“To an English eye the native [Japanese] method of fly-fishing will be rude; but it is justified by its results.”

- Basil Hall Chamberlain in “Things Japanese”, 1890

The Tenkara Guides’ TROutreach (Tenkara Recreational Outreach) is featured in the March/April issue of InMotion magazine! Erik, John and Rob of the TenkaraGuides.com are doing a terrific job in bringing adaptive tenkara to people interested in fishing.

TROutreach was started with the intent of teaching physically impaired individuals how to fly fish – INDEPENDENTLY – through the elegance of tenkara. While the program is still in its infancy, TROutreach is gaining steam every season. This is a program supported by Tenkara USA.

They teach tenkara to amputees, polytrauma Veterans, and others who find themselves in a position that makes it tough to enjoy the outdoors through fly fishing.

Awesome work guys!

After 2 decades of using an improved clinch to tie my fly to tippet, I decided to give a new knot a real try. This knot was taught to me by Dr. Ishigaki a couple of years ago, but being so used to tying the improved clinch it was difficult to change. Then, while doing some instructional filming for an upcoming DVD and trying to find ways to simplify tenkara instructions , I was inspired to use this knot. It seems to be a slight variation of the Scaffold Knot, with two loops rather than 3, I will call it a “double-loop slip knot”. It is the exact same knot as tippet to level line, and very similar to the level line to rod tip knot. It is very quick to tie, and as I have found out it is a super strong knot. I have not yet lost a single fly to poor knots (that includes fishing with one fly and not replacing tippet at all for 2 1/2 days of fishing on a backpacking trip where I caught over 40 fish on it, and a subsequent trip with multiple 18-22″ fish).

If you’re looking into a new knot, or are new to fly-fishing and want a simpler set of knots, give this one a try. It has become my “one tenkara knot”.

A writeup about In Search of Tenkara Part 3 is below. In case you missed parts 1 and 2:
In Search of Tenkara, Part 2:

In Search of Tenkara, Part 1:

About “In Search of Tenkara, Part 3″:
Let me get this out of the way first: I used non-tenkara flies, split shot and even a bobber! Let me explain (and I cover this in the video too).
Over the last couple of days my “one fly” (technique over gear) approach was really challenged. For over 2.5 years I have chosen to stick with one fly pattern and focus on refining techniques, as my teachers in Japan have taught me, to see how far I could go with using one fly pattern.
I once said to a class that “the one fly approach works…until it doesn’t”. In streams, spring creeks and rivers thorough the US, in different seasons, the approach has so far always worked. However, I have been waiting for a moment to be shown that it does not; and when the moment came I would not be above changing flies. I thought this finally would be the time where “one fly” would be proven to not work everywhere.
Read the rest of this entry »

For quite sometime I have known about the story of Mr. Bunpei Sonehara, who is largely considered to have been the last commercial tenkara angler in Japan. He recorded his story, which subsequently got published on this site in Japanese. It is a very interesting peak into the life of the last tenkara angler, who was forced to retire when the river he fished was dammed. The damming of the river caused commercial fishing – an activity that had been practiced on that river for centuries – to cease to be sustainable. My friend Masaki Nakano translated the story of Mr. Sonehara to share with you.

About Bunpei Sonehara: Born in 1915.  Started working for the South Manchurian Railway in 1937. Lost his wife during the WWII and returned Japan with two children in 1946. Started Tenkara fishing and it was commercially successful until the fourth dam was built at the Kurobe river.

Mr. Sonehara looking back on his fishing days

It was August 16^th, 1946 when I left Harbin, China for Japan.  It took me long fifty five days to get back to my hometown, O-machi in Nagano.  My wife passed away from illness in utter chaos right after the war. Two of my little children were the only cheer and hope I had.

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I’ve been working on a project that will take me a while to complete, I actually started it almost two years ago,  inspired by Mr. Yoshikazu Fujioka’s website (my tenkara flies teacher) and incorporating flies from people I have met in Japan. It is starting to look cool. It is a map of Japan with tenkara flies from different areas. As I learn of new flies, and go through the flies gifted to me in my travels to Japan, the map will become fuller. I hope it will serve as a useful resource.

View Tenkara Flies in a larger map

Our search for tenkara continues in this video, which documents a 3-day backpacking trip in the backcountry of Colorado with tenkara guide Paul Vertrees, owner of Kifaru Patrick Smith, and Daniel Galhardo.

If you missed “In Search of Tenkara, part 1″, here it is:

It snowed almost 10 inches here overnight and the snow continues to fall. As I shoveled the driveway, my next-door neighbor asked me “how do you like Colorado [now]?”
I love it.
Yesterday morning I headed out with my friend Malcolm Daly (founder of the Trango climbing equipment company, the Access Fund, Paradox Sports and others…wow…) to an area I wasn’t familiar with just outside of Boulder, Colorado. The drive took less than 30 minutes and the scenery was gorgeous. The snow will replenish the low water levels I saw yesterday, and it gives me a good reason to stay in and work on stuff I have postponed for months, like accounting. What is there not to love?

Since I’m looking for ways to continue postponing the accounting work, I want to share a few images. And, of course, just in case you’re also stuck in the snow and looking forward to the next day of fishing.

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The Big Sky Journal is featuring a nice story on tenkara this month, written by Chad Hanson.

You can read the article in its entirety on their website Tenkara Article in Big Sky Journal.

About this video:
Yesterday, March 8th, I decided I had spent enough time looking at my computer. It was time to go fishing.

Read the rest of this entry »

Jason Klass of Tenkara Talk and I will be trying to record regular podcast episodes. Please comment here if you have any questions about tenkara you’d like for us to address.

Podcast February 13, 2013
Podcast February 27, 2013

If you know fish will take your dry fly, even if it is wet and under, or…

If you know you can false-cast your fly to fish near the surface, you don’t need… floatant

If you know how to use currents to sink your fly, you don’t need… split-shot

If you know how to keep your line tight, and watch it as it goes by, you don’t need… strike indicators

If you know how to tie three of simple knots, you don’t need… tippet rings or dacron for the level line

If you know you can cut your line using your teeth, you don’t need… nippers (though we highly recommend this, because…you should know you can ruin your teeth that way!)

If you know 4X and 6X looks virtually the same underwater, you don’t need… multiple spools of tippet

If you know most fish will be caught between 15 and 40ft away from you, you don’t need… a bunch of line

If you know tenkara allows you to keep it off the water, you don’t need… to mend your drift

If you know how to tie flies by holding the hook, you don’t need… a vise

If you know fish checkout most things that could be food, you don’t need… a hundred fly patterns

If you know most artificial flies resemble many different things under water, you don’t need… 30 fly patterns

If you know how to present one fly in a variety of different ways, you don’t need… a dozen fly patterns

If you know the points above, you don’t need… a vest full of pockets

If you know you can fish with a pole that has the line tied to its tip…

If you know you can fish with a fixed-length of line…

AND, If you know you can land a fish without a reel, you don’t need…well… a reel.

My grandfather used to say, “knowledge is the only thing no one can take away from you”, and generally it is difficult to lose or forget it at home. The nicest thing about knowing, is that once you know you can leave a lot of things behind. And, as they say, “knowledge is weightless”.

What else do you know that would allow us to minimize what we carry and what we think we need?