Trophy taimen

For years I'd been dreaming about going to Mongolia to chase the mistirious Taimen. Summer 2004 it happened. In my fly fishing live I have learned to except that most of the time your either too early or late (you should have been here yesterday!). But this trip we hit it right. Within two hours after landing in camp I hooked, caught and released a 126cm taimen. A dream come true! My buddy Kees caught a 122cm taimen in the same pool the next morning. A fish I spotted from the high bank. An unforgettable adventure with lots of big taimen. After a few days I decided to change to surface fishing with a mouse imitation. Biggest on the dry fly measured 113cm. What a trip!

We used 9ft #9 fly rods. A reel with a good drag is a must. These taimen jump and run an they are strong fighters. We fished floating lines and sinktips (intermediate and sinking). The river was also full of lenok trout and grayling. So that's what they feed on. But the're also looking for lemming and mouse in the surface. Tie them on strong #2/0 to #6/0 hooks. Use strong tippet around 40/00. Fish quarter downstream en strip every now and then to give the streamer some extra movement. The take will be obvious as they will pull hard. When fishing in the surface do not strike until you feel the fish. Otherwise you'll miss a lot of them.

By-catch species are lenok and grayling. Big lenok ober 50cm will at times take the taimen streamers too but we mainly fished for grayling and lenok using a 9ft #5 and hoppers. There were so many fish in the river that we had takes all day long. In such circumstances nothing beats fishing dry flies.