Beyond Taimen: Golden Eagles, Asiatic Trout and the Soul of Mongolia by Ken Morrish

I had always believed that the ultimate Mongolian experience would combine a week of taimen and lenok fishing in the north with a Kazakh golden eagle festival in the west. This past September, I finally made it happen.

My wife Mia and I were excited to finally firm up plans for a two-part trip to Mongolia. The first portion was fish-centric and based out of Sweetwater Travel’s historic taimen hunting camp on the Eg-Ur rivers. The second part was a three-day add-on portion to visit an early season golden eagle festival near Ulgi in the Altia mountains.

We took a direct flight from Los Angeles to Seoul, Korea on Korean Air. Despite flying coach, it was a comfortable 13-hour flight with great food and service. After a reasonable layover in Seoul, we flew 3.5 hours to Ulaanbaatar where we overnighted in the included accommodations. The next morning, we headed to a funky domestic airport and boarded a nice Cessna Grand Caravan and flew 2 hours to a pasture “landing strip” near camp.

The camp that we visited is the original taimen fly fishing camp established by the Vermillion brothers of Sweetwater Travel in the late 1990’s. They selected their location carefully and settled on a great little piece of land overlooking the Ur River several miles upstream of its confluence with the Eg River. The Eg flows into the Selenge, and the Selenge is the largest of Lake Baikal’s tributaries. This is a jetboat camp which makes it a special and productive venue for targeting taimen. Even in large systems like the Eg-Ur, taimen are few and far between. The leading biologists (one of which guides at this camp) estimate there are only 25-30 taimen per river mile. Accordingly, you need to cover a lot of water each day, and you need a lot of water to cover if you want to keep your guests in the game. The Eg-Ur camp fishes five primary beats that collectively cover 70 miles of water. The guides are expert jetboat operators and they are also masters at “anchor drop” fishing in which they strategically align the boat in the current and progressively let out more anchor line as anglers cast to opposite sides of the boat. For the anglers who have fished everywhere and “seen it all”, I can assure you these will be the longest anchor ropes you have ever seen!

As you may know, steelhead anglers often like to move 3-5 feet between casts, whereas taimen hunters like to move 8-10 feet between casts, maximizing the amount of water covered. Can the fish see the fly with such big gaps between casts? You bet they can! We fished almost exclusively big 5/0 top-water flies (namely Ramsay’s Cyclops fly named for long time visiting master guide Matt Ramsay of Oregon). These flies are pulsed/chugged with a steady line-hand jigging motion; they move a ton of water and elicit violent takes, several of which made me involuntarily scream aloud.

I had a day on this trip where I landed more taimen than I did in the entirety of my previous trip! While we didn’t find any true monsters, we caught good numbers of fish between 30 and 37 inches and just knowing that each cast has the chance at raising a 50-inch fish makes things very engaging. My wife cares little for blind casting large flies, so we did what I would recommend all visiting anglers do, which is to dedicate several hours each day to targeting lenok. Lenok are also known as the Asiatic Trout, and in many ways, they should be the headline species in Mongolia. On the Eg-Ur they run relatively large, meaning most of the fish you catch are between 16 and 22 inches, with the chance at larger ones. Better yet, they are rather numerous, and they are targeted with 5-weight rods and floating lines while wading. The wading is easy, and they can be caught on dry flies, dry dropper setups, and swinging a small black woolly bugger, which is deadly. Every time Mia spent time lenok fishing, she landed fish that were 18 inches or larger. Two of our guests, Mike and Tana Powel made the trip to Mongolia to exclusively fish for lenok, and they crushed fish all week. The guides like to fish 1x and 2x tippet for lenok, because they can get away with it and because catching taimen while targeting lenok is common. Mike “incidentally” landed roughly 10 taimen this week, all on a 5-weight rod, and most were more than 30 inches long. Despite not targeting taimen, he was one of, if not, the top taimen rod in camp! This was an eye opener for me and crushed some of my preconceptions about the fishery.

Around day four, Mia converted into a taimen angler as well. The key here was introducing her to overhead casting with a 13-foot Spey rod. Suddenly, delivering a big wind-resistant popper was way easier. No double haul was needed, and magically the big bug was 70 feet out there and chugging up a storm. After four days of hauling hard with a 9-weight, I also converted to overhead Spey and had so much fun and so little pain. The guides sometimes call this “old guy” style, as their oldest guide (Big Fish Byra) loves to fish this way and can effortlessly cover the water with 100+ foot casts all day long! Roll the head out once on the water, side-arm into a single back cast, and let her rip!

Seeing Mike and Tana catch taimen on trout rods and watching them find success through overhead Spey casting changed my opinion regarding who was suited to fishing for taimen. I used to think of Mongolia and taimen fishing being appropriate only for advanced anglers/casters, but with the Spey rod and the prolific lenok fishery, I now see it as great destination for anglers of all skill levels.

One of my favorite moments came when we positioned the boat to fish for a taimen that our guide had spotted the day before. As he dropped the boat into position, I made the right cast to about 70 feet. As the fly chugged across the current I had a violent top-water take and strip set hard! After briefly feeling the full weight of the fish, it suddenly disappeared. I cursed out loud and after feeling rejected, continued to passively strip my fly back in while complaining to my wife and guide. Then, roughly 45 feet out, the fish attacked the popper again, this time flying clean out of the water. I strip set three times as hard as I could and turned around to my guide, smiling prematurely. Then the fish let go of the fly, and I cursed again, but this time even louder. I stripped in again and as I prepared to re-cast, the fish hammered it again right behind the boat. This time it stuck! It was a cast I will never forget.

I fished my first four days for taimen with a 9ft, 9-weight Sage SALT R8 and a matching RIO Elite Coldwater Predator line. It was perfect, and many of the guides prefer this type of single hand set up because they feel they are less “floppy” during the critical strip setting process. After four days of casting this outfit long and hard, I was a bit worn out and switched to overhead casting a 13ft 8-weight Sage R8 CORE Spey rod with a 575 grain floating Skagit head and a 15-foot floating tip. While I have spoken poorly about overhead casting Spey rods in the past, this fishery is ideal for this method, as the flies are so bulky and wind resistant that they crash 90% of one’s traditional water-loaded casts. When fishing from the boat and standing with a Spey rod, you simply roll cast the head out, lift into a slightly side-angled aerial back cast and fire it. 70-to 100-foot casts became fun and effortless. I had a great time doing this, and my Advil intake dropped considerably. I also had no trouble setting the hook with the long rod, as I remained deliberate in keeping the rod pointed straight at the fish until I had multiple solid strip sets.

SAGE EXPERIENCES PERFECT SET-UPS:
Taimen: A 9ft 9-weight rod with a floating line and a 400-500 grain integrated 24 sinking line. If you would like to bring a Spey rod we recommend a 13-14ft 8-weight with a Skagit head, a floating tip and 12.5 foot sink tips in T8, T11, T14 and T17.

Trout: A 9ft 5-weight with a floating line is all that is needed. Guests that like Spey fishing could also bring a 12ft 4 or 5-weight trout Spey with a Skagit head and RIO VersiTips.

The guides will strongly tend towards using their own hand-tied taimen flies. Their favorite surface fly is Ramsay’s Cyclops. Their wet flies tend to be very large and similar to musky flies. Most are tied on 4/0 and 6/0 hooks. Feel free to bring your favorite trout flies for lenok fishing along with black woolly buggers in #6 with weighted heads which work very well, as do a wide variety of high floating foam flies.

I am an unabashed fan of tent camps. Ger camps are in many ways even better. They are spacious, warm and regionally authentic. They have basic beds, simple mattresses, comfortable pillows, and large rectangular cotton sleeping bags with liners that are swapped out each week. They have electric lights, reasonable storage, a table, and a chair, as well as a wood burning stove fitted with a water heater and basin so you can take care of basic washing needs with warm water, without heading to the shower house. The stoves are discreetly lit by a staff member wearing a headlamp early each morning while guests are still in bed. I recommend damping the stove down after they depart because your ger will be awfully warm by the time you get up. Your stove will also be blazing when you return from fishing each night. There is a nearby building with three flush toilets as well as another with two showers and a sauna. To keep things real and remind you where you are, cows sometimes freely graze through camp.

The meals were surprisingly good. Mongolia is not known for exceptional or interesting cuisine, but the meals in camp were varied, western influenced, and very thoughtfully prepared. The coffee was strong and good, breakfast was hearty, and the lunches were dandy. In comparison to my first trip to Mongolia, the meals were fabulous!

In summary, a trip to Mongolia is far more than a fishing trip. It has great appeal to folks that are serious anglers as well as those that just want a culturally enriching experience where very accessible fishing is a part of the equation. My wife did not sign up for the fishing, but rather for the whole experience, and in that process, she met great folks, saw stunning landscapes, and caught a heap of great fish including taimen. At Fly Water Travel we often joke that there would be more anglers visiting Mongolia each year if there were no taimen. Why? Because taimen are fickle, few and far between and fishing for them with single handed rods is demanding. If folks went there only to fish for lenok, then each day on the water would likely exceed some of the best days of trout fishing they had ever experienced. So, we stand firm in encouraging folks to really give both fisheries an honest go.

Also know that to take full advantage of the considerable investment in travel time, Fly Water Travel can help you set up custom tours of the Gobi Desert (very popular, with four-star accommodation options), eagle festivals, and snow leopard tours. It was news to me that Mongolia is the best pace in the world to spot snow leopards in the wild. Our outfitter happens to be the country’s foremost authority in snow leopard touring, with the vast majority of his guests' having sightings from mid-September through October, as the early snows push them down into easily reachable lower elevation habitat.

Eg-Ur Taimen Camp - Hosted Trip with Jake Crawford 2026
Join Fly Water Travel's Jake Crawford on a hosted trip that includes taimen and lenok fishing on the Eg-Ur Rivers, followed by a four-star Gobi tour, and an eagle festival next year. Find out more HERE.

Mongolian Golden Eagle Festival
For adventuresome travelers, experiencing a Mongolian golden eagle festival is a pinnacle experience. Massive golden eagles perched on the worn leather gloves of mounted horsemen and women dressed in their finest traditional fur-trimmed garb. This trip was my opportunity to see it all in person. I was introduced to a wonderful and highly reputable outfitter in Mongolia through a great, longtime client. He has strong ties to the international adventure tourism industry, and he made our add-on tour a seamless pleasure.

Read more about this incredible add-on adventure and my experience HERE.