20 most amazing river monsters

Only once you see them, you can forever lose any desire to even approach the river. But for the gray-haired Jeremy Wade, who hosts the "River Monsters" program on Animal Planet, these are just fish. And yes, he really lets loose everything he has caught.

A two-meter, 50-kilogram armored pike caught in the Trinity River in Texas.

68-kilogram arapaima caught in Rio Maderia Lake in Brazil.

A huge six-gilled shark caught in the southern part of the African Zambezi River.

An electric eel from the Amazon River, which can grow up to 2.4 m in length and weigh up to 19 kg.

Freshwater sawfish that grows up to 6 meters in length and weighs up to 180 kg.

A huge Siamese carp from the Mekong River. And it's not an adult yet. It can grow up to 3 meters and weigh up to 300 kg, which makes it one of the largest freshwater fish on our planet.

A large freshwater stingray. This 180-kilogram fish was the largest that Jeremy Wade managed to catch.

The Therapon goliath is a distant relative of the piranha found in the Congo River in the heart of Africa.

73-kilogram catfish from Northern India. This fish was 1.5 m from head to tail, 1 meter in girth and with a tail span of 1.1 m.

Protopter. The largest individual can reach 2 meters in length.

The wundu catfish, which can reach 1.5 meters in length, and its maximum weight was 54 kg.

A New Zealand eel that can reach 1.5 meters in length.

Nile perch. It can grow up to 1.8 m in length and up to 225 kg in weight.

The black piranha is the largest of the 40 known piranha species.

A catfish similar to some prehistoric fish from the Orinoco River, known in these places as kuyu-kuyu. It can reach a meter in length and 18 kg in weight. In the back of the fish's body there are processes supporting the caudal fin, which is why it looks like an armadillo fish from another era.

The red-bellied paku belongs to the genus of piranhas, but unlike its fellows it feeds mainly on insects and vegetation. It uses its large, human-like teeth to crack nuts, seeds and chop up sea grasses and other food sources.

Short-tailed river stingray. It usually grows up to 1.5 m in diameter, and weighs more than 200 kg.

An ordinary catfish weighing 74 kg and 2.2 m long .

The white sturgeon is the largest and most primitive freshwater fish in North America. The largest sturgeon in history was more than 6 m in length and weighed almost 800 kg.

The Japanese great salamander, the second largest in the world after the Chinese. It grows up to 1.5 m in length.

A close relative of the piranha is the mackerel-shaped hydrolick, which is often called a vampire fish because of its long canines, which can be up to 15 cm in length. This beautiful fish lives in the Orinoco River in Venezuela.