Jeremy Wade

Jeremy John Wade, a native of rural Suffolk, England, UK where he grew up on the banks of the Suffolk Stour, currently resides in the countryside near Bath, Somerset, UK when he's not traveling to some far off land to catch "monster" fish and film the TV Series, River Monsters, a production of Icon Films for Animal Planet. He has a degree in Zoology from Bristol University and a postgraduate teaching certificate in biological sciences from the University of Kent. Besides his latest occupation as host of River Monsters, Jeremy Wade has worked as a secondary school biology teacher, tour leader, motorcycle dispatch rider, supply teacher, art tutor, translator (Portuguese-English), public relations consultant, dishwasher, senior copywriter (at an advertising agency) and newspaper reporter. He is a self-taught writer, with several published articles on poaching, fair trade, travel, natural history, and of course fishing. Besides his newspaper and magazine articles for The Times, Guardian, Sunday Telegraph, The Field and BBC Wildlife magazine, to name a few, he has also co-written a book in 1992 with Paul Arthur Boote called, "Somewhere Down the Crazy River." Described by many as an unusual, quirky, and strange tale of the perils faced by the two anglers, it is considered an angling classic. He has completed a new book, "River Monsters: True Stories of the Ones That Didn't Get Away," that will cover his fishing adventures worldwide which is scheduled for release in April 2011. At age 16, he was the youngest member of the British Carp Study Group (The B.C.S.G. is a national single species organization for experienced and successful carp anglers). His first overseas trip was to the mountain rivers of India in 1982 where his desire for tracking down large and little-known fresh-water fish became unquenchable and possibly border-lined on obsessive. Although he has mostly fished in the Congo and the Amazon rainforests of Brazil, his travels have taken him to many lands where he has had the misfortune of catching Malaria, been jailed overnight as a suspected spy, almost drowned, survived a plane crash, had an Alaskan bear steal his fish, and found himself facing the wrong end of a gun. Who knows what perils he may face in the future. During his career he has achieved a number of notable 'firsts'. These include filming a large mystery creature in an Amazon lake (dubbed 'the Amazon Nessie' by BBC Wildlife magazine) which turned out to be a malformed pink river dolphin, and getting the first underwater footage (with cameraman Rick Rosenthal) of the 'Giant Devil Catfish' in India. His tenacity is to be admired as he studied Portuguese for three hours a day for three months to prepare for a trip to Brazil. He has since worked as a Portuguese-English translator and speaks a half dozen languages well enough to get around although, in an episode, he admits that German is not one of them. He became a TV personality beginning in 2002 hosting his first TV series, "Jungle Hooks," filmed for Discovery Europe which was highly popular and followed by "River Monsters" in 2009 which has achieved the highest-ever audience figures in the history of Animal Planet. When not fishing, he enjoys scuba diving (mostly cold, low-visibility water around the U.K. coast) along with free diving and rock climbing when the weather allows.