Jeremy Wade Quotes

To a large extent we see what we want to see rather than what is really there.

Because, despite our differences, we shared one fundamental belief: that there is more to this world than what’s visible on the surface.

It's necessary to experience some failure, to calibrate our appreciation of success.

Once a myth becomes established, it forms part of our mental model of the world and alters our perception, the way our brains interpret the fleeting patterns our eyes pick up.

...I'm momentarily transfixed, torn between curiosity and fear. I can pull it up the gently sloping mud bank, but then what? Already thought is lagging behind events, as the blotchy brown mass slides up wet mud toward me, its amorphous margins flowing into the craters left by retreating feet. In the center of the yard-wide disc is a raised turret where two eyes open and close, flashing black. And it's bellowing. A loud rhythmic sound that is at first inexplicable until I realize that those blinking eyes are its spiracles, now sucking in air instead of water, which it is pumping out via gill slits on its underside. And all the while it brandishes that blade, stabbing the air like a scorpion...

Casting a line into the water is like asking a question. Something could be right underneath you, but you can’t see it—it’s there but not there.

But the biggest gar he ever heard of was never weighed. It got caught in a gillnet his grandfather set in the St. Francis River in the early 1900s and had to be pulled in with the help of a mule and then finished off with a shotgun. For years its scales were used as ashtrays.

I became aware that I was repeating certain actions: checking that doors were locked, cookers were turned off, basins and toilet bowls were clean. Connected with these things were strange, repetitive rituals:

Most big freshwater fish, in most parts of the world, have all but disappeared from most places where they used to live. As with arapaima, the main reason is over-harvesting, but there are other factors too. Dams block the migration routes of many fish, so they disappear from the water above the dam — or even altogether, if breeding grounds are cut off. Draining of floodplains, cutting off backwaters, competition from invasive species and pollution also play a part. And sometimes it's just willful slaughter, as was the case with the North American alligator gar in the early 1900s, thanks to the incorrect assumption that killing these predators would boost populations of ‘game’ fish.

And yet nature hath in them teeth and nails enough to scratch and fight against the sickness, and by such aids as God is pleased to give them they wade through the storm and murmur not.

Then came an invention to target fish with better accuracy. Some years after my visit to the Luangwa River I was in the Solomon Islands, in the South Pacific. One of my tasks here was to shoot a mullet with a bow and arrow, up one of the mangrove-fringed creeks. I already had some experience with a bow, having shot a couple of peacock bass in the Amazon.

To this end there are three levels of on-site information I am after. The first is actually seeing fish. Sometimes you can’t miss them: they jump or break the surface, or they’re right there in front of you. But normally you have to look. Looking into water takes practice. The surface acts as a partial mirror, which means a lot of interference from reflected light. So I wear polarizing sunglasses to block the worst of this surface glare. Blocking out the sky from my field of view also helps, either with a hand or a peaked hat. This lets my pupils open up, which allows more light, and hence more information, to reach the light-sensitive cells in my retina. I can now see much more detail in the water. But still, in places, the surface is a psychological barrier. This is because our eyes automatically focus on what is most obvious, which may be surface debris or whatever is reflected in the surface. But it’s possible to train our eyes to override this tendency. One of my many short-term jobs was unloading stuff from delivery trucks for a big auto accessories shop. At the back of the shop, there was a two-way mirror, behind which was the manager’s office. This mirror was the old-fashioned type, with vertical strips of clear glass punctuating the silver. Looking at it from the brightly lit shop, customers would see themselves reflected. But if you made your eyes defocus, you would suddenly see into the darker office behind. And once your focus had latched on to something at this deeper level, it was easy to keep it there. (Modern half-silvered mirrors are more difficult.

Jungle Hooks India series. I’d previously hooked a very big one but

Angling, in essence, is about converting something very insignificant (the bait, with negligible or even zero food value, maybe a worm that has been dug up or a few colorful but inedible fibers) into something very substantial: a fish big enough to feed a family. It could even be expressed as a mathematical equation: energy input (measured in calories or joules) + x = energy output. And the magic catalyst x that makes this apparent alchemy possible, this creation of something from nothing, is… human inventiveness and ingenuity. This is something we all have, baked into our DNA and yearning for expression, and it’s the part of our nature that should always be engaged when we are on the water, constantly interrogating the particular problem that we are trying to solve. Even

if just one crucial factor had been ignored. In this case the alternative story is summarized in just four words: No stealth no fish.