River Monsters/YMMV

• Crowning Moment of Awesome: Many of the catches.
  • The goonch catfish he caught? Largest one on record.
  • The climax of the Nile Perch episode.
  • The Arapaima he caught in 'Lair of Giants'? Possibly a new species.
• Crowning Moment of Heartwarming: The way the entire village celebrates when he brings back the Tigerfish.
  • the baby Kaluga at the end of Russian Killer
• Goddamned Bats: Kind of a Real Life example in "Silent Assassin". When trying to catch a short-tailed river stingray, Jeremy constantly catches piranha, or has his bait stolen by (he presumes) piranha. He caught a couple of catfish, too, but the piranha were the main problem.
• Idiot Ball: In the wolf fish episode, Jeremy points out a storm cloud some distance away that apparently had passed them by. Immediately after noting that tropical weather can be unpredictable, Jeremy, his crew, and his guide stop so the guide can get some fish for eating. They stop on a flat island, in the middle of a river, with all sorts of equipment. The sound guy gets struck by lightning.
• Iron Woobie | Stoic Woobie: The Sawfish. Not only is it really just a Gentle Giant, but it's been nearly fished to extinction (and almost always just for its Badass titular Natural Weapon). As a result, it's had to resort to breeding far upstream in rivers. In fact, the one that he finally catches at the end of the sawfish episode has bull shark bite marks, and crocodile bitemarks on its body. And this was just a baby. It really says a lot about this animals plight when you remember that it's intentionally going into these areas as it's still safer than going out into its preferred areas where the humans are. Humans Are Bastards, indeed.
  • It isn't QUITE fair to blame the inland breeding solely on humans; in the ocean, there are sharks significantly larger than bull sharks, as well as quite a few other predators that would happily eat a young sawfish. Now, the fact that all sawfish species are critically endangered? Yeah, that's on humans.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • What Jaws did for the ocean, he's doing for every river and lake he can find. Seriously, you know a show has a pretty high dose of Nightmare Fuel when piranhas are among the less dangerous creatures featured.
  • The Goonch catfish. They live in a cold, murky river, and grow to extreme sizes after eating the cremated bodies dumped into the river, causing them to develop a taste for humans. Go figure.
    • Also, the one Jeremy caught is nearly six foot long and weigh 170 pounds, and it's still not big enough for a man-eater, meaning that the ones that hunt swimmers are still out there.
  • Extra Jaws shoutout goes to the Bull Shark episode. Already not too much smaller than Great Whites, and meaner to boot, they're able to operate just as well in fresh water, the only shark in the world to do so. They've been found in sea-connected rivers up to 2200 miles inland.
    • And it's the *big* ones that tend to visit rivers; the larger ones can handle the stress better. In fact, the biggest bull shark ever caught anywhere was caught in a river.
• Paranoia Fuel: You'll never look at rivers and lakes the same way again.
• Tear Jerker: The Goliath Tigerfish episode. One of the attacks was a little girl, whose shiny belt attracted the Tigerfish which killed her. The belt was supposed to protect her from bad spirits in the river.
  • Although not as the little girl, try not to feel bad for Jeremy after the third time he tries to land the Tigerfish and doesn't. They way he voices his disappointment almost sounds like a Despair Event Horizon.
  • The last few minutes of the 'Russian Killer' episode are largely about how screwed the featured fish, the kaluga sturgeon, is, due to the caviar market.