Kidsday talks with "River Monsters" Jeremy Wade

We had the pleasure of interviewing extreme fisherman Jeremy Wade at the London Hotel in Manhattan. He is the host of “River Monsters” on Animal Planet.

Wade goes to the Congo and Amazon rivers, as well as other remote places, to catch the most dangerous fish. He is also a writer. When he is not on an adventure, he lives in Bristol, England. We had so much fun talking to him, we couldn’t leave. He just had one amazing story after another.

The new season starts Sunday night at 10  on Animal Planet. We suggest you watch it!

We asked Wade if he was ever afraid of a fish.
He said: “Some fish are potentially very dangerous. One of the episodes in Season 2, we were catching sharks up a river. . . . I was with some scientist and we wanted to put a tag on it so we can actually follow it around. So that meant that we had to get where we actually had to grab hold of it . . . and try to hold it still while we put the tag on it. . . . I did have my hands fairly close to his mouth, but anyway, I’ve still got all my fingers. A shark in the river, that got the heart beating.”

We wanted to know what other creatures he would go after on “River Monsters.”
He said: “We fished for a giant stingray. . . . I caught a very big stingray in the river that was too heavy to weigh accurately. It was about 6 feet across and, being a stingray, it’s got a poisonous spine on its tail.”

Even though the camera is mostly on Wade, we wanted to know how many tech people are with him when filming.
Wade said: “There’s normally quite a small group because we need to be quite mobile. Very often they’ll be in boats with our equipment. . . . Even a lot of people who fish don’t seem to understand, they seem to forget that fish are wild animals and in order to get close to fish you’ve got to be quite quiet, and if there’s too many of you dropping bags on the bank and knocking things inside the boat, the fish are going to be nowhere near. . . . So it’s normally myself, a director, a cameraman, sound recordist, and sometimes we have a general assistant producer whose job it is to make sure everything runs smoothly and line everything up.”

We asked Wade what things he liked about the show.
He answered: “One thing about these shows . . . we don’t script them, but we obviously have to plan them very carefully — where we’re going to go, who we’re going to meet. But then the thing is you get there and they take on a life of their own. Obviously, you’re going to get surprises. The fish are going to surprise you. And because the shows have a limited length, very often not everything gets into the show. We film all the shows, but some of them are still being put together. So I don’t know what’s in them until I see them.” 

We asked Wade if he ever fished on Long Island.
He said: “I had an e-mail from somebody who runs a fishing shop on LI.   . . . I quite would like to go out and fish for sharks off LI.”