“Driven to turn this fantasy into reality, I discovered some waters within cycling or lift-cadging distance that were rumoured to hold these mythical beasts”

Jeremy Wade, Somewhere down the Crazy River, 1992

Jeremy Wade is a writer specialising in travel and natural history. He is best known for using fishing as a means to look beneath the surface of human life in remote places, notably the Congo and the Amazon.

Having grown up in rural Suffolk, he studied zoology at Bristol University, and went on to teach biology at a grammar school in Kent.

packing a rod
Having started fishing on the Suffolk Stour, he went on to fish stillwaters for carp and catfish. At 16 he was the youngest member of the British Carp Study Group. In his early twenties, however, he hung up his rods, in response to overcrowded British lakes. Then in 1982, inspired by a magazine article about fishing for mahseer, he went to India.

Since then he has made expeditions to south-east Asia, Zaire (now Democratic Republic of Congo), the People's Republic of Congo (now Republic of ...), India (again) and the Amazon. During these journeys he has caught malaria, narrowly escaped drowning, and survived a plane crash. In between times, he has worked as a tour leader, motorcycle despatch rider, supply teacher, art tutor, translator (Portuguese-English), PR consultant, dishwasher and newspaper reporter. For a while he was senior copywriter at an advertising agency, until the excitement became too much.

In 1992 he published 'Somewhere Down The Crazy River' (written with Paul Boote). This recounts the rediscovery of the Indian mahseer and the goliath tigerfish of the Congo, and is considered to be one of the classics of angling literature. But his knack for finding rare creatures isn't limited to fish. In 1994, scientists were mystified by an animal he photographed in an Amazon lake. Sent out by the BBC Natural History Unit the following year, he succeeded in filming it after a five-week stake-out. Since then he has pursued another Amazon myth, the giant arapaima - the subject of his 2002 television series, 'Jungle Hooks'. His 2006 series, 'Jungle Hooks: India', also featured an underwater creature not seen before on TV....

Despite spending as much time as possible outside the UK, he resides intermittently in Somerset.