River Monsters (5 page)

Although I was starting to feel more comfortable underwater, managing longer submersions, and starting to spot sucker-mouthed carp swimming close to the rock in places where a strategically
placed loop line could have snared them, the low visibility was a problem. Diving here was like blundering around with a small candle in a dark room. We were only likely to see a goonch if we were
right on top of it, whereupon mutual shock would cause it to bolt. Nevertheless, after half a dozen more dives, Rick surfaced with a whoop: ‘I’ve just filmed my first goonch!’ But
it wasn’t a close view, just a shape that disappeared into a cloud of sand.

A little while later I was sliding head first down a forty-five-degree slope towards a lip where the rock fell vertically away, and there, in the overhang under the lip, was an open-sided tunnel
with a goonch wedged inside: four or five feet long and inches from my face. I slammed on the brakes by grabbing the rock above and reversing away, and then explained to Rick where it was. But
despite descending from the correct spot, he couldn’t find its hideout, and nor could I when I went back down. The landscape we were exploring was a complex abstract sculpture whose features
seemed to rearrange themselves when we weren’t looking. And with such a short horizon, navigating by following one remembered landmark to another was nearly impossible. A few dives later,
though, I was drifting along the excavated angle between sand and rock when something made me stop. I slowly floated up and found myself face to face with the same fish – although a moment
later, following a dull thump, there was only a blur of water filling the space it had occupied.

We needed to review our tactics. Perhaps it was time to deploy the ROV. The Remote Operated Vehicle was a minisubmarine we’d brought along inside a suitcase-sized flight case with another
water-tight case housing the control panel and the screen that displayed the view from the remote camera. Pictures were relayed back through a neutrally buoyant quarter-inch cable, by which the
craft was also controlled electronically. It reminded me of Thunderbird 2 from the TV show
Thunderbirds
, which I used to watch as a kid. A scale-model toy was something I had desperately
coveted, but Santa Claus had only considered me well behaved enough to deserve mints and tangerines. Okay, this was forty years late, but I was going to be flying this ship on a mission every bit
as exciting as those piloted by Virgil Tracy.

We fired up the small generator and launched the ROV halfway down the pool, from the boulder beach across from the cliff. Although the current was scarcely visible here, it was still powerful
enough to put a bow in the tether. We compensated for this by swimming it across to the cliff then turning its head up-current, exactly like a fish. With the current slower here, I was able to hold
position and then manoeuvre quite precisely, resting the ROV on sloping ledges and lightly bumping it over and around rocks on its stealthy search upstream. Immediately we were seeing a lot more
fish, particularly mahseer, swimming up and down underneath the rock overhangs. And we were getting much closer, without seeming to spook them. I dimmed the lights and periodically flicked to the
rear black-and-white camera. I still saw nothing large anywhere. The rock was sculpted into organic shapes, like a living thing turned to stone, portions of which would loom enigmatically, fill the
screen, then vanish. Then there was something a slightly different colour, more grey than brown, outlined against the cloudy water. Yes! It was the flank of a goonch – I could see the mottled
bands now. I eased the ROV back a bit, bumped it down to rest on the rock, turned a fraction to the right and there was its head. We got the DV tape in the recording deck spooling as I then edged
closer. The fish reacted as if it was quite accustomed to being visited by black-and-yellow minisubmersibles bedecked with lights. Who knows what was going through its mind? Maybe it just saw the
ROV as a weird looking fish, but one that was no threat because it was a lot smaller. Or maybe the goonch hadn’t registered it at all. Some fish occasionally become torpid, a state akin to
sleeping, and this one was resting on its belly, a bit like some sharks do. Or maybe it had been taken by surprise and was puzzled – in a fishy, worried way – and was pretending to be a
rock. I managed to look at it for a good five minutes. Only when I eased forward to nudge it gently did it move away and disappear. Again I put this fish at four or five feet long. We had our
goonch footage, but nothing yet that had us quaking in our boots.

The next day we went to another pool a few miles upstream. From a suspension bridge above, we looked down on a shoal of big mahseer, effortlessly cruising in midstream. That looked like a good
sign. Again, there was an underwater cliff with lots of hiding places – perfect goonch habitat – but we dived the whole length of the pool without seeing a single one. The spookiest
sight was a dead carp snared in a torn net fragment underneath a tangle of sunken tree roots. However, the absence of goonch was most odd, particularly given the presence of the mahseer overhead,
which seemed to rule out the cause simply being poachers.

Time was short. We had just one more day, and although we already had the first underwater footage of goonch, it wasn’t the blow-away stuff we were after. We piled our stuff into the jeep
and took it for a long walk to a smaller pool. Here, again, the current pushed against a wall of rock as it turned a corner, thereby excavating a deep hole. I’d fished this place a couple of
years ago, and I knew there were some serious snags down there, with at least a few lines and trailing hooks. The pool water had a soupy look to it, thanks to the turbulent rapid feeding it, and
the sun had already gone off the surface. Once in the water, the looming cliff, which curved around us and formed a rocky cove, gave the place the feel of an amphitheatre. I made my way across to
the rock, tried to breathe away my apprehension, and went under. The smooth water-worn rock plunged vertically downwards. I kept expecting to see the bottom, but instead the pressure kept
increasing and darkness closed in above me. I couldn’t understand how this was so much deeper than Temple Pool, and I thought of trailing lines. Just as I was thinking of kicking for the
surface, I saw something directly underneath me: a dark shape against a lighter background. As I got closer it flexed into a curve, swam a slow tight circle, and was gone. I surfaced with my lungs
bursting and told Rick, who hadn’t seen anything. Continuing here was pointless anyway, he said, because the visibility was too bad for filming. We had it all to do the next day.

Back at Temple Pool, we decided to start at the tail of the pool and work upstream. To minimise disturbance, Rick went in with the camera while I watched from the other side. Every few minutes
he disappeared from sight and then surfaced several feet along, puffing water from his snorkel and then breathing quietly to get oxygen back into his bloodstream. At one point a gully cut into the
rock, and when he surfaced from here, after a longer than normal delay, it was with an explosion of water and profanity.

‘Holy shit!’ he gurgled. ‘There’s one down there the size of a horse!’ He kicked across and explained to me that this was our chance for a two-shot: me and the
monster goonch in the same picture in an underwater cave where four or five others surrounded it. He would dive first and take up position on the bottom and I would follow after a few moments and
come in over the top of him. And we needed to go now because the fish had become agitated and might not stay there long – even though it meant I would be diving cold, having had no warm-up
dives to build up my underwater time and check the lie of the land.

As Rick disappeared straight down I tried to still my hammering heart before taking my one lungful and following. I saw his dim shape on the bottom and arched my back to look where the camera
was pointing. Too late I realised that I should have weighted myself a bit heavier for this, as my body, deprived of its downward momentum, started o drift back up. I kicked a couple of times and
managed to get a slippery grip on a boulder, holding myself in a head-down slant. Craning my neck backwards, I saw the water congeal into gloom underneath an angular arch. Something in there was
moving.

Grey against black, I could make out three or four – or maybe five – vertical against the rock wall, with their downward ends swaying like a pod of hideous aliens. I reached forward
and saw my fingers barely span the tail root of the biggest fish. They were getting disturbed, possibly feeling cornered, and my air was getting short. But those few moments burned into my memory
with an uncommon intensity – not so much a detailed picture but instead a feeling, like a fragment of a dream, whose residue remains after you’ve burst back into the light.

We had the footage we came for, the first shots of goonch in the wild. But in order to pass judgement on its capability as a maneater, we really needed a close look at one out of the water. From
previous experience, I knew this was not a fish one can catch to order. So when the ROV found a goonch tail poking out of a dark cleft, Rick suggested I go and ‘noodle’ it. But unlike
the flathead catfish pulled from their holes in Oklahoma, goonch have serious teeth, so there was no way I was going to grab it by the mouth. Also, on the screen, there was no telling its size.

With Rick watching the screen and the tape deck rolling, I followed the ROV’s yellow umbilical until I spotted its headlights eight feet down. A deep breath, a tuck, and a kick, and I was
seeing the fish myself. With no time to waste, I reached forward and grabbed the root of its tail.

The next thing I knew, my arm was possessed, shaking my entire body. I hung on and kicked for the surface as the fish’s body came clear and the thrashing became wilder. Then there were too
many things in my head: the fish, the water, my twisting-back fingers, and the aching air in my lungs. I couldn’t hold them all, and the fish was gone. Back on the shore, I cursed. Rick was
right: I should have grabbed with two hands. Fear had made me keep one free, for hanging on – to what? With both hands immobilising its tail, I could have finned its thrashing body to the
surface then across to the shallows. But a plan is no good after the event, and I wouldn’t get a chance like that again.

Later, as I fully expected, I would curse my mistake with even more fury as I watched my motionless lines around the clock, struggling to keep myself awake with just a sleep-deprived cameraman,
James Bickersteth, for company, the rest of the crew having gone home to England. I remember the insane joy we felt on the sixth day, when I finally landed a goonch. Then reality returned: the
realisation that, at ten pounds, this could be bait for the fish I was after. But at least getting one any smaller was impossible. The next day I caught a nine-pounder.

We moved pools, and I caught a twenty-seven-pounder. With some creative camera work it looked quite big, but who were we kidding? The next day, fishing in a thunderstorm, I got my line stuck and
deployed an ‘otter’ to free it: a half-full water bottle attached to a snap-swivel, which I clipped round the line and lobbed into the current. Once it had floated downstream of the
snag, I yanked hard on the line and felt it come free. But suddenly there was a force, much stronger than the current, ripping the line out. Hanging on for dear life, I stopped the fish’s
run, and after a period of stalemate, I brought it back towards me, thanks to a countercurrent on the bottom where the rapid at the pool’s top end rolls over a lip into deep water. But I
couldn’t bring it any closer. Before I’d started fishing, I had planned for this eventuality: I would launch myself into the water and pull for the beach on the other side. But a
day’s rain had made the river wider, faster, and higher. As I kicked off my shoes, James yelled at me not to do it, and, wisely, I listened to him. But in the chaos, the fish slipped off the
hook.

Back in England we faced the cold reality of a film about a monster fish but without a monster fish. Harry Marshall, boss of Icon Films, decided, against everyone’s advice except mine, to
send us out again. But the monsoon had arrived early. From Europe, finding out if the river was even accessible was impossible. Satellite images showed a dark mass spreading over the region. On our
arrival, the river was raging and brown, but a carefully placed bait would still hold bottom. Because of the water colour, I ripened my fish baits in the sun to create more of a scent trail
underwater. And on the third day I hooked something immense, which hung on the line like a great boulder, not running at all but slowly inching through the dark depths until the line went
vertically down into the water at my feet, where a great mass of bubbles now erupted followed by a dark back that was a yard wide. For a moment I thought I’d hooked the biggest goonch in the
world, but then I realised it was a huge soft-shelled turtle (
Aspideretes gangeticus
). My guide Alam wanted to cut the line, but I heaved it towards some shallows, thrust the rod at James,
and grabbed the turtle by the shoulders. The thing was like a tank and almost carried me into the river while shooting its prehensile neck, fully two feet long, and bolt-cutter jaws towards Alam.
With great difficulty we blocked its escape with a rock and then turned it on to its back. This two hundred–pound animal hadn’t been anywhere near my suspects list, but if, for any
reason, it locked on to a swimmer’s foot, there would be no resisting it.

Five days later, at the bottom of the pool, with a heavy fish gaining momentum in the current, James yelled at me again. But this time I ignored him. I had a clear plan and knew what I had to
do. Half an hour later, having scaled a steep, muddy hillside, crossed a bridge, sprinted down a riverside road, and stumbled exhausted across a field of boulders, James arrived at the precise
moment I yelled at Alam, ‘Now!’

The camera frame wobbles then holds position. In the foreground Alam reaches through the surface and grabs something, and in the frame’s opposite corner a great head rears out of the
water. This was the image that launched the series – and probably remains the iconic moment of all the episodes so far.