haven't seen it yet.
Look at that! That is actually not the fish I want.
That is a huge red-tailed catfish.
I want the white, streamlined, shark-like piraíba, but this thing, my goodness This is a good size.
This is very good size.
There we go.
These things don't grow They don't get caught much bigger than this.
I am going to weigh it.
Can you read that? Right.
This is 80 pounds, this one.
80 pounds.
That's very, very big for a red-tailed catfish.
Not an easy fish to lift.
Now that this fish is in the boat, it is pumping air not water over its gills, creating these strange sounds.
(Fish exhales) That is a big old catfish.
And it's getting me in training for the piraíba.
The only thing is, too many experiences like this one and I just won't have any energy for a fish that's bigger than this.
And, I mean, this thing is just a huge head, a huge bony head, tapering off into this leathery body.
And a great big wide mouth there.
Without any teeth, as such, but it's got real good grasping pads.
Unlike a shark that can bite its prey in half, catfish have to swallow it whole.
So, if they are overly ambitious, they will choke.
But this fish has a different problem.
Inside its mouth is a parasitic blood-sucker.
Another one here.
And that is absolutely engorged, absolutely engorged with blood, the blood of this poor catfish.
This tiny parasite, the candiru, and this vast predator are both from the Mafia-like family of catfish.
This is pretty disgusting.
I don't know if I can get hold of it.
They are very slippery.
I need more fingernails.
There we go.
So, there we go.
Before and after.
This one's fed.
This one's still lean and hungry.
And, as I'll find out, it's these small guys you have to watch out for, as this parasite is one of the cruellest catfish I'll meet.
There we go.
OK.
That was nice to catch that.
Not the fish I want, but You know, that's a real monster in its own right.
The candiru usually targets a big fish as its host, drinking blood from its gills, but occasionally they make mistakes.
This has resulted in one of the most infamous legends ever to emerge from the Amazon.
A man urinating in the river, who has a fish swim up his penis.
Yet for one gentleman, this urban myth became reality.
Luckily, he was able to make it to this surgery in Manaus, where he was treated by Dr Anoar Samad.
(Speaks Portuguese) He'd actually had this fish inside him for four days and the reason there was such a delay was because he actually lived a long way in the interior, away from the city.
(Speaks Portuguese) He had a very, very swollen bladder.
He was bleeding, a general fever, swollen testicles, generally in a very bad way.
The fish wasn't visible.
It's got these little sort of spines on the gill flaps, so it was almost like working its way in, like that.
It would have swum as far as the sphincter, at which point, the fish was apparently trying to sort of gnaw its way out.
Instead of just swimming up the urethra, it was starting to gnaw.
So this guy obviously was in a lot of pain.
What was done, first of all, the endoscope was put in the end of his penis, into the urethra.
The endoscope was equipped with a camera.
This is the actual footage from that operation.
They were expecting to find a little fish.
What they found, instead, was something that went almost from the entrance of the urethra, all the way back to the sphincter.
They are talking about something five or six inches.
So not exactly a little fish, quite a substantial animal.
Candiru locate their hosts by following the trail of dilute urea that fish excrete from their gills.
This could explain this candiru's mistake.
Having heard this gruesome tale, I decide to see if I can track down any more details.
I manage not only to find the victim, but I take him back to the actual scene of the assault on his manhood, to relive the events that have haunted him since that day.
(Speaks Portuguese) OK.
So, it's 11 years ago.
It's in this very spot.
Silvio and some friends were in the water down there.
And after a little period of time, Silvio, you know, felt the need to urinate, as happens.
He knew the story about the candiru, so he took himself partially out of the water.
While he was relieving himself, suddenly, he said, he just had a bit of a shock and the first thing he knew was that the fish was already, you know, inside, only just the end of its tail was out.
He tried to grab hold of it, but it's a very smooth fish, a bit like a bar of soap.
No good.
No success pulling it out, so he just ran up onto the bank to try and get some help.
The hospital facilities here aren't brilliant.
Silvio had to go to Manaus, which is quite a long journey away, several hours by road, and went to a hospital there and, basically, people just didn't believe him.
He was in this situation of people just not believing this was true, so he was passed from one hospital to another.
Eventually, he came to one place where, thankfully, the doctor did believe the story and actually decided to do a proper investigation and see if he could help.
I decide to throw a net out to see if I can catch one of these critters.
Here we go.
This is almost exactly what Silvio described.
Something going in one direction and just not wanting to come into reverse at all.
Look at that.
I can feel its spines digging in when it does that.
It was actually walking using its head.
Now imagine that in an orifice.
This fish is just leaking blood, not this fish's blood.
It's something it's been feeding on.
It is just an absolute nightmare, a real vampire fish, this thing.
A fish like this may have entered Silvio in search of a blood meal, but little did it know that its mistake would result in an unprecedented medical procedure lasting two hours.
(Speaks Portuguese) The first thought was to A bit like a hook that has got a barb on it, actually pulling it back the way it went in is not always a good idea.
He was thinking of actually coming in from the side, coming in from the perineum, and actually trying to pull the fish out, head first, but he thought that because it had been such a long time in there and also the fish was starting to rot a bit, maybe try and pull it out with the endoscope, out tail first, the way that it went in.
The tail of the fish was about here, about an inch in.
So the head of it would have been somewhere like here.
And then what happened was that the pincers were gradually manipulated out of the hole here.
There we go.
It grabbed hold of the fish just in front of the tail And then, using the camera, and then the whole apparatus just gradually, very delicately moved out.
Apparently, it was necessary to pull with a certain amount of force, but feeling that it's not doing any damage.
Fortunately, it did It did come out eventually.
The fish was sent to the National Institute of Amazonian Research to be formally identified, thus confirming, after centuries of speculation, that a fish has entered a human in the most intimate of places.
This is a somewhat momentous and possibly delicate occasion.
I'm bringing Silvio back to meet his fish.
This one.
Silvio.
This is actually the first time since he had the surgery that Silvio has seen this fish, this very fish.
- (Speaks Portuguese) - No, no, no.
I just asked Silvio if he would like to handle it and a very, very definite no.
I think once was enough.
So maybe if I leave it in my hand But I'm quite struck by how large it is.
(Speaks Portuguese) He's looking at it, thinking, "I didn't realise it was that big.
I thought it was smaller.
" It really does sort of beggar belief that something of that size could burrow into you.
So is the candiru the worst of all the fish in the Amazon - a catfish of such vile reputation that none can surpass it? Dr Lucia Rapp, the curator at the Institute, offers to show me some of the other strange catfish species that exist in the Amazon, as this place holds one of the world's largest collections of Amazon fish, all preserved in alcohol.
So bad to handle it.
It's a kind of armoured catfish.
These are not that spiny, because it's not a male.
Usually, the males get really large spines.
That is just It's like out of a horror movie or something from outer space.
You wouldn't believe this could be a fish.
- There is just such diversity.
- This is another kind.
It's not that spiny on the body.
But it can also have the big spines on the fin.
Right? A small mouth.
So this kind of fish, in fact, it grazes on wood.
Oops! There are over 1,000 different species of catfish in the Amazon.
- This is a beautiful one.
- Look at that.
More species than are found of any type of fish in all the rivers of the USA.
- That is quite cute-looking, really, isn't it? - Yes.
But there is another catfish species that she wants to show me that is potentially even more horrific than the bloodsucking candiru.
So what was the case that you heard about? We had a situation here recently.
We received a visit of a doctor who came with some images of two corpses, two men.
He believed they were shot because they have those very round holes on the body.
He started to dissect the corpses and saw it was not gunshots.
The corpses were hollow already inside, without any organs.
Wow, imagine being a pathologist and you're brought a corpse that has what looks like bullet holes, you start to dissect the body and the body is hollow.
The organs have been removed.
And there was not any kind of bullet inside the corpses.
It was just the fishes.
So he realised that the fishes got inside the bodies and had eaten the organs inside.
The fish was identified as a close catfish relative of the bloodsucking candiru called the candiru acu.
Would they have been dead when the fish got in? Well, they suspect that the men might be eaten alive because he saw the structure of the flesh and they were eaten from the inside.
And they probably died from that.
Not going to be alive for very long with all that going on inside.
That's for sure.
If you are alive, if you feel the fish, you can just remove it.
But if you are, for example, drunk or ill or something, you may not have enough strength to resist them.
Imagine a whole bunch of these fishes attacking you at once.
Not a very pleasant thought if you're going for a little swim in the Amazon.
Having heard this gruesome tale, I decide to visit the city morgue to see if I can track down any more details.
I think it's all very well having a certain scientific curiosity about some of these bizarre and gruesome deaths, but actually seeing the people waiting outside here who have come basically to identify bodies, you know, it becomes much more personal, and, you know, I'm not, to be honest, totally prepared for what I'm gonna sort of hear or even see in there.
A little bit sort of uneasy and uncomfortable about it, but Yeah, time to go anyway.
Dr Elizabeth Bezerra has dealt with several cases like this.
She was the first pathologist to recognise this bizarre behaviour and present it to the outside world.
(Speaks Portuguese) Apparently Mondays are the worst days for bodies coming in in this state.
People go out on picnics, having a drink on the weekend, they fall in the water, they disappear, then Mondays the bodies come to the surface.
So it sounds like we're not just talking about one or two animals.
The most that Doctor Elizabeth has taken from a corpse or found inside is more than 100 of these fish.
(They speak Portuguese) So these fish are sort of purpose-built for the task, it appears.
Cylindrical body, very smooth and slimy.
And then they have this mouth that, when it opens, it produces a circular bite.
These are actual photographs from the morgue that show the gunshot-wound-like holes.
And in some cases, the fish still inside the human corpse.
The body is literally eaten from the inside.
Just the bones and some skin remain.
It's you know, really quite a horrifying thing to visualise.
Unlike the harmless catfish of the US, Amazon catfish are proving to be a diverse group of gruesome killers.
And having heard this grizzly story, I'm strangely drawn to this macabre fish.
I'm keen to see a live one in action.
But I don't think I'll be using a human corpse as bait.
The thought of maybe more than 100 of these boring into a human body, I mean, they really are flesh-eating monsters.
It's not often you use a big fish to catch a small fish.
But after just two hours, it's definitely worked.
Oh, whoa, whoa! What was that? What was that? I don't know the scientific name for all the scavengers at this gruesome picnic.
The locals call these snakefish.
Eugh! And that is just disgusting.
That is horrible, whatever it is.
I hate That is one of the grossest sensations I think I've ever had.
I quite like fish but I don't like this one.
There's lighter bits of material in there.
I think what's happening - the shock of being pulled out - they're actually regurgitating bits of flesh into the water.
Hold on.
Hold on.
Hold on.
There's something a bit different in there.
If I can get it out I don't really want to shove my hand in there.
There.
There, there, there, there, there.
There, just hold it There we go.
So this is the candiru acu.
This is the fish that bores holes in the body and then devours from the inside out.
And it was this fish that they retrieved from those corpses in the morgue.
This was a heavy fish when it went in.
Look at the state of that.
It is just, you know, it's just been hollowed out.
And there's a hole here.
And that is, you know, it is just like a bullet hole.
Except nothing would have shot this fish.
It is a perfect round perforation in the skin.
Nothing left inside.
I'll just rip it open a little bit.
The candiru acu makes no distinction between human flesh and that of any other animal floating in the Amazon.
Just like a hollow case of skin with the remnants of the bone inside.
This is almost exactly what the autopsy report was in the morgue.
Except, in that case we were talking about a human being.
This water is obviously filled with flesh-eaters.
So I try and entice them to feed out of my hand.
I'm actually on somebody's house here and I'm just dangling this fish off the side.
These candiru are just attacking right on the surface.
I can see from here the way they are just drilling their way into that fish.
It's like a crocodile death roll, and no doubt the cause of the gunshot-like entry holes in the corpses.
I might try and lift them out.
Try and lift Look at that.
There's one there.
Back in the water.
Apparently these things give you a bite like a piranha.
Look at that.
That's a very, very definite cut.
And this is all the work of the candiru.
The Amazon River is a scavenger's paradise.
It's like an acid bath here for corpses.
And it's members of the catfish family that are one of the principal operators, cleaning up the bodies.
I've seen that here in the Amazon small catfish have a frightening ability to attack us where it hurts most.
And also to dispose of our bodies.
But what about the large catfish? I started this quest with a tale of a man-eater.
Can they really swallow something as big as themselves? I need to resume my hunt for the biggest catfish in the Amazon, the piraíba.
But no sooner have I cast into the water when my fishing guide Flavio spots a truly graphic example of over-ambitious Amazon predation.
Something that immediately reminds me of the man half swallowed by a fish.
We've just seen this floating down the river, quite a big one, still alive.
We thought it was dead to start with.
On investigation, it's got another one down its throat.
Flavio's just grabbing hold of the tail of it and pulling it out.
Look at that.
There's the tail of another fish.
So this fish almost choked to death on something too big to swallow, really.
If we can get the other fish out, it might survive.
But as it is Good grief! The size of that.
Look at that! Just look at the Good grief! Look at the size of the fish that other fish swallowed.
So that's the meal, the one that's looking slightly worse for wear.
And this is the greedy one that swallowed it.
Which might now recover.
(Laughs) This remarkable act of cannibalism is just as ambitious as the catfish that tried to swallow a man.
Maybe in these murky waters, accidentally biting off more than you can chew is a common occurrence.
If I ate something that big in relation to me, it would be about the size of a small child, or a medium-sized child, an eight year old.
You know.
It's just Ooh.
Some greedy fish in this river.
Reinvigorated by this chance encounter, I'm back on my quest in earnest.
Oh, just trying a different spot here.
Erm got a rapid at the top there, and then there's a deep hole with a clean bottom.
And this is a particular place for piraíba.
I've had a few fish recently that have taken the bait and I just haven't hooked up or they've come off.
Oh! (Bleep) It's come off.
So I'm doing something a little bit clever.
I'm putting a double hook rig on.
It doesn't have to take the entire bait.
Even if it just nips the tail of it or the body of it, I should hook up, get a good hook hold.
OK.
Go to the front of the boat.
There was movement there which certainly wasn't boat movement.
There was something actually on the end of the line.
Yep, there's something there definitely.
It's quite easy to get very excited when the rod starts banging around like that.
But I won't be in any doubt if it's a proper take.
I've just got to wait until this rod eventually just goes over like that.
A bit like that.
Flavio was fishing for bait but he's caught another species of catfish.
It's a small fish, this, but I'm holding it very, very gingerly because it has very sharp spines.
Very, very sharp spines here and here in particular.
Quite sharp there as well, you can see.
That is like a needle.
And the thing that's particularly nasty about that is that it also has barbs along that spine.
So if that goes in your finger, you're not gonna get it out.
You're gonna have to push it in through the same way.
Barbed all the way along.
I got one of these spines here stuck in that finger when I was fishing the Congo and it went right up the entire length.
It's one of the most painful things I've ever experienced in my life.
I had to rip it out cos there was no way that was going to continue through.
If that hadn't been ripped out, I'd be walking around today with a catfish attached to my right hand.
I'd better actually turn this rod because if something takes it like that, that could cut the line.
It's a fiddle getting this in position.
There.
A good time of day we're at now.
That was Something down there just grabbed the bait, bent the rod and then let go.
That is a fish on.
I think it's coming towards me.
What I don't want is the hook to come out like it has been doing.
It feels strange.
There are people who hook these fish and they are literally on for hours.
And it gets dark and they give up and cut the line.
I've come far too far to give up, so even though my muscles are aching, I carry on.
There's a very fast pulsing to it, not a throb, throb, throb, throb.
This is a big fish.
And I can only bully to a certain extent.
Strong, strong, strong fish.
Strong fish.
Strong fish.
After a struggle of nearly half an hour, I have the better of it.
There it is! There's the fish.
There's the fish! There's the fish.
A piraíba.
It's a piraíba.
Here we go.
This is the one I wanted.
This is the piraíba, the real monster of the Amazon.
(Deep gurgling) The fish is growling at me.
Phwoar.
Big old mouth on there.
Heavy, heavy fish.
I can hardly hold this up.
My arms are pretty shot anyway.
I can feel the fish flexing.
It's about to kick.
Oops.
And this is the one that people say when it gets big enough, it goes after people as well.
Looks a bit like a shark and it has a reputation to match.
This is a big one but they do go bigger.
This one, I don't know, possibly about 80 pounds.
You know, this is a man-size fish but they go bigger than man-size.
They go a size big enough to swallow a man.
A streamlined fish.
Smooth skin, no scales.
But it's a very streamlined catfish.
Most catfish are pretty slobby, they mope around on muddy bottoms.
But this is a fish of fairly fast current, and I can just feel that muscle flexing.
That's a lovely, lovely result.
And am I tired, am I tired! What I've got to do, though, is remember that the fish is as tired as I am, so although I want to admire it out of the water, I've got to get it back and think of the fish's recovery as well.
(Growls) Ooh.
Ooh.
OK.
And he's gone.
What a river monster.
In my investigation, I've seen how, in these murky waters, catfish sometimes make mistakes.
I've seen how catfish make no distinction between human and other flesh.
And I've seen first-hand how in the Amazon, fish will bite off more than they can chew.
So if you combine these findings and imagine this piraíba three times the size, still well within the maximum recorded weight, then just ask yourself are those accounts of fish swallowing people just fisherman's tales? I came here in search of a man-eating fish but instead I found a Mafia-like family of killers that are surely the Amazon's most frightening river monsters.