Over the past few decades I’ve had the good fortune to at times work, and sometimes live, in the country of Laos (wildlife and biodiversity conservation has been the work). About the time I first arrived there in the early 1990s, the The New Yorker published an article about Laos with the title “The Forgotten Country”. That pretty much sums it up – a land largely off our radars and off the main tourist routes. But at one time Laos attracted considerable attention from the U.S. military. In fact, Laos became the most bombed country per capita in history. A country about the size of the state of Oregon, in the course of an eight year “Secret War” in parallel with the center stage war in Vietnam next door, the U.S. dropped a greater tonnage of bombs on Laos than was dropped on all countries of Europe during World War II.
It’s a quieter, gentler place today, getting on in quiet resilience. The country is of potential interest to anglers, for at least two reasons. One is that Laos has another “most” – the greatest diversity of fish of any landlocked country in the world (can explore that here). And among these fish are the two largest freshwater fish in the world, the Mekong Giant Catfish and the Giant Freshwater Whipray. Specimens of each have been caught that weighed more than 600 pounds (270 kg; so probably beyond the capacity of even a DRAGONtail Hellbender…).
The richness of the aquatic life comes from two main sources: First is the Mekong River, one of the great watercourses of the world. The Mekong flows for hundreds of miles through Laos or along the country’s border with Thailand, and it has among the world’s greatest diversity of riverine life. Second, most of Laos away from the plain of Mekong is mountainous. So we’re talking upland streams, a lot of them, most with beautifully clear, swift water, abundant with fish. And many of the mountain streams hold fish endemic to that particular catchment.
A lot of fish in Laos, but so far not much tenkara! It’s likely that no one has ever sent a cast onto a Lao stream with a rod identified as ‘tenkara’ (and if anyone knows differently, please let us know in the comments). I took the opportunity of a recent return trip to fill this gap.
The Mekong flows along the capital city of Vientiane, where I was based for my recent trip, and local anglers sometimes fish the slack, murky water along the bank with rod & reel and stink baits. But the river in general is not tenkara water – too broad, deep and turbid. I needed to head for the hills.
I had a chance soon after arriving, a road trip to the forested Annamite Mountains along Laos’s eastern border with Vietnam, for some work on conservation of the world’s rarest large mammal (another thing Laos has), a hoofed critter known as the Saola (the name has two syllables, and rhymes with ‘now ha’). This particular trip wouldn’t involve field work, and would instead focus on meeting with villagers and local officials, and so my streamside opportunities would be limited. But perhaps I could find some water and land a fish, any fish, with a fixed line rig. From the States I’d brought along, appropriately enough, my TenkaraBum “Traveler 39”. It packs small and light, and can be fished at 320, 360 or 390 cm.
From Vientiane I traveled by truck with a Lao colleague and long-time friend, Chanthasone, better known by his nickname “Olay”. We’ve worked together on wildlife conservation projects in Laos for nearly twenty years. For two days we drove along sometimes rough roads into the Annamites, through some fantastically beautiful country, where we’ve both spent a lot of time on the ground over the years.
Our destination this time was a cluster of three villages I worked with more than 25 years ago on Saola surveys (and what a difference – today we can get there by truck, back then it was a three-day walk to the villages from the nearest road). My objective then was to try to confirm the presence of Saola in the area by camera-trapping. And in 1999, after several months of effort, came the reward of these photos of this spectacular yet still little-known animal (Saola has been given the moniker “Asian Unicorn” for its beauty and elusiveness). These are still some of the only photos known of a Saola:
Our second afternoon on the road, Olay and I reached the first village, and I soon found and reunited with another old friend, Saykham, the fantastic lead forest guide I worked with in 1998 and 1999 to get the Saola camtrap photos. He was just a twenty year-old kid then, and is now a married father of two grown children.
After some back-slapping, lots of laughs and smiles, and getting settled in his house , we all walked down to a small stream for the daily Lao ritual of a late afternoon bath. Of course, I brought my tenkara rod. After scrubbing off the grime and dust of the road and getting dressed again, while the others finished up, “Traveler” and I explored upstream a bit. This was probably the first time that tenkara, at least by that name, was fished in Laos, and yet within a few minutes I met some other ‘tenkara’ anglers! Four kids came downstream with what was essentially a traditional tenkara rod – a long, slender stem of bamboo they’d cut, with a fixed line at the end. They were bait fishing with worms, which may have technically made their rig a keiryu rod, but hey, close enough, and what fun.
They’d had better luck than my skunk, and proudly showed a few small fish in their makeshift live well:
The following day Olay, Saykham and I drove to the next two villages of the cluster, just a few minutes away. There I found and reunited with two other guides from the camera-trapping team. Like Saykham, they were some of the best guides I’ve had in all my years of fieldwork in Laos: Khoua-cha, a Hmong man, and Khamphiou, from the same ethnic group as Saykham (a people known as Toum). We reconnected as if I last saw them yesterday, instead of more than twenty years ago. They proposed a reunion picnic the next day along one of the streams where we once set camera-traps. Sounded like a plan to me, and I’d be bringing my tenkara gear along with the beer.
The next morning the five us squeezed into Olay’s truck. We rolled along amid laughs and talk about old times (an interesting aside: the five us have four different first languages, Toum, Hmong, Lao and English; but we got along in the one language we have in common, Lao). We were suitably outfitted for a Laos style picnic with some steamed sticky rice (Laos’s staple food), chili paste and a live duck.
Olay eased the truck along a track that barely qualified as a road, here and there skirting the edges of dry rice paddies, and we eventually arrived at the bank of a beautiful shaded stream. Olay parked under some trees, and we put a case of Beer Lao into the water to cool.
The stream flowed down from the forested Annamite range, and the lower slopes started just upstream from our picnic spot. The upper reach of this stream basin is one of the areas where we did the camera-trapping those years ago. It was very good to be back. The Annamite Mountains are an amazing ecosystem, recognized as a global biodiversity hotspot. And among the many species this hotspot holds, it’s not just Saola that is found only here. The Annamites have many other endemics, large and small, animal and plant. I went to work to find a fish, any fish.
While the guys made a fire and worked on turning the poor duck into lunch, I greeted the stream, renewing another acquaintance, and made some casts, trying first a couple of kebari patterns, then a Prince Nymph. Nothing and nothing. To be clear, there are no trout in Laos, and I didn’t know exactly what I was fishing for in this stretch. ‘Fish’ was about as specific as my expectation could get. With no response to what I threw, I showed my flybox to Saykham and asked his opinion. He slowly fingered through them and pointed to one of my odds-n-sods, something I’ve probably never used, a small bee pattern. Saykham once did well on guiding me to find Saola, and so I trusted him on this.
I tied on the bee, and on my second cast with it landed a beautiful small fish, a gorgeous thing edged in yellow with perch-like stripes. Perhaps the first fish in Laos to be landed on modern tenkara gear.
I continued wet wading upstream, and the bee and I soon landed a second species, another wee one, but I consider it an honorary trout given the beauty of its coloration.
As I progressed further, and the chatter of the gang faded behind me, it was just the tumbling flow of the stream, a light breeze swishing the trees, and some familiar calls of tropical forest birds. I came to a large pool, and decided to swap the bee with something that could get some depth. I tied on a Driftless hometown favorite, a Pink Squirrel in #14. Pink Squirrels probably don’t get to travel much, and so this could be fun. I quickly found a third species of fish stacked like cord wood in the pool, and they loved the Squirrel, bam-bam-bam. They were also small, but the fun they gave was big enough.
It was time to head back downstream for lunch (grilled duck on the fire and duck soup). While I wasn’t returning triumphant with a fish large enough to contribute to lunch, these couple of days had been rich, rich in reunions with both human and non-human friends, and also some discovery in this endlessly interesting world. Thank you (khob chai), Laos.
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