Lybalakh by Keith Rose-Innes

A trip to the remote Siberian mountains in search of giant arctic char, Keith Rose-Innes tells the story of how the Russian fly fishing explorer, Ilya Shebovich managed to research photos and intel from the nomadic reindeer herders to lead a trip into one of the wildest frontiers. The anglers are challenged by extreme weather fluctuations, mosquitos, a lake that is more than 160 meters deep and a fish species that don’t give themselves up easily.

It’s a story of flying to various lakes, making hundreds of thousands of casts, when finally the team turn to the insights from the local reindeer herder. This confuses the matter further rather than adding clarity and it takes fourteen days of casting flies into the deep, shallows and surface of the crystal clear Siberian lakes before things finally start to pay off. The mission of catching a really big arctic char leads on through night and day when finally at 3am in the dying stages of the trip Matt Solomon manages to entice and land a monster.

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