Jeremy Wade fishes Chernobyl in his most extreme TV series yet

Jeremy Wade’s River Monsters is to return for a fifth series on ITV in the new year, Angling Times can reveal.

The hugely popular show, which is shown around the world, is back for six more episodes plus a two-part special on the origins of the Loch Ness Monster.

This series, which will air in early January in a primetime slot, begins with Jeremy tackling catfish and the threat of radiation in the shadow of Chernobyl’s fourth nuclear reactor. Other episodes will see the former biology teacher fly fish for tarpon from a float tube, investigate a stingray thought to have dragged a honeymooning bride to her death in Columbia and some extreme-depth fishing in a Norwegian fjord.

Jeremy told Angling Times: “Before this series I was thinking ‘maybe we are running out of things to cover’, but as we dug deeper we actually found some subjects that were really interesting and it was a fantastic series to film.

“Some of it is new angles on fish we have done before, but with completely new stories.”

On the first show, set to be screened in the first week of January, Jeremy caught zander and catfish on soft lures and deadbaits in the Ukrainian city of Chernobyl, which suffered a catastrophic nuclear accident in 1986.

He said: “There are actually fish in the cooling pools of the reactor, which is a weird silver lining from the disaster. It’s like an extreme version of the old electricity cut on the River Nene at Peterborough, which was full of carp in the warm water pouring from the power station.

“The radiation is quite patchy there and I had a real-time doss meter with me at all times. In some places you would stumble upon a hotspot and if I hadn’t had the meter and just stayed there I would have actually reached my exposure limit in half an hour.”

Jeremy is also taking his show on the road with a series of lectures across the country in March. For more details visit www.rivermonsters.tv