The one that didn't get away (From Stroud News and Journal)

The one that didn't get away

What has life left to offer after a prime job on the News & Journal? Well, in the case of former reporter Jeremy Wade, an Amazon adventure, a hair-raising plane crash in the jungle and his own TV series.

Here the erstwhile reporter talks to one-time desk mate Sam Bond about the fishing trip of a life time.

WHEN most people go fishing they tend to look for a quiet spot on the river bank to while away a quiet afternoon.

They don't usually book a plane tickets to Brazil and invite along a film crew. And this, says Jeremy Wade, could be where they are missing out.

Back in July the intrepid former SNJ reporter left his Minchinhampton home to go in search of the Amazonian Arapaima, known to the locals as the pirarucu, the largest living fresh water fish known to man.

"The locals hunt it with a vengeance," he said. "It's actually now classed as an endangered species because it's been very heavily netted and speared over the years.

"Because it's such a big fish the Indians didn't really bother with it. "They didn't have the technology to catch it and it was far too big for an evening meal so they left it alone.

"But when the Portuguese arrived they had a tradition of eating salt fish and had metal spears." Despite its endangered status Jeremy is adamant there is no risk of extinction, though he accepts they are far less common than they were 20 years ago.

The Arapaima is, to an extent, a victim of its own success. It comes to the surface to take gulps of air which was a handy evolutionary adaptation when water levels dropped in the dry season and lakes began to stagnate.

Unlike most of its cousins it would not get short of breath in the oxygen-free water and could mop up all the other fish that had gone belly-up.

But evolution had not taken account of human hunters and it is not such a useful trick if fishermen armed with harpoons are waiting on the surface ready to spear you when you come up for air.

The locals still use wicked-looking barbed harpoons which are jabbed into the fish as it surfaces.

"Even the smaller one's can pull a boat," said Jeremy. "The canoes can get dragged around the lake for up to four hours by one of these things, it's a bit like old-style whaling.

"Although fishing them is now banned without a licence, everybody still does it because the backwoodsmen don't have any other source of cash."

"Here fishing is very much a minority interest and a bit of an anorak occupation," said Jeremy.

"But in the Amazon, fishing is something that everybody's life depends on."

Although Jeremy's love of fishing gave him some common ground with the Brazilians they did find his techniques hard to understand. "There were a bit baffled by the rod and line," he said.

"Most of them found it boring and didn't understand why I caught fish then put them back. "And they couldn't fathom why I had come all the way from England to crash through the jungle and generally suffer."

But, he said, they were happy to accept him and show him how they lived. Jeremy's adventure was filmed for the Discovery Channel to make a five-episode documentary, Jungle Hooks.

As well as charting his search for the big fish it shows him getting an insight into how the locals not only survive but thrive in what can be a pretty harsh environment. His quest for a giant Arapaima did not have an auspicious beginning and with just days to go he had still only caught a small specimen.

Even baiting the line was a problem because a lot of the lakes were full of piranhas. "The line just starts vibrating the moment you cast it out and within a few minutes there's nothing left on the hook," he said.

But with perfect dramatic timing Jeremy hooked the fish of his life with just hours to spare before having to leave the jungle.

And no trip to the Amazon would be complete without dramatically crashing your plane through the jungle canopy and having to hike back to civilisation through a swamp.

"We were doing some aerial filming, circling over the forest and we were just coming down to have a closer look at a lake when there was a loud bang from the engine which started running very erratically and the plane started vibrating.

"We rapidly lost height and the plane ploughed into the tops of the trees." Luckily the plane crashed into a rubber tree which cushioned the impact. "It flexed and then cracked, dropping us down into the swamp," said Jeremy.

"There was an overwhelming smell of fuel and at the same time there was this liquid surging over legs and up to my waist and I fully expected the whole lot to go up in smoke at any moment.

"But I realised it was water with a thin layer of fuel floating on top." The fun was not over, however, as the water continued to rise, rapidly filling up the cockpit, and Jeremy found the harness which had stopped him crashing through the windscreen seconds earlier was about to be his demise.

"I couldn't get it undone, which was pretty scary," he said. "I was just about to cut through the belt with my knife when the pilot reached under the water and undid the buckle."

Though they had all survived the crash, they now found themselves in the middle of an Amazonian swamp with no radio to call for help.

The Brazilian guide whacked a big buttress root with his machete, a jungle distress call, and within 15 minutes they were found by locals who had been out in the forest. It was a lucky escape.

"The guide said that if we'd come down ten minutes earlier when we were further from the town it would have been much harder to get out of the jungle," said Jeremy. "If we had to spend a night in the swamp and somebody had been bleeding then we might have had a problem with piranhas or caiman."

After that most customers would expect their money back but Jeremy and the film crew accepted a free flight out of town instead - on a plane with two engines.

Jeremy is not unaware of the arguments against sport fishing but argues a competent fisherman does little harm.

"All the fish I don't eat I put back and I handle them very carefully when they are out of the water to minimise the stress," he said.

"A lot of Amazon fish do feed on very spiky little cat fish and their mouths aren't as sensitive as ours.

"It does bother me slightly and I'm not totally deaf to the arguments about cruelty and causing distress.

"We all live at the expense of other living creatures at the end of the day." He said part of the fun was pitting his wits against the fish and there was something satisfying about winning that battle of will and cunning.

"On the other hand, if you don't, you have to accept the fact you've been outsmarted by a fish," he laughed.

Jeremy has been fishing since he was a child but his interest in taking his hobby to far flung corners of the globe was inspired by a newspaper article he read about someone embarking on a fishing expedition in India.

He thought he would like to do the same thing himself and he did, twice, before moving on to bigger fish in the Congo. "The African trips were all about trying to catch Goliath tiger fish," he said.

"It's a relative of the piranha but can weigh up to 14 or 16 stone." After landing his own Goliaths, which took three trips, Jeremy had to decide where to go next.

"The Amazon seemed to be the next logical step," he said. "Going from the world's second biggest rainforest to the biggest."

He is already researching his next trip but is keeping tight lipped about exactly what and where his quarry will be, but he said it will be a far cry from hunting arapaima in the Amazon.

* Jungle Hooks will first be shown on Discovery Home and Leisure channel at 9pm on Friday, December 20 when all five half-hour episodes will run consecutively. It will then be aired on Discovery at 4pm every afternoon from Monday, December 23 to Friday, December 27.