Looking Back

It's hard to imagine now that all of our experiences and memories of Mongolia were even real. If the weather didn't get so cold in such short order we'd still be casting to those big tiamen and big lenock. Imagine how life might have been on the very ground you stand upon some 300 years ago. It was rough living for AEG and at times somewhat brutal. Even for us it was hard to imagine that this was just day-to-day life for the Nomadic countryside culture of Mongolia. There wasn't coffee shops or stoplights outside of UB. A traffic jam was a heard of goats blocking the trail to the river, and the oven was nothing more than a steel wok over a campfire. Everyone you encounter was friendly, happy, and more than willing to help you out when you were in a tight spot.
Our exploration’s into remote river basins in search of untapped taimen fisheries with Andy Parkinson’s Fish Mongolia was nothing short of an unbelievable experience and opportunity for AEG. We contacted Andy a little over a year ago when we first started planning this expedition. His invitation to explore uncharted waters was quickly accepted. We knew that he had the resources to get us into these remote stretches of rivers, and when he said he had his own personal convoy of Russian military vehicles we called BS!

Let me formally introduce the newest members of the Loop Army, the M-31 and M-66.

There wasn’t a river crossing that we couldn’t handle or mountain we couldn’t climb, this was trail blazing at its finest, AEG was invincible! The sound of 4 tons of Russian steel bending will be forever etched in our minds. Thad can best describe his 30-day 4x4 excursion across Northern Mongolia in two words, “Spinal Compression!” Personally, I was never diagnosed with spinal bifida in grade school but I can’t imagine that’d be the case now.

No matter how many times we were thrown from one side of the M66 camper and back to the other side we still couldn’t stop thinking about how we were going to get one of these vehicles back to the States.
Northern Mongolia’s landscape was carpeted with green conifer trees during its summer months. The high rock cliffs that formed the confining valley walls of the rivers we explored left the impressions that we were fishing with in Glacier National Park. This portrait was only temporary and soon changed as the temperatures dropped and the fall-winter season quickly made its presence.
What was once green was now yellow. It was impressive to watch the deciduous green needles of the larch tree turn yellow in a week’s period of time. We were traversing through yellow forest and throwing streamers into fishing holes formed by 1000ft cliffs. I can’t imagine a more scenic place and time to fish than Northern Mongolia in the fall.

We had to leave the Convoy behind at times and resort to horse packing to reach the upper most reaches of these drainages along the Russian border. Camels packed our food supplies while horse trains were formed to pack our rafts and fishing equipment. There were times when we packed several days into these untapped rivers systems, and to the best of our knowledge we were the first westerners to ever fish these waters.

The temperature dropped fast, and within days our spike camps were frozen over. Water temperatures dropped 10 degrees and the river levels had dropped a foot. We were fishing at 6000ft and the odds were stacked against us.

I remember a time when we were well into a pack trip, some 45k up river when the first flash blizzard in Northern Mongolia came rumbling down upon us. Visibility was zero. The local horsemen guiding us kept pushing into the storm without hesitation. Our dells were frozen, our hands were beyond numb, we needed shelter fast. In the distance Justin spotted some sort of stable, an animal shelter of sorts that wasn’t to appealing to our guides. I know very little Mongolian but what I did decipher from Auggie through conversation was that they had no intention of sleeping on piles of stinky goat pellets that night. In their eyes we were pansy asses, I’m sure of it, but we really didn’t care.

In the morning the riverbanks were completely frozen. Ice blocks poured down the river making casting virtually impossible. In the next update I’ll explain how we overcame these odds, the effects of fermented horse milk better known as “milkshine” by Brian, and a few snap shots of the massive taimen that eventually came to hand. Hold tight….

A good dog to everyone,

Owens