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Documentary, River Monsters S09E04 Return of the Killer Catfis
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00:01I'm Jeremy Wade, explorer, biologist, and aquatic detective.
00:07I've fought battles with river and marine monsters all over the world,
00:11and I've been pushed to the limit time and again.
00:15But one extraordinary encounter stands out.
00:19It's in the fast water.
00:21Try and relax and keep a bit calm.
00:23On my first ever river monsters shoot, I landed a rare gunch catfish as big as me.
00:30That is a big fish.
00:33Since then, I've heard little about the gunch.
00:36I feared that they were gone for good.
00:39But now, from India's neighbour, Nepal, intriguing stories are surfacing
00:45of fishermen dragged into mountain rivers never to be seen again.
00:50But after that, he's just so terrified of what's in the water.
00:53He's now a farmer.
00:54Might need the boat.
00:55Is my old adversary, the deadly gunch catfish, back from the brink and back in business?
01:02A decade ago, in my first ever river monsters investigation, I spent six gruelling weeks on India's Kali river,
01:17trying to unmask the elusive monster behind a series of deadly attacks.
01:35I was exhausted and close to giving up when I was propelled into a raging river by an underwater beast.
01:46After an epic struggle, I finally caught the culprit.
01:50A 161 pound underwater ogre with a taste for human flesh.
01:58The giant devil catfish known as the gunch.
02:04Catching this ferocious fish made my reputation and launched river monsters.
02:10Since then, the Kali river has experienced rapid development and population growth.
02:18Parts have become so polluted, they've been declared a health hazard.
02:22I feared that Big Gunch had disappeared from the region's rivers.
02:29But now, an unexpected report from the Himalayan country of Nepal.
02:35A mysterious incident that feels strangely familiar.
02:40A lone fisherman on a mountain river, dragged off his feet and into the water by an unseen creature.
02:50His body never recovered.
02:54Could this be the work of the gunch?
02:57I have to find out.
03:02I'm heading 4,500 miles to Asia and the mighty Himalayan mountains.
03:11The top of the world is new territory for me.
03:15My destination, Nepal, is home to eight of the world's ten highest peaks.
03:21Including the highest of them all, Mount Everest.
03:25These mountains are the source of many great rivers.
03:29I'm curious to find out what lives in these remote waters.
03:40I'm curious to see you.
03:41I'm curious to see you.
03:42I'm curious to see you.
03:43I'm curious to see you.
03:44I'm curious to see you.
03:45I'm curious to see you.
03:47Katmandu is the spiritual and cultural heart of Nepal.
03:53A place of gods, ghosts, and demons.
04:00Looking at all these amazing carvings, it's not hard to imagine that this could be a place where you might find some strange monsters.
04:06The first step of my investigation is to meet my source for the recent story.
04:22Colonel Mike Allen.
04:27Mike spent 40 years as a soldier with the elite Gurkha regiment and many decades fishing the country's rivers.
04:35Like me, he has a fascination for the beasts that lurk in them.
04:39One hears reports of huge fish tucked away in some very deep pools.
04:46Mike still keeps his ear to the ground for interesting stories.
04:50And he's able to tell me where the mysterious case of the disappearing fishermen took place.
04:55On Nepal's longest and wildest river, the Karnali.
04:59Getting there won't be easy, so I've enlisted an experienced driver, Mahesh.
05:12The journey takes me through the foothills of the Himalayas, where rockfalls and landslides are common.
05:19This road, if you can call it that, is literally scratched into the side of a very unstable mountain.
05:27And every monsoon, huge bits of that mountainside slide down and end up in the river.
05:35Mahesh warns me that the devastating earthquake of 2015 made many roads here impassable.
05:42Look at this, boulders the size of a house, so at this stage I'm not actually sure if I'm going to make it through.
06:00We finally make it to the village of Kino, where the fishermen who disappeared lived.
06:05The villagers are aware of the case.
06:13Anybody else here who might know more about it? Thank you.
06:18I'm directed to the owner of the local tea house.
06:29Nawal was once a fisherman here on the Karnali river.
06:31He was friends with the man who disappeared and has agreed to talk about the incident.
06:37Can you tell me exactly what happened to this man just recently?
06:40What happened to him?
06:44As I question him about the mysterious case, I can start to see what happened.
06:50The incident took place just downstream from the village at a popular fishing spot.
06:56Ali, an experienced fisherman, was throwing a cast net from the shallows.
07:02His morning had been slow, so he stayed on after the other men had headed home.
07:10He was never seen again.
07:15According to Nawal, Ali was a strong swimmer and unlikely to have drowned.
07:26And if he had, a body would have turned up somewhere down river.
07:31But despite a search that went on for 20 days, no corpse was ever found.
07:36The consensus among the villagers is that Ali was dragged in to his death.
07:47What creature could have been powerful enough to drag a man into the water and devour his body?
07:57A big gunch catfish would have the power, and I know it has a reputation for disposing of the dead.
08:06But would it attack a man who's fighting back?
08:10I can't just assume a gunch is guilty.
08:14I need to consider other big predators that haunt Nepal's rivers.
08:19There's one I have in mind.
08:20But when I ask around, I don't get the answers I'm expecting.
08:26When you hear about people disappearing in the river in this part of the world,
08:32where possibly some large underwater creature is involved,
08:35top of the list of suspects is normally crocodiles.
08:39The thing is, if you've got crocodiles in the water, you're going to see them from time to time out of the water as well,
08:43because they have to come out into the heat to warm themselves up.
08:46And the people here just don't see them.
08:47I have a hunch why the locals don't come across crocodiles on this part of the Carnali.
08:54Rivers here are either rain or glacier-fed,
08:58and this affects the water's year-round temperature, and ultimately what lives in it.
09:05The cloudy grey colour of the water, the result of sediment known as rock flower,
09:11tells me that this is meltwater from the mountains, and will remain cold all year.
09:18Crocodiles dislike cold water, and since they've not been seen by the locals who've fished this river for centuries,
09:26I've scratched crocs from my suspect list.
09:29There must be something else, large enough to drag a man into this river.
09:37But what is it?
09:39I've got more questions for Nawal.
09:41And this time, he reveals more.
09:51There was another incident on the same stretch of river, and Nawal himself was the victim.
09:57I'm in remote western Nepal, on the trail of a river monster reported to have dragged a fisherman to a watery grave.
10:15Fairly close to the side of the river, and how deep was the water?
10:23I've just uncovered a second story with intriguing parallels to the first.
10:27A few years ago, Nawal was out fishing with a group of friends.
10:35They had fished this spot before, and knew the waters well.
10:39Suddenly, something very large became entangled in Nawal's net.
10:45He tried to hang on, but was being dragged away downstream.
10:50Even with the help of his friends, Nawal was unable to control whatever was in his net.
10:59He was pulled, he told me, about a hundred yards downstream, and it was only because these other guys stopped what they were doing and came to assist him that he survived.
11:14The original victim, Ali, didn't have people around to help him.
11:19But why didn't he simply let go of the net?
11:22Nawal tells me that fishermen loop the cord to the net around their wrist, so they don't lose it.
11:36This isn't normally dangerous.
11:40But if something really big gets in the net, the cord becomes a deadly noose.
11:52Nawal believes that this is what happened to Ali.
11:56And one extra little detail, Nawal himself, he doesn't fish anymore.
12:00He said after that he's just so terrified of what is in the water.
12:04He's now a farmer, doesn't go near the water.
12:09Both these stories remind me of my own experience ten years ago in India.
12:15I too was overpowered, forced into a river, and could have drowned.
12:20But I can't blame a gunch without proof.
12:29There could be other suspects here on the Karnali.
12:32It's a major river and flows all the way from the high Himalayas to the mighty Ganges.
12:38It contains many species, and no doubt some surprises under the surface.
12:47No, that's not working.
12:48But things are bumpy from the start.
12:53This is the second cast.
12:55Two casts, one snag.
12:57It's just the nature of this kind of fishing.
12:59You've got to be philosophical about it.
13:00You've got to have plenty of spare gear as well.
13:03After hours of trying, my frustrations begin to mount.
13:12Slightly revising my opinion of this place.
13:17I haven't got that gut feeling, I haven't got that sense of anticipation of something could happen at any moment.
13:26I switch up my gear just to try and get something on the line.
13:36Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
13:39Yes.
13:45It's stuck on something.
13:46That snag, that's a line or a net.
13:54Damn.
13:55I've lost my lure on something in the river.
14:02Yeah, that's the line, that would have been, that would have been at the knot to my swivel.
14:10This is a bad sign.
14:15I'm hoping the fisherman can tell me what's preventing me from getting to the fish.
14:21Here, big fish now?
14:23Big fish.
14:2515 kg.
14:27It quickly becomes clear that there are two problems here.
14:30So now a lot of people are fishing this river.
14:35The river is overfished, and the equipment being used is left hidden in the water for days,
14:41and sometimes even discarded there.
14:44So it's probably something like that that I got caught up on.
14:48Mostly this is going to be under the surface.
14:50I'm going to discover one of these when I hook up on it.
14:54A single rod and line in this place.
14:56I'm just not going to get anything of note at all.
15:02I need to find a stretch of river that's not riddled with nets and lines waiting to snag my gear.
15:09A place where fewer people are fishing.
15:14When briefing me on the region, Colonel Mike told me about an area he's fished before.
15:19In the lower part, which is the Babai River.
15:22He said the Babai River is isolated and difficult to access, so this should mean less fishing activity.
15:32From a nearby high point, things look promising.
15:36Little evidence of habitation.
15:39On the river's edge, there are other encouraging signs.
15:47These marks were made by sucker-mouth fish swimming over the rock and feeding on algae.
15:55Here we go, here's the head of the fish.
15:57The sucker is here, and it's just moving along slowly sucking up algae.
16:00And what these marks tell me is three things.
16:04First thing is that a couple of months ago, the water level was somewhere up here.
16:09Two, there are small fish in this river, and we're talking about something this size that would have made these marks here.
16:15And three, normally when you've got small fish, you're going to find something bigger that wants to feed on them.
16:20After my frustrations on the Carnali, I'm eager to get a line in these pristine waters.
16:31Now I have a real chance of tracking down the monster that's stalking this region's rivers.
16:37Yeah, there's something pulling there, there we go.
16:55Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, got a fish.
16:56I am in western Nepal, investigating mysterious incidents where fishermen were dragged into rivers, one to his death.
17:15And I finally got a fish on my line.
17:20Look at that, look at that.
17:26This is a marsia.
17:32I think the first thing to be said about this is that it's a very pretty fish.
17:37These large golden scales, very streamlined body.
17:41This is what, back in the days of the British Empire, the colonial gents in their time off used to come and fish for.
17:47These potentially grow to over 100 pounds, some stories even maybe 200 pounds.
17:53I've caught large marsia myself.
17:56I caught one over 90 pounds.
17:58So this is certainly a fish that if somebody got it in their throw net, this is absolutely capable of pulling you in the water.
18:07Although it doesn't look like it, this is actually a predator.
18:10It has a very muscular mouth, which is sort of telescopic.
18:13It's quite capacious there.
18:14It feeds on the bottom, going over rocks, feeling with ease.
18:19But that's capable of taking quite large prey.
18:22And it does have teeth, but the teeth are not in the normal place.
18:26They are throat teeth, they're in the back of the throat.
18:27A large marsia can be a formidable fish, but I'd need to see how big they grow here to be convinced it's a serious suspect.
18:40The Babai River is clearly worth investigating.
18:45I'll need a boat to travel downstream.
18:49When I explain what I'm looking for and why, I'm directed to a man named Firalal.
18:55He has a remarkable story.
19:08A couple of years ago, Firalal was walking by the river.
19:12It was late in the day and getting dark.
19:16He noticed something at the water's edge and went to investigate.
19:21He couldn't see what the creature was.
19:31But it was large and semi-submerged.
19:37Firalal thought it was dead.
19:42It wasn't.
19:47He had to tear himself free.
19:50So it's here.
19:52Do you have any scar, any mark?
19:56The scars extend from his shoulder to his wrist.
20:00This animal was big.
20:03When I ask him what he thought it was, he uses a word in his local dialect that I'm guessing means crocodile.
20:10But this doesn't add up.
20:11If that had been a crocodile, either you don't get your arm back or you're not around to tell the story, or you've got great big holes in your arm.
20:24And I've seen crocodile bites. That's not a crocodile bite. That's something else. I really need to find out what exactly that was.
20:29Could this same monster be responsible for the incidents on the Karnali River?
20:38Firalal's terrifying encounter happened downstream inside a national park where no one is allowed to live.
20:44I need permission to go there.
20:48At the park office, the ranger warns me about potential dangers on the Babai River.
20:54So the water was all the way up to the bridge, to the road?
20:57Just two years ago, there was a massive flood.
21:06Few people have ventured here since.
21:10To help me navigate safely downstream, I'm assigned two guides.
21:15Gandhi and Kathak.
21:17They explain that the river has narrow sections of fast water, punctuated by wider, slow-flowing pools, which will be best for fishing.
21:36I think this could be a good position to fish from.
21:39Yeah, I think I'll try here.
21:41The river takes us through alluvial grasslands and thick sub-tropical forest.
21:51My guides warn me there are rhinos and tigers here.
21:55So I'll have to watch my back as we continue down river.
22:03Push, push, push.
22:12For Gandhi and Kathak, every trip down the Babai is a new challenge, because the river's course is constantly changing.
22:32This is just the fact that the river floods every year.
22:35And every year it will subtly rearrange the river, but sometimes it will rearrange it in a rather dramatic way.
22:44The recent massive flood may also have changed the underwater geography of the river, and displaced some of the fish.
22:52Which could make tracking down suspects a tougher task.
22:57Oh yeah, alright.
22:58Throw it and then we'll tie it under.
23:01I'm eager to get down to the scene of Firalal's attack, but my guides advise that we stop and make camp.
23:16It's a good thing we did.
23:18That's pretty definitely an elephant crossing place there, just at the bottom of this pool.
23:26And they come out 75 yards away from our camp, so good job we didn't put the camp a little bit further down.
23:36They might have got a bit upset if you don't want to upset these guys.
23:40Wild elephants could tear apart our camp if they stumbled on it in the dark.
23:44My guides tell me that every year in lowland Nepal, people are killed by elephant herds.
23:57The next morning I'm itching to get on and get fishing.
24:00What about this though?
24:01Crocodile tracks.
24:02They indicate the water must be warmer here on the Babai than on the Karnali.
24:16So crocs have to be on the suspect list for any attack here.
24:19But Firalal's scars were like no crocodile bites I've ever seen.
24:27They were made by a narrower jawed monster.
24:31More like an alligator gar maybe, a fish I know well.
24:36Actually laying hands on this historic beast.
24:39But gar are not native to these waters.
24:42There's got to be something else out here.
24:51We continue downstream to the area where Firalal was attacked.
24:56Yeah, let's try one from just here.
25:00With tigers and crocs on the banks, I'm staying in the boat.
25:03I'm not sure what attacked Firalal, but it's in here somewhere.
25:16Oh, there we go.
25:19Yep.
25:21Whoa!
25:22I'm in remote Western Nepal, investigating three mysterious cases.
25:38And I've got a fish on.
25:40There it is.
25:44I have no landing net or anything, so that might impede me just a little bit.
25:52There.
25:57That is a snake head.
25:59I've seen snake head in the Indian subcontinent.
26:01Normally just a few inches long.
26:02I've used them for bait.
26:04But this thing?
26:05This has got to be, I don't know,
26:07about the ten pound mark, something like that.
26:10But I have it on good authority that these grow considerably bigger.
26:14A reliable estimate of 90 pounds.
26:17And if you've got one of those in a throw net,
26:19particularly when one of these is fresh, full of energy,
26:20that could well pull you in.
26:24I wouldn't want to be in that position myself.
26:27A big snake head could have been responsible for the dragging incidents on the Karnali.
26:32But what about the attack on Firalal, here on the Babai?
26:36It's one of the very few fish that will actually go for a person,
26:40knowing that it's a person.
26:42You know, it's not poor visibility, mistaken identity, reflex grab, anything like that.
26:46This is one fish that really does punch above its weight.
26:51Putting on a bite-proof glove here, I'm going to try and have a look at the teeth.
26:56A lot of predatory fish swallow their prey whole.
27:00Some predatory fish, such as piranhas, bite lumps out.
27:05And you can look at their teeth and you can tell that that's what they do.
27:07This, it's a bit misleading.
27:10They don't look like cutting teeth, they look like gripping teeth.
27:14They're like needles.
27:16But in fact what they do is when they grip their prey,
27:21if they shake the head, those teeth act rather like the teeth on a saw blade
27:25and they can actually cut a small fish in half in a fraction of a second.
27:29It looks like this has been injured by something.
27:36On the other side as well, it looks like something's had a go at it.
27:42Anything that attacks a three-foot snakehead is going to be a serious predator.
27:48And the tooth marks again suggest a narrow-jawed assailant.
27:54Whatever bit into this snakehead may be what attacked Firilal.
28:11Half an hour downstream, I spot something way up ahead at the water's edge
28:15and decide to investigate.
28:39It's a long dark shape.
28:41It's hard to make out of this distance though.
28:43The creature emerges.
28:53But it's not a crock.
28:56The knob on its long thin jaw is unmistakable.
29:00I can hardly believe what I'm seeing.
29:04This is a gharial.
29:06Possibly the rarest river monster of them all.
29:09This is one of the scarcest predators in the world.
29:14There's barely more than 200 of them left.
29:16I am now close enough to get a real appreciation of the size of the animal.
29:19It's at least 15 feet.
29:20But also I can start to see those jaws, the jaws and the teeth.
29:25And I'll tell you, although scientists say these are specifically designed for catching and eating fish,
29:30when you're this close to one, the adrenaline is definitely pumping.
29:35For me, it's the encounter of a lifetime.
29:38Because of hunting and habitat loss, the gharial is critically endangered in the wild and is now protected.
29:46I have no doubt that this was the narrow-jawed animal that scarred the snake head.
29:57But is the gharial responsible for the attacks I'm investigating?
30:01It's time to take stock.
30:07Well, the suspect list I've managed to assemble so far contains some pretty impressive beasts,
30:12but somehow I don't think there's a particularly compelling case for any one of them.
30:18The marcia can grow big, but I've not seen large enough ones here.
30:25The snake head can do some real damage, but I don't think it's aggressive enough to actually kill someone.
30:33And the gharial, it's certainly big enough and has the power and weaponry to be seriously dangerous.
30:40And with a jaw much narrower than a crox, I'm pretty certain this is the creature that scarred Firilal.
30:49But what about the incidents on the Karnali River?
30:55In this case, water temperature is key.
30:59Since it's too cold for crocodiles on the Karnali, I don't think gharial would be there either.
31:08I've been trying to keep an open mind, but every sign points to the beast that drew me here in the first place.
31:18Possibly, of all the monsters I've tangled with in my career, the most memorable.
31:24The gunch catfish.
31:27The gunch ripped me from a riverbank in just the same way that narwhal was overpowered.
31:32And its taste for human flesh could account for Ali's body never being recovered.
31:41The gunch has the means and the motive, and I know this fish is capable of the crime.
31:46It's now my prime suspect.
31:50Might need the boat.
31:51Time for a showdown with the original river monster.
31:54I'm in western Nepal investigating three mysterious cases.
32:08I believe I've solved one, but two incidents in which the victims were dragged into rivers, one to his death, remain open.
32:19After fishing two rivers extensively, I've narrowed my focus to the gunch catfish.
32:25A decade ago, it took me six tortuous weeks to track down a big gunch, and such beasts are now even rarer.
32:37I think I need to give this a closer look.
32:39My journal from the original expedition details the depths, water flow, and river conditions that led to a successful catch.
32:49I'm hoping this hard-won knowledge will help fast-track me to the fish.
33:00Going after gunch requires patience, persistence, and preparation.
33:05It's not exactly fresh, but the good thing about catfish such as gunch is it's going to help them locate it,
33:11and they're not fussy really in terms of the freshness of the stuff that they eat.
33:17With any luck, the pungent bait will prove irresistible to the sometimes fickle gunch.
33:25A lot of people think you've got to hide the hook.
33:27You hide the hook, you're not going to get that hook to penetrate in the mouth of the predator.
33:31So the hook points have to be visible.
33:36And what I've done to hold it all, particularly holding the mouth shut,
33:40if that mouth is open, the current's going to pull the whole thing apart.
33:44So I've used bits of luggage tag, and that's holding everything nicely together.
33:49Now to scope out this pool.
33:56What I'm going to do before starting fishing, I just want to get an idea of depths.
34:01So just a bit of lead on a bit of light line.
34:05I'm just going to drop it off the side of the boat.
34:06What I'm looking for is deep water.
34:09I mean, what the gunch like is when the current pushes into a rock
34:13and then excavates a bit of a hole.
34:16But sometimes what looks deep isn't.
34:19You cast out and you're just in a few feet of water.
34:22I'll even do it here.
34:23It's three foot, six, nine.
34:33That's 12 foot.
34:36This is 12 foot of water.
34:39This could be a good spot here.
34:40This could be a good spot.
34:41Gunch use their whisker-like barbels to check out potential food.
34:57So a bite may not be the first thing I'll feel on my line.
35:03Gunch very often what they do is they investigate beforehand
35:06and you feel this sort of a bit of a jarring.
35:09It's almost a sort of metallic sensation.
35:14It's very hard to describe.
35:15You feel a bit of a rattling on the line.
35:18Fishing like this requires complete concentration
35:22and experience counts.
35:26I think this is possibly my favourite form of fishing.
35:29One rod and you feel the line.
35:32It's amazing what information you can pick up.
35:35Every time I cast, I'm helping to build this mental picture.
35:42Oh, that is something. That is something.
35:44That was definitely...
35:45It's a little... boom, boom.
35:46Boom, boom, boom, boom.
35:56The tantalising tap on my line is followed by hours with no further sign.
36:02But I know that the elusive Gunch is rarely caught in a day.
36:15For the next week, I fish every hour I can.
36:19Maybe first in here.
36:24Gunch are easily spooked and slow to shed their suspicions.
36:29So once I've fished a pool, we leave it and head further downstream.
36:34Much clearer sky today.
36:35It will only be a matter of days before we leave the park and run out of unspoiled river.
36:49After a week of frustration, I've caught nothing.
36:52Actually, the water conditions couldn't have been better.
36:59Some really, really classic Gunch spots.
37:03OK, they can just sit and not feed for a long period of time,
37:07but, you know, it just is so odd that I spent so much time
37:11without even a touch from a fish.
37:14It feels like there's hardly anything here.
37:18The recent big flood may have washed many fish out of this area.
37:23And although I've seen a fish eating gharial, it's only the one.
37:30I'm really starting to wonder if there are any Gunch left in this river.
37:36My failure so far is making me question my approach.
37:39And inevitably, I'm starting to compare this experience
37:43with my first Gunch expedition ten years ago.
37:47The time that has passed since I last fished for Gunch,
37:51have I changed in that time?
37:53Am I a better fisherman? I don't know.
37:56Is my ability to see below the surface better?
38:00It was one of the Greek philosophers who said,
38:04you never step into the same river twice.
38:07I could modify that slightly.
38:10You never cast into the same river twice
38:12because it is not the same river
38:14and you are not the same person.
38:19But one thing is the same.
38:21My determination to catch my quarry.
38:24I'm going to fish round the clock.
38:26Garial hunt during the day.
38:37Maybe the Gunch will be more confident to feed after dark.
38:41Somewhere down there is the fish I'm after.
38:43I'm just trying to imagine what it's doing right now at this moment.
38:49The chances are it's picked up the scent of this bait.
38:54Maybe it's just moments away from taking, I don't know.
39:00It could be very close to the bait.
39:02Oh, yep.
39:04It's coming in.
39:06There's something there. I'm going to swing it up here.
39:11Ah, it's a turtle.
39:12I've got to be a bit careful of this thing.
39:26It's not what I was hoping for.
39:27But this turtle isn't a complete disappointment.
39:31When I caught that big Gunch from the same pool,
39:35I had one of these fellas.
39:37This one's probably about seven or eight pounds.
39:40I had one of these about 200 pounds.
39:43A turtle could be a good omen.
39:46And it better be.
39:48Tomorrow will be our final day in the national park.
39:52My last chance to catch a Gunch.
39:57My guides say there are just two fishing pools left
40:03before the river returns us to civilization.
40:07I plan to fish this one through the morning
40:10and move to the second this evening.
40:13But I hadn't bargained on company.
40:18There's a tiger prince coming along this direction.
40:20And this is a big animal.
40:22And the other thing is, this is very fresh.
40:24Probably this morning, probably a matter of just hours.
40:28So, and with this long grass here,
40:31you know, it might not be that far away even now.
40:35With a potential man-eater on the prowl,
40:41it's maybe not a great idea to fish here.
40:44So we're moving downstream to the final pool.
40:46I want to fish from that rock.
40:48I have one last opportunity for a showdown with the Gunch.
40:53A high casting position could help prevent my line wrapping round
41:07any large underwater boulders.
41:13The hours tick by.
41:16It's looking like another day of promise, followed by disappointment.
41:17The hours tick by.
41:18It's looking like another day of promise, followed by disappointment.
41:21The hours tick by.
41:22The hours tick by.
41:28The hours tick by.
41:34It's looking like another day of promise, followed by disappointment.
41:39A distinct tap on my line.
42:09I've hooked something, but I'm struggling to control it.
42:36I'm on the Babai River in Nepal.
42:38There's something on my line, and I need to react fast.
42:42Might need the boats.
43:00The fish is still on, but I'm in danger of losing it.
43:05Got it.
43:10Let's go out.
43:12In the confusion, the fish has taken the advantage and found a snag.
43:16The line's around a rock.
43:21It's gone.
43:25It's gone.
43:27I had it hooked, and yet somehow it snagged.
43:32The position of a rock in the wrong place.
44:08In my line.
44:14A big fish forcing me into the water.
44:18And with me out of my element, everything in the balance.
44:23That time, victory.
44:27This time, defeat.
44:31I've reached the end of this investigation.
44:40My experience just now makes me think a gunch was responsible for what happened to Narwhal and Ali.
44:50Of course, I'm disappointed not to catch my culprit.
44:56But perhaps this is the right ending for the story of my greatest adversary.
45:02After nine years of catching all manner of river monsters all around the world, perhaps it's appropriate that it was finally the gunch that reminded me of my fallibility as an angler.
45:15And of course, in the broader context, this is a draw.
45:18It's won all.
45:19I'm sort of happy to call this quits.
45:22And in fact, not always am I actually fishing for the fish.
45:26I'm fishing for the answer.
45:27And I did find the answer.
45:30I came here looking for a culprit that I feared was gone for good.
45:35I go home with some satisfaction at least.
45:38It seems that the giant outlandish gunch, the original river monster, is still out there.
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