Dreams of Taimen

Once I caught a pretty big one, about twenty kilos.

But they say, taimen can be as big as seventy kilograms.

 Here in Siberia we call them “grandma-eaters”.

Vasily Peskov. Forest People

Probably all ambitious anglers (along with the unambitious ones) dream of catching this one, big, strong, and beautiful. Even its name, “tai-men”, is so mysterious it lures you in …

Dictionaries describe this species as follows: taimen (lat., Hucho taimen) is the largest species of fish in the salmon family (family Salmonidae). It usually is 1 m long and weighs about 22 kilograms; however, significantly bigger specimen can be found. Its red adipose, anal, and caudal fins are the distinctive feature of this species. It has a long straight body that becomes slightly reddish or light crimson during the spawning season. Young specimen have vertical stripes.

However, the best description of taimen one can find in the Jahangir Jewels by Petr Sigunov:
“Taimen had a round dark brown back, ash-grey sides covered with black spots and crescents and a whitish belly with golden speckles. It had a truly magnificent tail: smoky, silvery, with yellow spots, it gradually turned red and ended with a bright orange broad fin with crimson, golden and blueish stripes. Its paired fins were sharp, the pectoral ones were grey and the back ones were orange. It had a dorsal fin covered with black ovals; and more black patterns decorated the adipose fin. It had a big head and a fearsome mouth with rare large sharp conical teeth curved inward. It had a broad and heavy forehead. Its gill cover was smoky, glossy and covered with black speckles.”

Taimen, with its strong muscles and broad head, is perfectly fit for the fast Siberian rivers full of rifts and rapids. Its sleek body, strong fins and powerful long tail make long swims through tempestuous mountain currents possible. What a breathtaking experience it is to witness this creature literally flying up a waterfall from a slope to a slope, from a bend to a bend by pushing itself off the stones with its tail. Taimen also uses its strong tail to knock out and drown its prey. As Viktor Astafiev wrote, “…and only taimen was chasing roaches through the shallows in the backwater all night, pounding its tail, as if someone was firing a shotgun” (Tsar Fish).

Taimen, also called the Siberian taimen, also has two “siblings”: Danube salmon (the oldest species of taimen) and Sakhalin taimen (also known as the Japanese huchen), but they do not grow as big and have other distinctions. The Siberian taimen occurs in the Siberian rivers and lakes all the way east to Indigirka, it also inhabits the Amur basin, as well as the Ud and Tugur rivers that flow into the Sea of Okhotsk.

Locals call it talmen or len. Yakuts call it bil, Mongols call it tal, Buryats call it tulu (the famous dish of tala derives its name from this word). In the language of the Nivkh (indigenous people of the Amur River region and Sakhalin) taimen is called tav’yashpd.

Taimen is the largest predator in a Siberian river. Taimen is its master and its jewel. Many a story, tale and legend is told about taimen, some of them are even modern. Thus, the main character of the Red Taimen novel has been admiring the sunset every year from the cliffy backwater. When the last ray of sun went out and everything hid in shadows, “out of the water there came taimen. It flew up in the air, going into a vertical climb, practically shooting its almost a meter-long body out from the depth. It woke the whole of the backwater up. Waves came splashing on the stones. They slid off to the deep and it seemed they nodded at Kiriyanov in secret. Taimen danced around, wild and raging, and bathed in scarlet gleam. It looked like the spirit of this roaring stream, hiding away in the backwater, - strong, triumphant, everlasting!” (Askold Yakubovsky).

In Clear Pools

Taimen inhabits cool streams and prefers swift currents. It hides in the deep and the shadows, behind the boulders and fallen trees by day, but at night, it comes out to the rifts and deep reaches next to the rapids and the streams creeks where it feeds all night until dawn and only gives itself away by strong splashes on the river surface. On sunny days when the water warms up it keeps to the cold springs and inflowing streams.

The Siberian taimen lives strictly in fresh waters. During the spawning season in May-June, after the ice breaks and drifts, taimen comes up to the headwaters. Spawning grounds are usually in the shallow waters, only 50-70 cm deep, with swift currents and stony bed. Females lay eggs at 7-8 °С into the holes they dig. After spawning some specimen return to tributaries, while others leave for larger rivers and streams where they spend the summer keeping to deep waters. For winter, taimen goes down to large streams or lakes.

Large specimen mostly live alone, but the young ones shoal together into small groups. Juveniles (up to three years) feed on insects, worms and small crustaceans. Adult taimen are mainly piscivores, though they may also eat frogs, birds and small terrestrial animals, including snakes and lizards. Taimen becomes mature in five years and lays eggs twice a year.

It is hard to catch taimen during the spawning season, but after that, they become excessively “greedy” and easy. The best time for angling is dawn or dusk. You can use spinning rods or spoon lures, and in winter, it is better to change to the live bait and trolling.

Following the Red Tail

Taimen fillet and its roe have always been considered delicacy in Siberia. Despite the fact it is less fatty than an Atlantic salmon, taimen is really tasty. The fillet can be white, yellowish or rose in color. Dmitry Mamin-Sibiryak described “taimen with rose tender fillet” in his works and wrote, “…we caught taimen in the river and cooked a most delicious ukha (fish broth).”

Once it is hooked, taimen fights fiercely, loudly and with a flair. It jumps, somersaults, goes into vertical climbs and tries to break the line with its tail. Small specimen of up to 10 kilos tend to act like that, while bigger ones are more composed – however, a single-handed fight with them might be extremely dangerous. As Leonid Sabaneev, a 19^th century scientist, once noted, “talmen has no rivals in the Siberian rivers when it comes to its strength, speed and intellect. A heavy talmen can easily drag an angler off its boat and you cannot get it out of the water on your own.”

There have been numerous accidents when taimen dragged people into the icy rivers with swift currents and dangerous rifts. The fish may beat its tail so fiercely when already out of the water that its captor falls down startled. Anglers also slip on the rocks and hit their head – one such episode is described in the Tsar Fish. Numerous stories are told of fingers cut off with a fishing line or people getting stuck in ice holes…

Taimen is often compared to a wolf – not only for its appetite, but also because it cannot move backward. It is not in its nature to back off. It uses its huge head and sharp teeth to break and tear through the nets. Sometimes it can easily jump over the net, and if it is caught in a dragnet, it will jump at its captors pushing them out of the way.

Speckled Terror

An old Evenk tale tells the story of how the Sun punished taimen for its ill nature and gluttony by waking the wind and throwing the fish out to the shore. A kind boy asked what happened and learned that “one small fish saw the Sun, rejoiced and started playing with one of its rays, jumping around and having fun. That Taimen caught the fish and ate it.” But the tale has a happy ending. The Sun forgave the insolent Taimen and told the boy to “splash some water on a dead Taimen if you happen to come across one lying on the shore, and then it will come back to live. Throw it then into the water and the river will take it back.”

Experienced anglers confirm that taimen has an excellent appetite. It catches the lure. Once it feels it is a metal fake, it spits it out – but catches it again if it moves. People say, “it chases every scrap”. The glitter coming from the lure wakes its instincts up and makes it restless. More often than not anglers catch specimen with more than one lure in its mouth.

Arkady Kutilov describes catching this “beast” with a “mouse spinning lure” with excitement:
“Taimen cannot bear having something spinning in front of it. It does not understand it, it becomes annoyed, it practically boils with anger. Seeing the spinner from afar, it may be a hundred meters, taimen lunges at it. Like a Messerschmitt coming in for an attack, it turns against the current, grabs the mouse and is gone within a second. The line is one hundred meters long, and for exactly one hundred meters taimen will be thinking it is free” (Farmer Barabanov’s Stories).

Taimen has a very good eyesight and an accurate grip. Any small animal coming to drink may become its prey even if it is far away on the opposite shore. This red-tailed cunning fellow can find a nice spot at a rift and open its mouth to catch all the small fish that got in the current or take a group of rodents trying to cross the river by surprise. Well, what else can be said, this one likes to eat. Anglers often catch a stuffed taimen with dozens of small graylings, squirrels and lemmings inside its belly.

A small fish from the Yelchik-Belchik tale by Viktor Astafiev sees taimen as haughty, sated and utterly terrifying:

“…two huge, of the size of a half a log, fish swam by lazily moving their strawberry-red fins. Their bodies were covered in silver medals and gold insignias, their strong backs were dark and only bellies stuffed with food were tender, almost female-like; and they carried them around carefully trying not to hit anything, not touching the riverbed. They slid through the water freely as masters, arrogant and demanding. And their tails – the goby did not lie – oh, what tails they have! They are like a brightly colored rudder, winged and rounded at the edges.

Warriors of the River

The Siberian taimen can be two meters long and can weigh as much as one hundred kilograms. Naturally, nowadays sport anglers can hardly dream of catching even a 60-80 kilo giant, however, it is perfectly possible to catch a 30-40 kilo one with a spinning rod, and it happens quite often.

Each year taimen grows by 8-10 centimeters. One-year old “kid” is about 10 cm long, seven-year adult – 70-80 centimeters already, and so on. Of course, the figures are approximate, the main factor being the amount of forage in the water. Different specimen can be more or less fat, and the weight does not exactly correlate with the length.

As for its age, taimen are long-livers, which distinguishes them from other salmonids. The oldest specimen caught in the middle of the 20th century was 55 years old. However, its weight matched the same figure.

Taimen Hiding Spots

It is a very good luck catching a “trophy” taimen, especially nowadays with the species suffering from poaching and bad environment state. The species is included into the Red List of Threatened Species of Russia and its population keeps decreasing. After a short photoshoot, you need to release the fish back into the river. It will survive if you have not caused damage or held it by its gills.

But wait, is it only a single photograph that the anglers are after when flying to the end of the earth? “If you are lucky, Siberia can show you its rare unexplainable enchanting captivating dawns when everything seems to sing: the grass, the trees, the rocks. They sing because of soft golden sunrays, play of azure hues in the fog, blurred sapphire shadows. And then the gloomy taimen guided only by their predatory instincts start to dance, as if drunk with silent mysterious glory. They soar up high over the river as shooting stars, bend themselves in steep arcs and thud their tails back on the water. Or they may, like swimmers diving from a platform, deftly turn in mid-air, straighten up and go back into the depth silently, without a single splash” (Jahangir Jewels by Petr Sigunov).

And here is how Astafiev draws a picture of a quiet life in a taiga river in late autumn in his Tsar Fish:

“In the Ende river lenoks were splashing around knocking out juveniles and tying knots on the river surface; taimen was leaving the shallows; harius was trying the floating leaves and fallen autumn clutter picking up the maggots lazily and leaving neat circles on the water. Fat and careless fish hid away from the boat without any hurry, gathered along the trail behind us and stayed away from the whirlpools and turmoils. Soon harius will head for the lower reaches, followed by taimen and lenoks, and the river will be deserted.”

Many dream to witness those magnificent moments, some of us – to see them once again, and some – to be here for the first time. If we are lucky, we will meet the last of those legendary river warriors who have been hiding in the cold serene depths for centuries and made the river alive. Will the fine taimen kind last, continuing to ignite the anglers’ passion and courage as it has been doing for centuries? It depends on how we treat it.