Mongolia: What We Talk About When We Talk About Taimen

Mongolia:

What We Talk About When We Talk About Taimen

You’ve probably heard about taimen, the extremely large and long-lived relatives of trout that in the angling imagination have grown even larger than life. It could be the broad blunt head, like an oversized brookie with a bad attitude. Or maybe it’s the red tail, as if a bull trout had eaten too many cutthroats. Or perhaps it’s the dwindling habitat, as rare as a solitary morning on a Madison River weekend. For these reasons and more, taimen have become a destination. Like Paris in the spring, a taimen’s heart-rending strike exists in a specific time and a far-off place, a location so remote that the experience requires (for most people) a week’s leave and a month’s salary.

By: PETER W. FONG, Photos by: PETER W. FONG and JEFF FORSEE

Personally, I don’t object to this state of affairs because, since 2006, I’ve been guiding anglers on two incomparable rivers in northern Mongolia, an environment still free of such twenty-first-century detritus as fences, dams, and vacation homes. Which means that I enjoy the privilege of seeing more than my share of taimen ravage the fly.

Many of these splendid attacks involve floating mouse imitations made of hair, foam, or some combination of both. Sometimes we can see the fish coming, a wolf across the steppe. Other times it’s a bolt from the blue, a liquid detonation of shock and surprise. As a guide, I’m gripping the oars when it happens—not the rod— but taimen are astonishing enough that this matters less than you might think.

Never ordinary

Like other charismatic predators, taimen are not truly plentiful, even where their populations are healthy. They can be fickle, especially under a bright afternoon sun, and their hard mouths can make them difficult to hook. If you float ten miles of river, casting with diligence and precision, you are likely to raise a half-dozen, and to release one or two. I don’t want to call this an ordinary day, because drifting through Mongolia’s remarkable landscape should never feel ordinary, but it’s a reasonable expectation, if not a statistical average.

“This disheartening history could hardly be attributed to a lack of skill or persistence”

The word average, however, interests me even less than ordinary. Because I always hope for better—for the unusual, exceptional, or truly unforgettable. That’s what most guides want for their clients: something they can take home. Not something tangible, but a totem memory you can rub until it shines, some ritual protection against the harsher elements of civilized life: a domineering boss, a kidney stone, or an adjustable-rate mortgage.

And because our rivers are routinely generous with their souvenirs, I usually get what I want. But when the inevitable occurs—those days when the unpredictable nature of fishing becomes predictably frustrating—I can’t avoid the old questions of fate and luck.

In that fateful summer, I met two anglers who have fished in most of the world’s hotspots, from Argentina to New Zealand. Ray took up fly-fishing as a hedge against retirement-induced dementia. He could cast moderately well, told a good story, appreciated cold beer and a ritual cigarette. He was a fun guy to row down the river, although I did have to remind him to set the hook now and again.

With the greatest of intent

While Ray was enthusiastic, his friend Kevin was obsessed. Once the fishing began, he sipped nothing but water, ate only when necessary. He leaned forward in the boat, as intent as the great gray herons that stalk the banks, and laid out line with the stylish efficiency that comes from long practice.

Kevin was the second person I have met who used a roll cast to disengage less desirable fish immediately after they ate the fly. And during his time in Mongolia, all fish were less desirable than taimen, even the colorful and enthusiastic Amur trout.

No doubt you can guess which angler landed the largest taimen of the season, on a six-weight rod, while skating a hopper pattern for lenok. And which cast fervently from sunrise to sunset, without a solid take, until at last, in knee-deep water, he saw a silver wake streaming toward the mouse, with the straightforward concentration of a nuclear submarine, only to watch a 16-inch lenok dart ahead, like a sparrow hawk stealing prey from a golden eagle, and impale itself on the size 2/0 hook.

These incidents, and others like them, can—if you let them—condense an entire day into success or failure. And when the failures begin to repeat themselves, it’s easy to start keeping track, to catalog each missed chance and discover a pattern of futility.

Although I tried not to count, I was aware of the numbers over the course of Kevin’s trip. A truly hungry taimen will often give you three or four opportunities to set the hook. In fact, some particularly aggressive fish might strike six times or more. Kevin encountered none of these accommodating individuals.

“I lingered over every likely pool and seam, looking for the one fish”

This disheartening history could hardly be attributed to a lack of skill or persistence. The man had plenty of both. According to Ray, Kevin had outfished him on all previous occasions, for everything from Arctic char to sea-run browns.

In a promising start, Kevin netted a 30-inch taimen on the first afternoon. And he’d been raising fish ever since. But some taimen missed clumsily before vanishing into broken water, while several offered nothing more than an indolent swirl. And the one merciless specimen that ate with abandon? It charged directly at the rod tip. (Slack line, fish gone.)

The end of an unlucky streak

For Kevin’s last day on the river, I wanted something that felt like victory, something to chalk up in the win column. Not in his amiable competition with Ray, but with the curse that seemed to have settled over him like a solitary cloud. It was possible, I thought, to end his unlucky streak by force: the force of will and of determination and of desire.

As it turned out, I was wrong. But it wasn’t until after the season that I realized my entire attitude also had been wrong. When you’re floating through the valley where Genghis Khan was born, casting a fly for fish as long as your leg, you really can’t lose. Because what you’re after is not victory, but memory.

Kevin and I covered the final stretch of river with single-minded dedication.

To tell the truth, I was so absorbed with hunting taimen that I scarcely noticed the family of whooping swans veering overhead, the four gray cygnets grown as large as their parents, ready for their journey south. Nor did I pause to admire the autumn hillsides, with their golden poplars, white-barked birches, and red-leaved currants. Instead, I lingered over every likely pool and seam, looking for the one fish that I imagined would release Kevin from his torment.

A healthy release

We didn’t talk about Ray’s run of good fortune. What was there to say? Ray’s big fish on 3X tippet had probably been a lineclass record, but we hadn’t even considered breaking out the scale. It had been a long fight— upstream all the way, with the taimen surging again and again toward the sanctuary of a sunken log. Because that fish was at least 20 years old (judging from its size), a healthy release was the end of our ambitions.

Don’t get me wrong—I don’t wish that Kevin and I had fished less carefully or with less commitment. But perhaps we might have allowed ourselves to look away from our destination every hundredth cast or so. At the bachelor flock of black grouse that flew plumply over a gravel bar. Or the blush and silver flanks of that infernal sparrow-hawk lenok.

In retrospect, my favorite moments on the river always seem to occur when I’m thinking less like a commuter and more like a pilgrim. All hope, no expectations.

Of course, I never spoke these thoughts to Kevin. I am just superstitious enough to suspect that naming a curse might prolong its power. And to his credit, Kevin never mentioned it either. He simply kept putting the fly on the water, with such stoic calm that I might have misread his silent determination.

Maybe his suffering was all in my head, maybe he already knew what I repeatedly forget—that casting is its own consolation, and that sometimes our most hopeful memories are memories of hope, unfulfilled.

—Peter W. Fong is the author of the award-winning novel, Principles of Navigation. In 2018, he led an international team of scientists on a thousand-mile expedition from the headwaters of Mongolia’s Delgermörön River to Russia’s Lake Baikal. His stories and photographs have appeared in The Flyfish Journal, High Country News, the New York Times, and many other publications. The Coconut Crab, a chapter book for children and adults, is forthcoming from Green Writers Press.

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