Quotes from Jeremy Wade

A lot of fish that live in the sea, they are your normal, nice, pretty, silvery, shiny fish.

But the whole reason I fish is that you never know for sure what is down there. Unless you drained Loch Ness you will never be certain what's living in it.

It took me six years going to the Amazon, three months at a time, to actually track down the arapaima. That's commonly said to be the biggest fresh-water fish in the world. Nobody knows for sure, but a lot of people think so.

When the fish relaxes, that's when I bring the rod down and reel in. But you don't rush it. If it runs, you let it run.

Once I started catching fish I was very curious to see what other fish there are. This happens to most people who fish - they want to catch bigger fish.

With rivers, you don't have a lot of room to work, and with the bigger fish that I'm catching, you might have just a few feet to work with.

I gave up fishing in England. It got too crowded.

The 'River Monsters' episodes acted a bit like a whodunit - there was a crime scene, maybe someone had been pulled under, and we had to find out what happened.

I made a series set in India that was more of a conventional fishing show. The fish were very uncooperative, so we were casting around for other bits of local color. We heard local stories of something pulling people into the water. They called it the Kali man-eater. We did a bit of a feature on this, and if formed part of that series.

I was 7 or 8, and my parents gave me a rod and reel as a way to get me out of the house. My first fish was a roach fish, and I remember being frightened to touch it. It was wriggling and cold blooded, but it was magical.

The thing about the oceans is there is the benefit of water clarity. You can see what's going on there, but a lot of fresh water is murky. You just can't see what's there and I think, for that reason, rivers haven't featured so much on wildlife TV.

I was on the Mekong River between the border of Thailand and Laos. I was there to find the elusive Mekong giant catfish but the border police were suspicious. Along with my film, they confiscated my passport and started making accusations about my political allegiances.

Bull sharks get quite a lot of bad press.

With 'River Monsters', I am the investigator: here's the crime scene, I talk to witnesses, I establish a suspects list, I narrow it down; here's the prime suspect, I go and arrest the prime suspect - who often doesn't want to come quietly.

You don't necessarily have to go to some exotic location halfway around the world. You can find that other world very close to where you live.

The thing is, if you always catch fish then you lose interest because any achievement is related to facing difficulty; having to work hard for it.

We are descended from people who paid attention to dangerous things in the environment. People who didn't pay attention to dangerous things in the environment didn't get to survive and to breed.

Most sharks can't tolerate freshwater but bull sharks have a quirk of their physiology that enables them to.

It's always the crocodile you don't see you have to worry about.

I've had some hands on experience with some very big bull sharks. One false move you could be minus a few fingers or worse. You've got to respect them because it's more about what they are capable of.

The worst thing that happened when filming 'River Monsters' was the time when our sound recordist was hit by lightning.

If I'd had a magic ejector seat when I went to Zaire, which is now the Democratic Republic of Congo, I would have pressed it multiple times. I felt totally out of my depth. I had no money and there was precious little infrastructure so I had to barter to survive.

Twenty-five years ago my two main target species were goliath tigerfish and arapaima from the Amazon. Each took me six years to track down and catch, over the course of three expeditions to the Congo and six to the Amazon.

I try to sneak a bit of education into the entertainment. We don't preach to people, but we do try to give them very strong messages.