Trip Summary; as told by Tim Pask

Photo by Tim Pask

Week 1
I arrive to find Chris recovering from some nasty bug he picked up from a street vendor a few days earlier. Most of the blood vessels in his eyes are shattered and I wonder how hard one would have to puke in order to basically explode your eyes. Well at least we won’t be staying in UB where it appears we would all be subjected to food poisoning on a daily basis.

I am feeling good about my gear, as I am completely equipped for the winter steelhead conditions we will soon find ourselves in.

Photo by Tim Pask


A short helicopter trip finds us in camp with Justin, Brian and Auggie. We soon begin our exploration at the Russian boarder. It seems a bit warm and I am looking for a T-Shirt to wear, but no Luck!

Somebody in the group smells already. I think it is Chris, but it could be the van driver or perhaps even the cook. Chris says he can’t smell the overwhelming BO, but I suspect he is lying.

Taimen fishing is going to be easy!!

Week 2
Everyone but me stinks and I wonder how they can live with themselves. I have been skipping breathes in order to not have to inhale the foul stench that seems to follow the group.

Our beer supply seems to be dwindling faster the expected, so we send the drivers off for more beer when ever we are within 50k of a small village. We never get any change from the drivers, so I suspect they are saving it for us and will surely put it towards our next beer run.

Photo by Tim Pask

We notice some nasty meat lying around in a cardboard box. Good thing we aren’t eating it, as it must surely be rotten by now.

We are all picking up the Mongolian language with ease. I know it’s amazing but one of the drivers is named “What’s Up” and the other is named “Monday”. It is even stranger that out woman cook is named “Two Man”. If you ever find yourself in a group of Mongolia’s and you want to make a toast, the correct expression is “Good Dog”. Simply replace the word “Cheers” with “Good Dog” and you’re sure to be a big hit in most social circles.

Photo by Tim Pask

Photo by Tim Pask

I seem to be the slowest runner in the group, as I was stung 3 times when we walked past a yellow jackets nest. It was Chris’s idea to go that way, and I wonder if he knew it was along the way. Not to mention that once we stopped running he beat the remaining 12 yellow jackets off me with a stick. Just in case you are wondering I don’t recommend following Chris Owens anywhere regardless of the continent or promised outcome.

It is hot and everyone but me is wearing shorts and wet wading. I’ll be well prepared when the winter steelhead conditions roll around.

Taimen fishing is going to be fairly easy.

Week 3
The BO is gone and I have no explanation as to where. Chris has a theory that after a certain period of time your body either absorbs the smell or simply stops expelling it. Either way it’s good that one of the world’s nastiest smells has somehow vanished and we are all daisy fresh.

The Mongolian’s are not as diverse as we seem to be when it comes to picking up a new language and we learned that they have names for us. Brian is “Calm Man”, Justin is “Pretty Boy”, and Chris apparently looks like some Russian actor who always plays a psychopathic killer of sorts so he has assumed the “Russian Killer” handle. I find myself with the boring name of “Beard Man” but the good news is that the cook is not looking at me with the same eyes she is giving Justin. I’d be scared, very scared.

Photo by Tim Pask

Photo by Tim Pask

Chris found five bottles of Vodka behind the driver’s seat. He must be planning on taking it home with him after our journey. It seemed like the good brand and we could not afford to buy it ourselves. The drivers must make a lot of money in Mongolia.

The Calm Man saves us at least once a day, and does remain calm while doing it, so perhaps there is some method to their naming scheme.

That box of meat continues to follow us around. The flies are so thick I think they could carry it off. Our friends the yellow jackets are eating their fair share as well. Once again I am glad we aren’t eating that, as we would surely be projectile vomiting in all directions.

I’ve used Chris’s big ass Gerber knife to cut some pant legs off, as it’s been in the 80’s most everyday. The sunscreen is much more coveted that the fleece that lines my bags. It may be hot during the day, but at least it drops well below freezing at night.

Photo by Tim Pask

Taimen fishing could be a little harder then I thought.

Week 4
I have lost track of how many times the “Calm Man” has saved me. “Pretty Boy” is staying 20 meters away from the cook at all times (don’t blame him), and Chris is having the time of his life. Auggie surely thinks we are all nuts, but goes out of his way to shelter us from the scorn of our drivers and the cook who have good reason to pretty much hate us by now.

Justin alerts us in the middle of our diner that the dreaded box of rotten meat that seems to follow us around is actually what we are eating. Everyone but Chris runs out and pukes up contents of what we had all just inhaled. I thought it tasted a little sour!!! A few hours later Chris begins to puke… What followed was not pretty and I’ll let you image how the next 24 hours went. Oh yea, never, ever in a million years travel to strange destinations in the world without your Cipro.

Monday somehow lost 3 ½ bottles of his vodka. He must have been pissed off about it, as he through a fit and was unable to walk, let alone drive. We had a bit of a tussle keeping him from behind the wheel. We finally put him in the other van and gave him a few beers to settle him down. He must have been okay with it, as he was soon asleep. After getting supplies the next day the driver apparently found his vodka as his bag was once again full. I hoped he didn’t loose it again, as he sure seemed to go crazy once it was misplaced.

Photo by Tim Pask

Photo by Tim Pask

The “Russian Killer”, “Pretty Boy” and “Calm Man” all seemed to love the adventure. Personally my fu@%@#^^% back was killing me, my liquid diet of beer and anything out of a box, can or plastic container was wearing thin. Well at least I’d make it back to UB where Thad would soon join the crew and I’d be off to the good old USA, where we only have to worry about high taxes and bad politics. I wonder what Thad’s Mongolian name will be?????

Oh I almost forgot. Taimen fishing is impossible!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Photo by Tim Pask
Photo by Tim Pask
Photo by Tim Pask
Photo by Tim Pask
Photo by Tim Pask
Photo by Tim Pask
Photo by Tim Pask
Photo by Tim Pask
Photo by Tim Pask
Photo by Tim Pask
Photo by Tim Pask
Photo by Tim Pask
Photo by Tim Pask
Photo by Tim Pask
Photo by Tim Pask
Photo by Tim Pask

Changing Seasons

The seasons are changing in Eastern Mongolia. The conifer trees are starting to turn yellow and will soon make there annual needle drop leaving this once Montana look-alike landscape a soon to be leafless and colorless windswept barren cold Mongolia wonderland. The fishing however is starting to pick up.

We’ve explored 100’s of kilometers of unexplored headwaters and tributaries looking for viable taimen populations. We’ve found a few remote taimen strongholds where accessibility to these sections of rivers was more than difficult to reach. Outside of these sacred stretches of river over-harvesting by local villages has taken an immediate toll on these fish. The UB cowboy (a wealthy 4x4 and fishing enthusiasts from Ulaanbaatar) quite frequently inhabit these stretches of river and have a knack for throwing 3 pound spoons into the deepest holes that they can drench. They all know taimen fishing is illegal in some areas so they hide behind their right to legally lenock fish; the result is usually dozens and dozens miles of taimen-less water. Unlike North American salmonids, taimen can live in excess of 50 years and generally don’t reach a spawning maturity until 8-9 years of age. To decimate a section of water all you need is a few uneducated UB cowboys and some hungry locals and the fish are gone, it doesn’t take much effort at all.

We’ve lost some monsters! How big were they? Beats the hell out of me. I’ve watched Tim’s backing knot ripped from his fly line as his Skagit heads bails down the river at Mach-10. We just sat there and looked at each other in a moment of silence and ahhh, we then ran like a couple of inmates breaking jail after it. 100 yards later Tim caught up and grabbed the line and started to pull on the beast fist over fist as if he were off shore hand lining a big tuna. This fish was massive! In fell swoop half its body surfaced and snapped 20# test effortlessly. This is one incident of many where big fish have laughed at us and have almost made some of us cry! There was a very long silence intermixed with a few cuss words and it was off to try our luck somewhere else.

The landscape is frosted every morning now and the hoppers have passed on. Its big streamer time on the river, which usually means we’re back to huck-casting flies and lines that would be medically diagnosed as not very healthy to fling around. Whipping around this apparatus for prolonged casting periods is beginning to take a toll. I actually know a few fly fishermen whose wrists would probably blow-up, or instantaneously combust, or maybe even liquefy to substance character similar to yogurt between their hand and forearm.

Anyhow, the method to our madness is getting borderline crazy trying to catch the big boy, and it's getting close to the time where the crew drives west to fish the boreal forest along the Russian border and possibly freeze to death. I’ll keep you posted. In the mean time check back soon for a blog update from our photo-extraordinaire Tim Pask… It should be interesting.

Chou Chou,

Owens

“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

Stuck in the mud

We spent the other day digging our vans out of some very deep mud. We were taking a very typical Mongolian river-side road when our driver decided to do change his path and go into the muddy swamp. Check out our podcast for more details.

Tim Pask Photo

Tim Pask Photo

Tim Pask Photo

Searching for Chinggis

Sorry it has been so long since our last update, things have been crazy on the river. In the last 7 days we have: arrived into camp 4 times after dark, taught our drivers how to use a GPS (reason we arrived after dark..) and managed to break our first rod of the trip, we have also needed to ask for directions at least a dozen times (remember no marked roads...), Needless to say, we have had our hands full. Fishing finally picked up last week, a few nice Taimen to hand kept our spirits up after the brutally tough start we had in the beginning. The fish have been looking up at gurglers and other mouse patterns have been the ticket, I must say there is something awesome about watching a three footer come up to the floating bug. All in all things are going great, our crew is learning the ropes and we are finally learning the river.

More updates about our next leg of the trip in a few days, a 7 day exploratory down a remote drainage in Eastern Mongolia.

Tim Pask Photo

Tim Pask Photo

Tim Pask Photo

Tim Pask Photo

Tim Pask Photo

Tim Pask Photo

This weeks shout out goes to Brunton for their solar panels and charging systems, they have been keeping us juiced even though we haven't seen any real power source for the last few weeks.

Out of UB

Things never go as planned. We were scheduled to meet our drivers and spend 8 hours driving to our first river deep in the countryside. The problem, Chris didn't make it. We aren't exactly sure how it happened, but he ended up getting really sick, like go to the bathroom every 10 minutes kind of sick. It could have come from a number of different places, but we have our money on the mystery be bought from the road side kabob stand late one night.

So Brian and I loaded up the vans and began the drive. We also got to spend a little more time with our translator/countryside guide, Auggi, who in a word is best described as awesome! He is 24 years old, and has been up and down the entire country, raced jeeps in the Gobi, can show a man how to catch a horse, and spent the month before we showed up with the Shaman people of the north. He has done more than any of us when it comes to wilderness and adventure and the time he had to re-brake his broken arm hasn't stopped him one step.

Auggi, Brian and I took the "8 hour drive" to our first camp - it turned into 15. Chris was to chopper in with Tim Pask in two days, this actually worked. All of Tim's gear made it to UB, the chopper didn't crash, and there they were getting off the big bird just smiling away. Once the rest of the crew arrived, we could continue our travel to northern most portion of the stream, the border guards were friendly and took our paperwork without any fuss, we were almost to Russia.

On the way north we stopped in by a small family's ger to make sure we were going the right way, as there are no marked roads for hundreds of miles, even the GPS can throw you off sometimes. They were very friendly and brought us some of their home made dried yogurt which was different to say the least. We pressed on and eventually made it to the put-in at 11pm. Total drive time from UB to first put in : 27 hours.

Well we are on the water now. The trout fishing is good. Taimen fishing is hard. More updates in a few days.

Tim Pask Photo

Tim Pask Photo

Tim Pask Photo

Tim Pask Photo

Tim Pask Photo