Quotes from Jeremy Wade

I don't see myself as a particularly expert angler.

People assume I'm fearless. A lot of the things I deal with are pretty scary. Fear makes you pay attention - it's about absolute concentration.

Fishing is quite a good metaphor for life. You do your prep, you do your thinking, you put your bait out, and you wait, confident that you've done your groundwork. But a lot of life is luck.

I did catch a bull shark, and also accidentally caught two very large groupers. The bigger one was not far short of 400 lbs. It just reinforced that fishing is about the unexpected. You sit there waiting for one thing, and then something totally different comes along.

I think fish do have personalities. Fish have very small brains so there's not much going on in there. But different types of fish have different personalities.

Florida's nice and warm, there's all sorts of stuff living there that shouldn't be there!

I've been stabbed by a catfish. They've got quite sharp spines on their pectoral fins.

Fishermen can be very superstitious and sometimes you do find yourself thinking, this fish has got a curse on it, it's just not going to happen.

The stream at the end of your street can be a place where you make contact with this whole other amazing world hidden right there beneath the surface. Fishing can be the passport to that world.

A river without monsters is a scarier prospect because it means the water is unhealthy.

The first time you catch a fish, it's amazing. You make contact with this whole other world that exists, hidden, under the water.

Even without the creatures living in it, water is dangerous. We have an ambivalent relationship with water. It's the source of life, it's the source of food, but it's also a source of death, if you're not careful.

The other thing is, visibility is often not very good in fresh water. So if a fish bites something, a part of the body, it doesn't actually always realize that it's part of a body. It just sees something sort of waving around in front of it.

We all need a bit of mystery in our lives, and rivers offer plenty of that.

Lake Garda it's very different. The northern part of the lake is very much Loch Ness, deep sides, but as soon as you get into the south it opens out. You walk around, you see shallow waters, and you see weeds that should feed a small fish. You think, 'Ah, this is different'.

The way that we live with potentially dangerous animals is not to kill them, but to understand them and to coexist with them.

I like eating fish and the thing is when I'm on a shoot, quite often the fish that I catch are bigger than me. Although I have a very healthy appetite I could normally eat about a pound of fish in a meal. I can't eat 100 pounds of fish or 200 pounds of fish.

Being in front of a class full of kids, you are giving a performance. You have to get their attention. You've got to awaken their curiosity. You become a bit of an entertainer.

Everything starts with fishermen's tales. Everywhere you go the fishermen talk.

One of my favorite fish is the Arapaima. It lives in the Amazon and they grow maybe nine feet long and one might weigh two of me.

I think it's true to say that everybody has a fascination with predators. It's something that's hardwired into us.

There's less mystery in the sea than there is in fresh water. If you look at television there's lots of documentaries on whales, on coral reefs, the deep oceanic trenches. There's loads of stuff. But as soon as you look for anything about fresh water, the information is very sketchy.

A fish with a big mouth, like a catfish, they've been known to bite people's legs. Normally not because they're hungry, but because they're protecting a nest or something like that.

It's a bit like some martial arts: if you're behind somebody there's not much they can do, if you're in a certain position. So same thing with a fish, if you're in the right position you're okay. As soon as you get in the wrong position you can be in very real danger.