Justin,
As mentioned, Rose and I were very impressed with this program. Excellent service, excellent food and nice gers. Our trip was on the upper section of the Onon River. The Onon eventually flows to the Amur River on Russia.
We caught 20 Taimen on our trip ranging from low 20s to low 40s. Interestingly, we only caught one fish in the 30s. I caught 4 Taimen in the low 40s. Rose caught 1 in this range. Unfortunately, no picture of her fish as it "escaped" before we could get a photo. We also caught 4 nice Amur pike - photo of one attached.
We didn't fish for the lenok, Amur trout or grayling. One of the other groups on our float spent their 1st week in the headwaters on the Onon and said that these species were much more abundant in the headwaters vs the upper section.
Two of the guides on our trip were Chilean (Fabien and Marcello). During the Chilean summer they work on an estancia just across the border from Rio Pico! Both had guided on the Onon and the Delger Moron for close to 15 years. The 3rd guide was a young mongolian (Tsogo) who, despite his age and experience, was excellent. I caught 3 of my large fish with him.
The guides explained that the taimen on the Onon are different than those on the Delger. The Onon taimen are more silver (less brown) with redder tails and more energetic ... Amur taimen vs Baikal taimen.
Generally, there are larger, but fewer, taimen on the Delger. Interestingly, the largest taimen the Chileans had seen caught was on the lower Onon - 56 inches. They also mentioned that they had seen larger taimen that had been hooked on the lower Onon (probably over 60), however, the fish stayed on the bottom and were unable to be moved. Rose hooked one of these. She had the fish on for over 10 minutes. It then swam to the bottom of a pool and would just not move. The guide tried to "coax" it up but, unfortunately, broke the 30 lb leader.
The one "downside" of the trip was the drive to the river ... 9 hours to get there and 12 hours back to Ulaan Baatar.
Otherwise
Jim
