“SNAP”

It will be an act of god if we all make it through this trip in one piece, and I won’t be surprised if we’re all two inches shorter! We have traveled 100’s of miles across road less landscapes, each time blazing our own trail through the wilderness. Every tire valve on every van has leaked and if it weren’t for the rusty bicycle pump under the van driver’s seat we’d all find ourselves between a rock and a hard place. The windshield is cracked and ready fall out at anytime. Our van driver thinks he’s competing in Mongolia Gobi desert cross-country rally classic every time he turns over the ignition. I’m sure it won’t be long before our Russian Fergon flips and tumbles across the landscape 84 times through some cattle ranchers’ yurt! Hopefully our cameras will be rolling tape when I pin him in a chicken wing for driving to fast.

Terry, we need bicycle helmets and a box of the cushy pads that people sit on when they have hemorrhoids. Grrrr.


Well, the fishing is definitely improving. Every time we miss a strike or accidentally float over a pod of big fish we’re learning more about taimen and strategies to catching them. It didn’t take long for us to figure out that it wasn’t necessary to swing an 18” streamer pattern tied on a 5/0 hook with an entire rabbit hide and Christmas Tree assemble to catch these fish. I’m almost sure that I permanently injured one of my wrist’s when it let out a huge “SNAP” while trying to violently push through on a double haul chuck and duck cast with one of these ridiculous patterns. I’ve spent the last two days learning to cast left handed without much luck so I think I’m just going to resign to camera boy for a while. Everyone is saying that I should spend less time water coloring and weaving baskets between trips, so I think I should come up with a better excuse on the next go-round..

Anyhow, our Gurgler patterns won’t cast or swing well with rabbit hair tales. They’re constantly wrapping around the shank of our hooks making our already pitiful presentation look even scarier. While passing a wild camel on the side of the road yesterday Brian “the Tech” Jill came up with a soon to be tested brilliant idea of using camel hair as a gurgler tale substitute for the soggy rabbit hair tails. One problem, how the hell were we going to cut a clump of hair off a wild camel with our fly tying scissors???

These animals are big and they’re not the tame creatures featured in the Conan movies, so we sent Auggie out to complete this task. I would have done the same for him if he wanted to tie a fly pattern with chipmunk or squirrel hair in the States.


Auggie’s English is good but somehow he misunderstood or misinterpreted me when I asked him to cut a little hair off the camel with get a little air on the camel. That crazy Mongolian jumped on the back of the camel saddled up between the two humps and was going for an 8 second ride. And he did! He’s lucky that animal didn’t decide to run to the Russian border.

Well, I have to check out.. The Mac laptop is screaming low battery at me and Monday the Van driver is not happy that I’m sitting on his van seat slash bed at the moment.. He’s been awkwardly staring at me for the last 2 hours and I’m feeling a little uncomfortable at the moment.. I promise no more rodeo stories next blog update and little more on the fishing. Ohh and we’ll let you know if the Gurgler Gurgles..

Chau Chau

Owens