My name is Jeremy Wade, and for the past 30 years,
I've been traveling the globe
on the trail of freshwater monsters.
Normally, I'm hunting them down in the lush and humid tropics,
but this time, I'm in a totally different zone...
as I travel deep into northern Asia.
It's a desolate place where only the tough survive.
This is actually quite a grim, unpleasant sight.
The prehistoric predator I'm after
has a savage reputation
for attacking anything that gets in his way,
including unwary fishermen.
I first became hooked on stories about river monsters as a kid...
from giants with a deadly, 10-inch dagger in their tail...
to creatures that can literally shock you to death.
First go. Amazing. First go.
There's one monster I read about called the taimen
that I always wanted to catch,
but I always thought either they're now extinct
or they're now so rare
that they're all but impossible to find.
But recently, I've been getting reports
that have made me think again
about catching this legendary predator.
As a boy, I read a legend about a taimen trapped in ice.
It was so large
that starving livestock herders survived the harsh winter
by slicing off pieces of the living fish.
When spring arrived and the ice melted,
this giant taimen climbed onto the land
and ate all the herders.
Farfetched, but it speaks volumes
about how this fish is regarded.
They can grow up to six feet long,
with a mouth packed full of needle-sharp teeth.
And I've had a recent report
that shows what level of aggression they're capable of.
A man was fishing for taimen
when he felt a violent strike on the line.
After a struggle, he managed to bring the fish in...
at which point it turned and bit his arm, drawing blood.
I wonder if it's aggressive enough to be deadly.
Taimen were historically found in Siberia, China, or Mongolia,
but they've been fished to the brink of extinction
in most places.
These reports I've been getting
come from what could be their last stronghold...
Northern Mongolia, one of the most remote places on earth.
Mongolia is the landlocked kingdom of Genghis Khan.
His brutal armies, the Golden Hordes,
terrorized Asia and half of Europe.
It may look hospitable now, but winter temperatures
regularly drop to minus-40 degrees,
and only the toughest creatures can survive in this.
It's the end of summer.
I only have a small window to fish
before the iron grip of winter
will tighten again on this land.
After a couple of days traveling,
I arrive at a tiny town called Moron
that's rarely visited by westerners.
From here, I'm heading into desolate wilderness.
I've never been to Mongolia before,
but when I'm somewhere new, I like to tap into
the knowledge of the local fishermen.
It's worked well for me in the past,
allowing me to pick up pointers
on technique, bait, and location,
all helping me to catch the monster I'm after.
But Mongolia is unique in my experience, because here,
nobody seems to know anything about fish or fishing.
I'm totally mystified.
How can there be a land without any fishing culture?
No, he's saying traditionally, Mongolians...
They don't eat fish.
Most people in Mongolia are Buddhist.
I've been directed to a temple on the edge of town
where I might get some answers.
It's actually believed that if you kill fish,
that's gonna bring bad luck to you.
This would explain why I'm finding no fellow fishermen
and why Mongolia's rivers
are the last bastion of the mighty taimen.
Without any local knowledge to help me,
I feel the pressure to start fishing as soon as possible.
I found a place near the temple
where I can't resist dropping my line into the water.
The taimen I'm after are ferocious predators.
I've heard they like their prey alive and squealing.
Local reports say
they pick off prairie dogs as they swim across rivers,
so I'll try to trigger their predatory reflex
by creating a disturbance on the surface
with a spinner or a fly.
When you're using something like that to entice the fish,
that's just got so little weight to it.
There's no way you can cast that out using its own weight,
so you're using the weight of the line...
with a heavy line and a flexible rod,
and that's what actually gets
this very light, insubstantial fly out onto the water.
I've only fly-fished a few times before,
so it doesn't exactly come naturally to me.
Hey! Zoom on the fish.
Despite that, I've had some interesting results.
No, but it's gonna break. He's gonna break the fish off.
Whoa!
My fly casting is starting to come right.
It's not long before I get a take.
Oh! Something actually took that.
Oh! Here we go, here we go.
That's not a taimen, but it's my first Mongolian fish.
This is a dace, a member of the carp family.
Not exactly a monster, but at least I'm on the food chain.
All I have to do now is move up it until I reach the top.
The next day, I meet up with my guide, Jenga,
who knows the area where the man was bitten.
- Hi, Jeremy. - How are you doing?
- I'm Jenga. - How are you?
He's agreed to take me there,
over a hundred miles into the wilderness,
but he insists on two more people joining our team.
Jenga is the only one who speaks English.
Our transport is an ex-Russian army six-wheeler.
This is the only reliable vehicle for the terrain ahead.
All roads stop at the edge of Moron.
From here on out, it's going to be off-roading,
all the way up to the Russian border,
a lawless area where few people dare to go.
I'm here in the summer,
but this landscape has a darker side.
During the winter of 2010, it was so cold
that millions of yaks, horses, and other livestock died.
But what doesn't kill you makes you stronger,
and that applies to fish, too.
All around are signs of how life is just clinging on
for most of the time.
I thought that was gonna be a cow in the distance.
That's actually a horse.
It's still got the bridle on it, so...
you know, this is a grim sight,
but a very graphic illustration of how harsh this landscape is.
Looks very benign when you sort of see it in the wide,
with this thin layer of green over it,
but you start looking closely,
and this is the kind of thing that you see.
This carcass-strewn landscape is making me uneasy.
It doesn't help
that I can't communicate with two of my traveling companions.
And the third... Jenga... Isn't saying much.
After a bone-shaking 10-hour drive,
we drop down into a valley where tonight's camp will be.
This is the first water we've come across.
While setting up camp, Jenga casually drops a bombshell.
A couple of years ago,
I was camping here with a couple of people.
Yeah.
And we've been shot at.
We were here, heard a gunshot, and the bullet just...
Pew, bing!
Hits the rock.
I can't believe what I'm hearing.
The bullet hit a rock not far from Jenga.
The chances are it was a warning shot...
but they weren't going to hang around to find out.
So we just packed everything up
and just went in the back fast as we can.
Who was shooting at you?
There was ninjas.
Ninjas are prospectors, part of a gold rush sweeping Mongolia
after massive deposits were found here.
Some areas of the country have become like the Wild West.
This is a place that no police or anything here.
Right, okay.
So wanted to do something they want to do.
Jenga hasn't been back here since,
and although he and his friends
have agreed to help me catch a taimen,
we'll have to watch our backs for renegade gold diggers
potentially taking aim.
We just have time to set up camp before sunset.
Getting shot at
is not something that I was necessarily banking on
or the possibility of that happening.
And having heard that,
the whole landscape takes on a different aspect.
We're wide-open here, surrounded by high vantage points.
Jenga also said that this wasn't an isolated incident.
He also heard gunfire at night quite regularly.
And this was probably cattle rustlers,
who are also known to operate in this area.
So it's gonna make the fishing considerably more challenging
than I expected, in a way that I wasn't expecting at all.
After a restless night,
I'm now focused on what I've come here for...
The river and catching my first taimen.
This landscape is very different
from what I'm used to.
At the moment, it looks pristine,
as if it should be teeming with animals.
But for most of the year, it's a very different picture,
which is why there's so little wildlife here.
The river is frozen over for six months every year,
so anything living on that water has got to be tough,
scratching a living from whatever comes its way.
It's also a very hard place to live.
Compared to a tropical river, there's almost no food.
Taimen will often stick to one area for long periods of time.
If a strike doesn't come quickly,
it most often means it's already spooked
or there isn't one there.
To maximize my chances, I have to keep on casting and moving,
covering as much water as possible,
so we'll drift down the river in a raft.
I'm used to rivers
where I can jump in and out wearing just shorts,
but here, the water is bitterly cold.
I need waders and thermal clothing
to give me some protection.
We'll be cut off from the outside world.
If anything happens to us, we could be days away from help.
Each day, Jenga's friends, Talga and Baira,
go ahead to set up camp while I fish, hour after hour
casting my line on the water,
trying to provoke this aggressive fish into striking.
The plan is to go down the Delger-Moron
through 60 miles of inaccessible landscapes,
where hopefully the armed ninjas haven't yet reached.
But there's always that uneasy feeling of being watched.
At the water's edge, something catches my eye.
There must be hundreds, if not thousands,
of one-inch-long fish fry here.
These are very young lenok and grayling.
But what's significant to me is the fact that they're here.
They're not in the main river.
They're in this little, shallow pocket
that's inaccessible, really, in that deeper water.
And the fact that they're here...
That tells me that the main river
is not a healthy place to be if you're a small fish.
There are dangerous predators out there,
and this, if you're a small fish,
is actually the safest place to be.
Mongolia is proving to be a Jekyll-and-Hyde landscape.
The calm waters give way to rapids without warning.
Dangers come from above and beneath.
Hitting a submerged boulder
could tip us into the frigid torrent,
while overhead, loose rocks
frequently drop from the granite cliffs.
Taimen like fast-running water
because it's perfect for ambushing prey.
They hold in the calmer eddies that form behind rocks,
waiting for their food to come to them.
All the time, I'm looking out
for a flash of the taimen's distinctive, red tail.
Main current is surging in that direction.
You've got a bit of an eddy.
This is a classic bit of countercurrent,
and I was thinking I might see a taimen there.
The riverbed is strewn with slippery boulders
and getting a sure footing is not easy.
One slip and I could be swept away.
After working the rapids for hours,
there's something on my line,
and it's putting up a strong fight.
Yeah, it's a fish.
This is not the fish I'm looking for.
It's a lenok.
I'll get it on soft grass.
Very, very strong fish.
Actually very hard to keep hold of this when it wriggles.
This is a relative of the taimen.
Wow. Strong, strong fish.
Strong as these fish are, though, taimen will eat these.
A big taimen will just inhale this headfirst.
Good sign... whoops!
A fish on a lure from these rapids.
Very, very fast water.
It's amazing how fast the water can be
and fish will still live there.
This lenok only weighs around three pounds,
but it has an incredible strength for its size.
Like everything in this savage environment,
it's a lot tougher than it looks.
It's getting towards the end of my first day on the river,
and we have to get to the safety of camp
before it's dark.
Jenga is loosening up as we get to know each other.
I suspect he knows a bit more about this fish
than I first thought,
because he now reveals a surprising tattoo.
I marked myself with a taimen tattoo on my arm.
The tail of his taimen tattoo is represented by a wolf,
because the taimen is the only predator in Mongolian waters,
and it's sometimes called the river wolf.
His design also contains an eagle...
Another top predator here.
Jenga clearly sees the taimen as a creature to be feared.
I ask if he's aware of any humans falling foul of them,
and he lets slip that he knows about the same incident
that I've come to investigate.
It was a big fish.
It was around four feet, and he was handling it...
and that taimen just bit his arm on the muscle
so that he was bleeding.
Jenga seems concerned
about me wanting to catch one of these fish.
Taimen is real aggressive, mean.
It's a real scary fish.
It's gonna scare you.
This is all fleshing out my mental profile of my adversary
and what I have to prepare for.
I'm already keeping a watchful eye on the surrounding hills,
but I've also got to be wary of the ground under my feet.
Amazing how camouflaged this thing is.
Talga has just found a venomous snake,
just in the grass near the camp...
I mean, in between the tents.
This snake is a type of pit viper.
Its fangs inject a cocktail of toxins
that dissolve flesh and paralyze prey.
Medical help and any antivenoms are potentially days away.
It's quite hard to see when it's still,
but that's quite disconcerting.
I might have been walking within feet of that,
you know, this morning.
What's interesting, though, more interesting
is that one of these was seen in the river last year
on the surface, and a taimen came up and took it.
A fish that takes venomous snakes... I mean,
that really does say something about this predatory fish.
We take it far away from camp and let it go.
I've only got a short amount of time to catch a taimen
before the winter freeze,
so I fish every bit of water I can.
Here, it's so clear, I can see the fish the taimen feed on.
Hopefully, there's one nearby.
Right. This is fish.
It's not a taimen.
I seem to have caught everything in this river
except what I'm after.
In this case, it's a grayling.
They're found all over Asia and Europe
and can grow to two feet long.
That's the sort of trademark, sail-like dorsal fin.
Very pretty fish. Quite stripy flanks.
Relative of the trout.
It's got this little adipose fin here.
Very nice to catch that, get my striking reflexes.
But I think the biggest role the grayling have in this river
is actually food for the taimen.
It's actually quite unusual for me to catch fish that I can see.
Normally, the rivers that I fish are quite murky.
And this water, though, is wonderfully clear,
particularly now it's going down.
It's getting clearer almost by the day.
We carry on drifting down the river
for another couple of days with no luck.
I'm beginning to think
that my childhood dream of catching a monster taimen
will remain just that... A dream.
Seeing my frustration, Jenga arranges for me to meet someone
who might be able to help.
I'm instructed to enter a traditional Mongolian tent,
called a ger.
I assume whoever is in there
can help me find the taimen I'm after.
I was expecting maybe a gun-toting gold digger,
but it's a shaman.
The first thing that strikes me
is that she's nothing like the witch doctors I've met
in places such as the Congo and the Okavango, in Africa.
They are always elder statesmen of the village.
But in Mongolia, both men and women can be shaman.
Although most people in Mongolia are Buddhist,
many also follow an older, animistic religion...
A Pagan belief system with deep roots
stretching beyond the age of Genghis Khan.
What she's actually saying is that everything has a spirit,
even things that we regard as inanimate...
The mountains, the sky, the water, the trees.
Spirits are basically all around.
Everything out there has a spirit.
The water spirit owns the fish.
It's almost as if the fish are the children of the spirit.
The shaman tells me that these spirits are ever present
and have the power to keep me from catching a taimen.
I'd assumed the powerful feeling of being watched
was down to the ninjas, but now I'm not so sure.
She offers to contact the spirit world,
and I'm hoping this will give me some guidance
as to what to do.
Just after sunset, the ceremony to summon the spirit begins.
For me, spirituality and fishing have a lot in common.
Casting a line on the water
is like asking a question or saying a prayer.
Both rely on faith...
Faith that you're going to get an answer...
Or in my case a fish.
You don't just become a shaman in Mongolia.
A spirit picks you in childhood,
but only reveals itself in later life.
She starts by banging a drum
to help her enter a trancelike state.
Before my eyes, she transforms
from the soft-spoken person I met in the ger
to a gruff-voiced oracle.
She is literally a woman possessed.
Having looked at my palms, although fishing is a bad thing,
it doesn't please the spirits, there is some good in me,
and a spirit will bring the fish to me.
But what I've got to do, not just here, but other rivers,
is when I go to the river,
I've got to make some kind of offering to the spirits
before I fish.
I've promised that if I catch a taimen,
I'll let it go unharmed.
I've traveled thousands of miles
to try and catch this fish,
and so far, I haven't gotten close.
I'll take any help I can get.
Before setting off again, I do as the shaman ordered
and go down to the river
to give an offering of yak milk to the spirits.
My time on the river is getting short,
and there's still no sign of any taimen.
A fisherman's fortune can turn on a dime.
You can go day after day without anything,
but then suddenly,
all of your frustrations dissolve in a second.
I see a large shape in the water, heading towards my lure.
Could this be my first taimen?
That's a fish. That's a fish.
After seeing the telltale flash of taimen red,
I'm sure that I have the monster I dreamed about
on my line.
I almost took it on the drop as it hit the water.
That's a good size, as well.
Yeah, we need to get clear of the...
let's keep away from this rock.
Let's just go behind.
Oh
That came off, that came off.
I was sort of trying to muscle it past this snag here.
But that just slipped off the hook.
The shaman said that I would get to see a taimen,
and that's exactly what's happened.
But I've traveled over 4,000 miles, been fishing for days,
and I'm wondering now
if this is the closest I'll ever get to one.
Jenga tells me of a likely spot further downstream
where there's a good set of rapids.
I start fishing immediately.
It's easy to get dejected,
but I'm trusting my intuition again.
This is just where a taimen could be lurking.
Then I spot a large one coming up in the water,
and I feel my hopes rise.
Taimen tend to be quite territorial.
If they're seen in a spot very often,
they're still there later.
So with a bit of luck and a few moments' time,
this could be inside his mouth.
Taimen are the undisputed masters
of Mongolia's icy waters.
Will my lure trigger its legendary predatory instinct?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah! Got a fish, got a fish!
Something has hit my lure, and it's fighting hard.
Again, I see the distinctive flash of red.
It's another taimen.
That's a strong fish, a strong fish, this.
And this feels bigger than the one that got away.
It's actually just in this heavy water,
and that heavy water is moving upstream,
so I'm just keeping constant pressure.
There it is, there it is, there it is.
It's in among some rocks.
If my line catches on one, it could easily snap.
It might be ready.
To secure the taimen, Jenga grabs hold of its tail.
Fantastic.
We both know its teeth
are capable of causing some serious damage.
There's nothing like bringing a good-size fish in
to make you forget all your frustrations.
My first taimen... not a monster, but a great start.
And there's a big old rapid,
and this was just right on the edge of that.
Rubber fish, and it's just bouncing down, bouncing down,
and it's got a little bit of a kick on that tail there,
and something... boom!
And look at that.
That's a lovely fish. That's a lovely fish.
Wow.
So, my first taimen.
And it's still got a lot of fight left in it, actually.
I mean, it's just one bar of muscle.
Very, very strong fish.
I mean, just to survive in these rapids, this water...
I mean, there's more white water
than, you know, still water here.
And this thing was living right on the edge of that.
I mean, this fish really, really living up to its reputation.
Its mouth is packed with needle-sharp teeth.
They're angled back like a shark's
so whatever it grabs hold of won't get away.
Now, although this is a predatory fish,
it's also, true to say, it's a very pretty fish.
It's a very nicely marked fish.
But these spots, of course,
serve as perfect camouflage, really, in this rocky river,
just blending in with the background.
I mean, it makes it a real stealth predator.
The shaman warned me not to kill or harm any taimen.
I release it quickly
so I don't damage my chance of finding an even bigger one.
Yeah, I think it's ready to go.
There it is.
Zoom!
I'm eager to carry on fishing, but it's near nightfall,
and we have to get to the safety of our nearby camp.
After catching my first taimen,
there's a new confidence among us...
and we share stories far into the night.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I get up early the next morning
to have one last go in the rapids near camp.
This time, I'm going to try heavy-duty fly fishing.
Maybe this will deliver the big fish I'm after.
The taimen will most likely be holding in the eddies and boils
behind the big rocks, so this is where I aim my casts.
But with such a strong current bumping my fly,
it's hard to feel the exact moment when I have a take.
All of this is adding to the pressure,
as this could be my last chance here,
and I feel that I'm starting to make mistakes.
Yeah, it's a fish, it's a fish.
No, it's off.
I just seen a fish come up of my fly.
It was in the tail of the white water there.
And I think I probably pulled it out of its mouth.
I should have just given it a little longer.
It's very hard in the heat of the moment.
You just get this reflex.
You see the fish. I wanted to set the hook.
But... ah!
But they're here, they're here, and they're coming up.
After feeling the power of the taimen,
I believe that a big one could pull me off-balance
and into the water.
I need to keep my footing.
Suddenly, I'm being pulled towards the water.
There's something big on my line.
Yes, yes, yes, yes!
That's a fish, that's a fish!
I mustn't let the line snag on the boulders or it's game over.
All right. I can see it. I can see that red tail.
Right, now just take it easy now.
Big, red tail.
This is a good-size fish.
Can see the fish really well
going out into the current there.
The bigger they are, the harder they fight,
and this one's fighting with all its strength
to get away from me.
The adrenaline is pumping, and my brain is telling me
to keep a constant tension on the line
or this fish will throw my hook.
Okay. It's spinning, it's spinning, it's spinning.
It's a two-man job bringing this taimen in,
and our first attempt fails.
This is now difficult,
because the line is around the body of the fish.
I've lost control of the fish.
I can't bring it out of the strong current.
Jenga has to go out into the middle of the river
to grab the taimen, hopefully without getting bitten.
After an intense, nerve-racking battle, a very long journey
that began back in my childhood comes to an end.
Taimen on a fly.
Wow.
What a fish, what a fish. Amazing fish.
This is a rare beast. I'm lucky to see one this big.
Right.
Oh! The size of the head on this thing.
Wow!
And look at the mouth on that and just the muscle on this.
Just looking at this thing now,
you can just tell how well-adapted it is
for this predatory lifestyle in this fast water.
Very, very streamlined body.
Got this huge mouth, and the teeth in there are just angled.
You know, they almost come back flat,
which is why they're not immediately visible.
And it's even got teeth on the tongue.
If it sank those teeth into me, it could do some damage.
I can feel this one still has a lot of fight left in it.
It's time to return it to its element.
What's really nice is this fish is just flexing.
This fish is ready to go.
I'm gently supporting it by the pectoral fins,
just taking the weight, but jack's still holding the tail.
I think as soon as we let go of the tail,
it's gonna support itself.
It might think for a second or two,
and then I think it's gonna be gone, back into this fast water.
I was worried that I might never catch a taimen,
but I was lucky enough to catch two in the same spot.
To me, this is also an indicator.
The fact that the top predator is still here
shows that this river is still alive.
For the time being, at least, this is a healthy river.
And just what an amazing sight to see.
It's been the fulfillment of a long-held personal goal
in a place of extraordinary harshness and beauty,
and it proves that the fighting spirit of Genghis Khan
is still alive and well in Mongolia.
It's now time for me to leave this mysterious wilderness
and head back to the modern world.