Oh my God. We're driving manically through the Slovenia forest in the freezing darkness, jeep slithering down the track like a drunken snake. I'm on the back seat, trying to sort out cameras and flashguns and to settle my beating heart. Deer scatter in front of the headlights. I glimpse a boar in a clearing. The wilderness is everywhere...fitting home to perhaps the rarest fly-catchable target in the northern hemisphere.
Hucho hucho. The huchen. The Danubian salmon. Call it what you will - we've caught one. It's taken me sixteen years of continuous trips to focus my lens on a huchen but now, at last, I know I'm so close. I'm praying the fish isn't dead, or returned, or tiny...I couldn't stand another knock back after all these years.
We're here. The river bank is a madness of activity. Al, the captor, the hero, looks like a man possessed. So he should be. Roc. Marco. Robin. All headless chickens. It's chaos. And there, tethered in the shallow backwater is THE fish. Twenty odd pounds of huchen. A glorious slab of silver in the torchlight. Just over a metre. The inhabitant of a tiny alpine-like river smaller than the Itchen. It's a miracle of a monster from what's little more than a stream.
Al is babbling. "We saw it hunting in the dusk. There were grayling coming out in front of it. We put a big fly into the commotion. There was a bow wave. Bang! What an attack! The rod was half pulled in. Fight? Ten perhaps fifteen minutes. We were down to the backing twice. It fought hard on the bottom but came out ten, perhaps a dozen times, just thrashing on the surface."
As I focus, I scrutinise the fish and calm down. There's a job to be done. Blimey. I'm taking it all in. Fishery science is bunkum half the time. Central Europe - hucho hucho - the huchen. Asia - hucho hucho taimen - the taimen. Blood brothers we're told, peas in a pod. But they couldn't be more different. The huchen and the taimen. There's no red tail here. Nothing of that pike-like shovel head. Silver flanks not purple blue. The adipose fin is about all that unites them.
You must drink in these photographs. They're rare as a fish that talks. And remember where that fish has just come from...a transparent river laughing its way through forests and Tyrolean-like meadows. A land (today) of peace and plenty. Snow-capped mountains towering over all. Big grayling. Wild rainbows and browns. All fodder for these mighty huchen. Fish you can sight and stalk. Fish you creep up on until they're a rod's length off. Fish that take flies mimicking bullheads, lampreys and immature grayling. Fish that are massive and gorgeous and to die for.
Well done Al. Well done guides. Sixteen years of waiting done with. Oh my God? Thank you Lord for this star-filled night.
IN FACT
- The group used a mixture of Zane rods and reels along with Platinum XD saltwater rods. We found the multi-piece make-up of the gear very useful on the flight. And all with no effect on the general feel and poise of the rods. Floating lines were used throughout with twenty to thirty pound breaking strain leaders. Flies were tied for us by Roc Lustrik - our guide and one of the world's top huchen experts.
- The trick is to get the flies down deep and work them right past the huchen's nose in erratic movements. Takes? Sometimes they're big hits like Al's. Often times, you just strike at anything. Though they are big fish they can sip in the biggest flies like a grayling does a nymph. Taking spinning gear (we used Missionaries) is also advisable in case the river is coloured.
- Timing is very tight. December is arguably the best month. The weather is changeable so we recommend a good outer shell and a combination of base layers.
- Outfitter. Fishing Breaks (info@fishingbreaks.com) will organise travel, guiding and accommodation on the river side. Ticketing - the most difficult part - will also be arranged.
- Hucho hucho and taimen are broadly of the same branch of the salmon family. The largest huchen recorded weighed an astonishing hundred and five kilos back in 1943. On average, it's suggested that huchen stop growing at around twenty years and taimen at around fifty - probably because of the colder water in Siberia and Mongolia. It's also suggested that both species can live for a hundred years or more. In both cases, their conservation status is endangered. Fishing permits are expensive but the money is ploughed back into preserving the species. It's important to fish with single, barbless hooks in both Europe and in Asia for both species.
