MONGOLIA: A taimen quest

I can't remember the first time I saw a photo of a taimen but I know it had a profound impact on me. The sight of what was effectively a giant trout being held up by two men in front of a backdrop of golden trees, a jade green river and snow-capped mountains became imprinted in my mind.

Whilst a variety of different species of taimen exist from Europe right through to the far east of Siberia, Mongolia is the last stronghold of this incredible fish. Sparse human habitation, almost no human development in the regional parts of the country and an indigenous population that eat little fish have seen taimen numbers hold steady in Mongolia. Virtually all the operators I researched also had self-imposed catch and release policies for taimen.

Taimen are not a trout but part of the more broad family of salmonids. The most notable thing about taimen is their size. They grow huge! Numerous unconfirmed claims of fish in excess of 100kgs exist; however, confirmed reports and photos of fish that regularly hit 25 kilos and often push up into 30 to 40 kilos set them apart as one wild "trout".
Actual weights are hard to determine as taimen are rarely killed but lengths are usually used to assess the size of a fish. Fish of a metre are considered trophy fish while those over 120cms are monsters.

I have fished Mongolia twice to date and I'm certain I will again, such are my feelings for the place.
Both trips were to the same camp in the extreme north of Mongolia only a few kilometres from the Siberian border. Kchanagai is owned and operated by a Mongolian family with a Czech company, Ingol, acting as booking and logistics agent.

Like all "exotic" fishing destinations, none of them are easy to get to. Mongolia itself is reasonably easy to get to from Australia. There are several flying options via China, Korea or Japan. Japan was ridiculously expensive, Korea too infrequent so that left China, which has several scheduled flights a day to the capital of Mongolia - Ulaan Bator.
You might care to note that I use the term "scheduled" as this service is notoriously unreliable. My first trip was trouble free but my second trip saw us waiting at the airport in Beijing for 12 hours before finally taking off. We originally thought ourselves unlucky. However, whilst waiting, we met an American fishing guide who had been booked on an over-subscribed flight and was forced to send his clients ahead of him with one of his "rookie" guides two days earlier, while he remained behind to try and get himself on another flight. Two days in Beijing Airport would not be fun! He managed to make it onto our flight.

Once in Ulaan Bator we had a couple of days R&R, which was nice. UB, as it is affectionately known, is a safe and relaxing city. Checking out some of the local shops and markets makes for an interesting experience. A trip to the local "department store" is a must. This large building is not dissimilar to any large department store except that independent sellers occupy floor space. This means you might find the same wares (or types of wares) in several locations so it pays to look around. The main reason to go to the mall is to take advantage of the incredibly cheap cost of clothing, especially outdoors wear. As we were heading into the northern hemisphere autumn at a pretty high latitude and altitude, it gets cold so a good quality but inexpensive Goretex jacket is an opportunity too good to miss.
We all bought heavy duty Columbia or North Face Goretex jackets complete with removable fleece inner jackets for between $28 and $35 US. A similar jacket back home is around $500 AUD. They might be factory seconds but they were definitely originals and everyone agreed, they did the job perfectly!

To call it "remote" is really understating Kchanagai's location. My first trip involved a helicopter ride in and out. At five and a half hour's duration (with a refuelling stop along the way) in a 1970s Russian MIL8 helicopter - held together with sticky tape and band-aids - it was an exciting and interesting experience... A pretty lax application of sound aviation practices meant that load limits are "tested". All the seats were occupied, luggage was stacked in the aisle and local people sit atop the luggage for the journey. We were informed that the pilots fly at an altitude at which they feel safe. If they are not comfortable with the chopper they fly low at around 100 to 150 metres (so there is less distance to fall).
If they are happy, they fly at around 500m. When you are told not to worry because "the pilots want to get home too" it does provide an odd sense of assurance.

Once you overcome the trepidation of the flight, it is actually an amazing journey. The scenery is spectacular and you are able to open the windows and take photos by sticking your arm out of the chopper. The economics of heli travel requires Ingol to stack the chopper with patrons destined for two camps, Kchanagai and Tengis, the latter is located about 25kms upstream on the same river.
If you're an anxious flyer you may be pleased to hear that there is an overland option. My second trip to Kchanagai involved a heli ride in and the overland option out. It involved a three-hour horse ride from Kchanagai to Tengis camp followed by between 14 and 17 hours in a 4X4 Russian van, followed by an hour and a half commercial flight from Moron back to Ulaan Bator.
If this sounds reasonable, let me fill you in on some more detail. The horse ride involves having complete trust in your horse along tracks that run along the edge of a bluff. The horses do occasionally  lose their footing, but we were assured that they hardly ever fall... There are also three river crossings, which can be interesting depending on water levels.

The van journey doesn't follow any roads, simply tracks that are, at best, rough, at worst, atrocious. The incessant shaking of the van was hellish. There is also what you might call a ferry crossing. It is hand made and hand operated. It consists of a timber base on top of a bunch of drums. I was saddened to hear that this ferry capsized earlier that year and the one of the cooks from my first trip was drowned along with several others.
Thankfully I guess, I found this out after we'd made the crossing. There was also a very boggy hill climb that took us several attempts to get through after getting bogged to the differential. I honestly didn't think we would make it! To make it worse (if possible), our journey was undertaken between the hours of 3:00pm and 10:00am the following day. Sleep was impossible in the van, which included our driver. It was taxing on all of us but our driver was on the verge of passing out by the time dawn came around and he was swerving all over the place and falling asleep at the wheel! The flight from Moron (aptly named perhaps...) back to Ulaan Bator was very pleasant but that may have just been due to everything else we'd experienced. We obviously made it back safely, but it was the most gruelling journey I have ever undertaken.

So, was it worth it? For me, the answer is "absolutely". The reasons why are a little harder to put into words. I will start with the fishing. There are three species of fish in this river: taimen, grayling and lenok. Grayling are the Siberian variety. They are more golden in colour than the arctic variety of North America and have a larger and arguably more spectacular dorsal fin. They are abundant in this river and you could (and we did) spend hours fly fishing or spinning small spinners for them. While we fished in autumn when dry fly action is not so prevalent, we still managed some nice sessions. One that sticks in my mind was standing in one place for more then two hours casting dry flies into one run and catching fish on virtually every cast. It was champagne dry fly action. Otherwise we fished for them with nymphs and indicators. Grayling in this river average a bit under a kilo but we caught plenty between one and two kilos. They are also great sport with regular spectacular leaps.

Lenok are a sort of trout. At a quick glance they look like a rainbow but on closer inspection are quite different and interesting. From the gill case back they have a trout body and the vague colouration of a rainbow trout but instead of a rainbow stripe along the body they have pinkish/red marks along the body. The shape of the head is probably the most interesting thing about the lenok. They have a mouth that faces downwards like a whiting or more accurately, like an English barbell, suggesting that they are a bottom feeder. However, they also have a mouth full of teeth, just like a trout, and are highly predatory. They look like they are in the evolutionary changes between bottom feeder and predator.
While not as abundant as the grayling (mainly because they are absolutely prolific), there are still heaps of lenok in this river. We caught them on small spinners and nymphs mainly but also caught a few on dry flies too. Apparently they respond really well to dry flies in the summer. They fight really well and compare very well to rainbow trout in that regard. They do jump but not that often.
Lenok averaged about two kilos but we regularly caught them to four. If you spent your day deliberately targeting lenok and grayling you are certain to catches good numbers of each species.

How about the iconic taimen? They are obviously the top predator in these parts. They look a little like a cross between a brown trout and Atlantic salmon. Most of them are quite long and lean, however, they are actually cylindrical in shape, which adds a lot of body bulk. They have a fearsome head and jaws filled with trout like teeth - just much bigger. They are a dull grey/brown along body but change to a rusty red rear and tail.

The thing I like about them is the fact their behavior is so trout-like. They take up lies in places just like a trout. You just have to "super-size" everything. Instead of holding behind a rock, they need a boulder. You also need to offer them something worth their while to eat which, given their potential size, could be substantial. We caught quite a lot of small ones (up to about 6 kilos) on small bladed spinners, soft plastics and Jackals. We caught some bigger ones on large bibbed minnows, spinnerbaits, large soft plastics and big bladed spinners.

However, if you really want to target the big ones you can't go past a live grayling for bait. We rigged them on a treble hook pinned through the nose. The bait is then cast upstream and allowed to drift/swim past a likely lie. These may be a large boulder, deep channel, submerged snag or any other likely hold. You have to keep slight tension on the line in order to feel the take. Then you really have to set the hook as the taimen have a pretty hard mouth.

Taimen are also a renowned fly fishing target. We fished for them and caught them on fly during our trips but summer is prime fly fishing time. Autumn is the season for bigger fish, which is what we were after. Having said that, Mark Draper, who was on my second trip, had his heart set on getting a decent taimen on fly. While walking along a high bank one day and looking into the water we noticed a suspicious "log" sitting on the bottom in about a metre of clear water. While trying to ascertain whether it might be a fish he noticed it swim off the side and reposition. Mark quickly dropped down to water level and set himself up to cast. He put out a cast in front of the fish where he knew the big six-inch deceiver would be seen. His heart nearly stopped when the fish made a beeline for it and in a cavernous gulp the fly was gone. He struck and the water erupted as the fish thrashed on the end of the line. After a reasonably brief fight the fish came in and was landed, posed for some photos and then released. The fish measured 127cms.
In all honesty, taimen are not great fighters. They do a lot of rolling around and occasionally a short powerful run and if they make it into the current then you will have your work cut out for you. They also jump from time to time and this is pretty impressive to see a metre long taimen leap a body length from the water.

Just about everyone on both my trips caught fish over 120cms with the biggest fish on the first trip being 139cms and 131cms on the second trip. We all also caught plenty of smaller fish. Because I haven't fished elsewhere for taimen it is hard to compare the fishing at Kchanagai with other areas but a German angler who fished with me on my first trip specialises in them and has travelled extensively. He rates Kchanagai as the best water he has fished.

Early on in this trip we'd received a harsh reminder of the environment we were fishing. At the other camp, which was occupied by a group of Czech anglers who'd choppered in with us, one of them was wading the edge of a channel between two lakes when he took one step too many and went over the edge and into the icy water. His waders immediately filled with water and he was swept under and away with the current. One of his companions went in after him but was unable to get him and almost drowned himself. The poor guy's body was recovered several days later. After learning this, all of us were far more careful how we waded for the duration of the trip.

Fishing for me is the big reason to visit Mongolia but what makes it so special? I remember hearing a quote from someone who said something along the lines of "All passionate anglers dream of being able to travel back in time to fish virgin waters. Mongolia is that place."
I have to say I agree. Mongolia is so remote and the country so exotic that it's hard not to feel that way. I remember sitting on a high bank looking over the river and down the river towards Siberia knowing that the nearest civilization was an eternity away and thinking, "I am in Mongolia!".

It remains one of the most memorable fishing trips and destinations of my life and I hope to return.

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