Trip Summary

Mongolia, by Brian Gies
Fly Fishing Mongolia

Truth be told, I am one of the lucky few who loves travel just as much as fly fishing. Those closest to me know that traveling in Asia, multi day wilderness whitewater trips and swinging flies on rugged rivers are very high on my list of preferred activities. This fall it seems that all the stars have aligned in my favor as I will be getting a healthy dose of all of the above.

I started by traveling in September to China and Mongolia, which I will report on below. Then in early November I was off to India and Nepal for a ten day rafting expedition to chase the Himalayan Mahseer which I will report on soon.

It had been four years since my last trip to Mongolia. On my previous trip I stopped in China but was too rushed to take the time to see some of the famous sights. This time I built a few extra days into my itinerary to give me time to hike on the Great Wall and tour the Forbidden City and the Summer Palace. Should you find yourself in Beijing, I would highly recommend these sights as they are physically impressive and culturally fascinating as well. However, there were a few downsides to this part of the trip. First, as we all know China’s industrial revolution is in full swing. One result of this is that we did not see the sun the whole time we were in Beijing and it was not because of cloud cover. Second, it seems that Air China has decided that it does not need to honor flights as scheduled. The result was a 36 hour delay for our flight to Mongolia and the worst and most bizarre customer service that I have ever experienced. Luckily our schedule was such that even with travel delays we were able make it to camp in time to get in just under six full days of fishing.

The main Taimen camp is as idyllically situated as one could imagine. Guest stay in gers (traditional Mongolian tents) that are arranged in a semi circle, on a grass infield, along a long, easy bend of a low gradient river. The rolling hills in the foreground and gentle mountains in the distance are covered in pine, larch, alder, and birch trees. The fall season is particularly scenic with the grass green from summer monsoons, combined with birch and larch trees in their fall colors of yellow and orange.

The rivers were in perfect shape, running low and clear. We had a week of ideal weather with crisp mornings giving way to sunny, clear afternoons. Our group had a number of experienced anglers and the guide staff was comprised of the most experienced Taimen guides in the industry. By all counts I would have expected this to be an outstanding fishing week with a number of memorable fish stories being told over evening meals. As it turned out there were many stories of massive explosions on surface flies, big tugs on streamers and giant black shapes swirling around flies. Unfortunately the photos of happy anglers holding the fish of their dreams were few and far between. My own luck mirrored the groups with multiple fish over forty inches coming to my surface fly, two of them seemingly hooked quite solid, only to come unbuttoned in the end. This wasn’t to say that we did not land any fish. Along with the opportunity at bigger fish, each day the group landed good numbers of Lenok in the 20” to 30” range and a decent number of Taimen in the high 20” to low 30” range. Our guides worked hard to keep us on good water and in the game and hopeful of the big strike right to the end of every day. I just can not say enough about the talent and dedication of these guys.

While we all would have liked a few more monsters to hand, in the end we knew that all of us would likely be back to try our hand at landing the mythical 60 incher in a place that we all consider one the most magical fly fishing destinations in the world .