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Fly Fishing Mongolia.
Sat 2nd November, 2013
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Fly Fishing for Taimen in Mongolia.
You might remember a few months ago that Paul Anderson and a couple of mates from Tasmania shared their report on their latest fishing trip to New Zealand with us ... I just checked that ... it was actually in May ... where does it go? Since then globe-trotting Paul has been off on his travels again ... this time to Mongolia chasing the legendary Taimen ... I'll let Paul continue the story ...
"Guess I should start at the beginning, about 4 years ago I was at the Rise fly fishing film festival, there was a short clip of Taimen fishing in Mongolia. I distinctively remember thinking that going to Mongolia and fishing for these fish would be one of the greatest fly fishing adventures anyone could ever do but logistically it seemed impossible, I didn’t know where to start, and I’ll admit that I wasn’t 100% sure where Mongolia was ha-ha, so I had a bit of a search on Google for companies that offered packages to fish the rivers. I had no luck with any web-sites that I come across, so I put my Mongolian plans on the back-burner for the time being.
That was, until 18 months ago when I came across a few pics on Facebook of people holding up some rather large red tailed river-wolfs. I jumped back on Google and did a quick search ‘Fly Fishing Mongolia’.
There were now a lot more search results than a couple of years ago so I flicked through a few websites but the one that caught my eye was www.mongoliarivers.com it was set out better and just looked more professional.
I contacted Mark Jonstad and after we discussed the options I decided on booking the very last trip of the season (October 6th-16th) on the lower section of the river.
I thought this would be the best time of year because the rivers are starting to freeze over and the fish are looking for food to feed up before the long cold winter.
So fast forward 18 months and I arrive in the Mongolian capital Ulaanbataar(UB), where I was greeted by Nomadic Journeys guide Oso, he dropped me off at my hotel and gave me a run down on the city and what to expect.
Ulaanbataar is a pretty unique place as it’s a mix of modern and traditional stylings with a lot of soviet influence, the Russians pulled troops out of Mongolia in the late 80s early 90s and the country gained its Independence and formed a new constitution in 1992.
I had a few days in the capital exploring the city and getting my gear organized for the week ahead.
On the 6th of October I woke from a pretty ordinary sleep, I guess I was so excited I didn’t sleep very well. I went to the hotel lobby and was met by Oso, we had a bit of a chat and he told me a little bit about the other guys. Turns out I would be fishing with four Kiwis (Guy, Hugo, Mark, Murray) and an American (Jay)..
We headed back to the UB airport and caught a flight out to the landing strip about an hour and thirty minutes north east of Ulaanbataar.
We were about to land but had to buzz a few cows to get them off the landing strip before we were able too. We touched down and were met buy the guides, staff and the anglers from the upper river trip that were going to catch the plane back to UB.
We had a quick yarn to these blokes and every thing they had to say was 100% positive which was a good sign for the fishing to come.
On a side note we did notice their hands, swollen and cracked (stripping for seven days is pretty hard on the hands) and they recommended hand cream and Voltarin gel, I didn’t have either!
We jumped in some old Russian vans and headed a few hundred meters over to the river … before we knew it we were in our waders and jumping in the boats to start fishing.
It was all a bit surreal, I couldn’t really believe where I was, it was fantastic!!
Myself and Jay shared a boat and a tent at night, we were dubbed the International team by the Kiwis, we had guide Marcelo who told us that today was a practice day, which most people needed because the flies we were casting were rather large copper tube flies about 8 inches long with 3/0 Gamakatsu saltwater hooks.
It took me about a dozen casts before I could get the fly to go where I wanted. I found that because we were in boats that water-loading was the best technique for chucking these beasts.
You can also double haul them pretty easily but you're better off saving your arm and just water loading, plus its a lot safer for the guide and guy at the front of the boat he-he!
The other thing we had to learn was the strip set; this is something that I’m very familiar with yet never do it when I get a bite.
I've got such a bad habit of rod setting that I can tell myself to strip set and 5 seconds later get a bite and rod set.
It’s a very hard habit to break!
I remedied this by doing every strip as though I was setting the hook, and it was pretty effective for me.
I would strip set into the fish and on the next strip I would strip set again and also raise my rod, it worked for me, but I'm not so sure its the best method.
The guides recommended strip setting a few times because the bigger taimen had rather hard mouths, and by the end of the trip I had the "double strip set" down pretty good.
Actually I think by the end of the trip everyone had mastered the strip set technique, especially Hugo.
 
So at the end of day one I had one take but no hook up and Jay had a few takes and one hook up that he landed, we were both pretty happy to see a taimen, they are beautiful fish.
We arrived at camp at about 5.30 or so and all the tents had been set up and the cooking was underway. We got changed and made our way to the main tent where we had a bit of a chat about the days fishing.
We were all very excited, especially team Kiwi which had boated 4 fish all up, talk of this competition had already started to heat up. Team Kiwi V The Internationals for most fish landed and I had to keep my mouth shut as I hadn’t landed anything he-he.
Dinner arrived a short time later, it was a beautiful meal!! in fact all the meals were superb!! A big thanks to Boggi our chef, her food was spectacular!!
The following morning Jay and I woke up at 5am, not because we wanted to, but because Mark and Guy were snoring really loudly in the tent next to us!
We got up and pottered about for a while, there was still some hot water left in the thermos from last night so we made a couple of coffees and sat around by the fire for the next hour or so.
Fresh hot water was available at 7am, breakfast was served at 8am and we were on the river by 9am. We float the river approximately 9-12 kms per day, sometimes even further. Breakfast was delicious and today our guide was Yuurgi.
He's a Mongolian guide and knows the river very very well, by lunch time he had us onto half a dozen fish including an Amur Pike.. which was totally awesome.
Amur Pike are pretty rare fish, they're found in only two places, the Onon-Shilka-Amur system ... and on the island of Sakhalin. This river also has a small population of another rare species, the Amur Trout, they look very similar to a regular brown trout but have a mouth that looks more like a Bonefish. The first fish I landed in Mongolia was an Amur Trout" ...
For the rest of this adventure plus more great pics and video footage {like the clip below} go to www.iheartthefly.com In fact if you like all things fly-fishing why not bookmark it ...thanks Paul.
Tight lines
Mike |
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