River Monsters

I've seen all three episodes. I've really enjoyed it, especially the gar episode. I could do without the gratuitous sensationalism. Here's the synopsis for next week's:

River Monsters
European Maneater
TV-PG

Wade travels to Germany where he meets victims of a beast that has been raising its snout above the surface of freshwaters in Europe for the past 700 years. We discover that the Wels catfish is an aggressive predator of man eating proportions.

Here's an episode guide:

River Monsters

Not sure how long these will be up, but the episode is on YouTube in 5 parts :



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8jtMuRP4Ng
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvgBhoLMF-U
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEOwBWsENGc

The show is really good in my opinion. He debunked the myths about the alligator gar being a killer of humans. Especially the one just repeated on another show ( on history channel), about an alligator gar chopping a five foot alligator in half. My experience with these fish are just as on the shows end when he swam with them. Gentle fish. Accidents can happen, as the rare attacks because of a mistake on the fishes part, or when you take the fish out of the water. I have had plenty of deep cuts, scrapes and all that from gar, and pike - luckily not from bowfin.

Fish attacks likely happened, just as they have here with pike and musky being the fish attacking. The fish had no plan to eat people, it just saw movement and went for it, then realized its mistake and swam off. If these fish were attacking people, there would be many more attacks and repeated attacks by the same fish over and over.

I am sure this show can keep going after true or notorious monsters are exhausted. For example, after watching the gator gar show, I thought bowfin would work good for an episode. No man proportion size, or pack hunting of piranha, but they are monsters in the eyes of many who fish or know fish. Don't know if I am clear on how I am explaining how bowfin would work.

The show does well clearing up misconceptions with education. I think the old adage that people fear what they don't understand is what comes to mind.

It would be like dirty jobs. When I first heard of the show, it had some really sickening jobs. Sewers full of what sewers are full of, cleaning up crime scenes. Now many are a lot less benign, jobs many of us do or did at one time, like cleaning out a chicken coup. Still dirty but not something you would not be able to eat supper after doing, and I think that show is still interesting. I liked the one episode with the guy who had to rake weeds out of the harbor and the other half was a gal catching snakes to see what they were eating.

I caught the show last Sunday ( May 10th ) after missing it the week before while in the cheese state. Pretty cool. It also had the doc and the victim of the urine seeking, uretha invading fish. Yeow. Good interviews and a bit of specimen cringing. The plucked and pickled beast was in lab jar. Way too big for that kind of invasive behavior.
They also had these catfish water maggots, another kind of monster. Hollow out a corpse pretty quick. All and all a gruesome show, not for the squimish. Connie yelled at me after my girls ran screaming from the room.
Not to mention the photoshopped pic of the legs jutting from the catfish mouth.
Jeremy does a great job of catching these fish and showing them to us. I like the show. I look forward to each Sunday evening at 10 on the Animal Planet.

And as for snorkeling with the Alligator Gar...
The other day Tom sent me this pic from the NANFA Texas convention and the Alligator Gar tank... I forgot all about that.

Even tho i was trying to get out and away from those sharp teeth, i was still promoting NANFA President Bruce!

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Casper wrote: Oh yea, you would have to be crazy to jump in a tank of Alligator Gar like Jeremy did at the end. That would make for good tourist footage if things were to break bad.


Drew commented: I thought you were the snorkelmeister! You wouldn't do it given the opportunity?

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I think they were more afraid of me than i them, but i will let others decide whom was more fearsome. They were BIG and with bigger heads full of sharp teeth. My hands and fingers were tucked tightly to my sides. I think Wayne was hoping for a touristy photo carnage shot but i got out quick enough. I just dont trust Wayne anymore.

Edited by Casper Cox, 12 May 2009 - 03:58 PM.

See, I knew there were more NANFA shirt images in circulation.