River Monsters
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3.8 • 22 Ratings
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- £2.99
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- £2.99
Publisher Description
A tale of obsession and very big fish from Jeremy Wade, the presenter of ITV's RIVER MONSTERS.
Over ten feet long, it weighs in at nearly a quarter of a ton. Covering its back are armoured plates made of bone. Five hundred stiletto-sharp teeth line its long crocodilian jaws. It's a prehistoric beast of staggering proportions; a fearsome creature from the time of the dinosaurs.
But the Alligator Gar, an air-breathing survivor from the Cretaceous period is still with us today, patrolling inland rivers, hunting in murky waters shared by human communities.
And for Jeremy Wade, described as the 'greatest angling explorer of his generation', the Gar and other outlandish freshwater predators have been an obsession for all his adult life. With names like Arapaima, Snakehead, Goonch, Goliath Tigerfish and Electric Eel, many of them have acquired an almost mythical status.
In a quest that has taken him from the Amazon to the Congo, and from North America to the mountains of India, Wade has pursued the truth about these little known, often misunderstood animals. Along the way he's survived a plane crash, malaria and a fish-inflicted blow to the chest that, according to a later scan, caused permanent scarring to his heart.
In RIVER MONSTERS, Wade delivers a sometimes jaw-dropping blend of adventure, natural history, legend and detective work. It reads like a hunt for the Loch Ness Monster. But it's all true.
These are fisherman's tales like you've never heard before. The stories of the ones that didn't get away ...
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"Casting a line into the water is like asking a question," Wade writes charmingly in his first book, a tie-in to his popular show on Animal Planet, but the answer often comes in the form of a terrifying creature from the deep. In this collection of fish stories on steroids, Wade goes to such exotic locales as India, where he searches for the golden Himalayan mahseer, "a fish said to grow to 200 pounds," and Thailand, to find the Mekong giant catfish, reportedly tipping the scales at 646 pounds. Wade always paints a colorful portrait, describing his journey to Lizard Lake in the Amazon, for instance, as one of "waiting for trucks that never came and sleeping in rat- and bedbug-infested brothels." He was on his way to see red-bellied piranhas, making a rather memorable impression that fish don't have to be big to be brutal. Wade is an immensely likeable host, a man's man with stories that will make most men cringe, as when he recalls a plane crash, or the shallow-water bol kata of Papua New Guinea, an unpredictable fish that is as likely to clamp down on his genitals as it is to swim slowly by. Let Wade stand in the shallow water; this is a great way to get a few vicarious thrills.
Customer Reviews
I’m sad the finish the book.
The only book that has made me sad to finish. After watching all the river monster series the book really opened my eyes to how crazy and interesting Jeremy Wade is.
Fantastic read I’m looking forward to reading his next book. (How to think like a fish)
River monsters
Love it ( no more skinny dipping)