I have been using Picasa for storing and sharing our photos for a long time. At first it was a handy way to organize the photos on my computer, and eventually I made it our central repository for Tenkara USA photos. It was easy to upload full-resolution photos and share them. And then, Google starting messing things up. They tried combining it with that service nobody seems to use called Google+. And, instead of easily viewing the photos on Picasa, now people saw it in a Google+ page, which made it hard to download the file.

Today I uploaded a large batch of photographs from the Tenkara Summit and a few funny things happened. Without me wishing it, Google combined a few images into multi-photo compositions. And, it combined others into animated Gif files. Some of them worked out well – pretty smart system. But, I didn’t want them, nor need them. So much for using Picasa for our photography needs, time to find a new service. But, in the meantime I’ll share some of the funny things it did today:

Here’s TJ, happy to be in a Virginia brook trout stream

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Every event needs a good photographer. We have been very lucky to get professional photographers to attend all of our Tenkara Summits and memorialize the event in superb photos. This year we counted on the presence of Justin Ide. Justin was a participant at the event and is a professional photographer who offered to capture the moments at the 2013 Tenkara Summit. If you’re looking for a professional photographer, look no further: http://www.justinide.com/. Enjoy the slideshow below.

Tenkara Summit 2013 – Images by Justin Ide

Here is a slideshow of the majority of my collection of tenkara flies. Most of these flies were gifts from tenkara anglers in Japan, and a large part of this collection was tied by Mr. Yoshikazu Fujioka who recreated historical tenkara flies he learned about in books and through hearsay.

Today I started fishing near Aspen, Colorado, after giving a presentation in the area yesterday. In the morning I headed out with a group and caught some beautiful rainbows, mostly in the 18-20″ range. Then, in the early afternoon I hooked into browns (still in the same river), at least one at about 20″.

On the 3.5 hour drive home I stopped in a small stream off the highway to take a break and fish. A few minutes into fishing and I hooked a couple of cutthroats (western slope cutthroats I think). As I walked upstream I came across a beaver dam, cast above it and caught a brookie. As I walked away to farther spot I thought to myself…”wait a minute, I just caught a Colorado Grand Slam! YEAH!”. A quick note, I caught them all on one fly… not just the “one fly”, but the actual same fly (a variation of the amano kebari). I’m putting a new “Tenkara Diary” video together, hopefully you’ll see it tomorrow, but here are the photos:

This is the photo of a Japanese char, the Iwana, which I took on one of my trips to Japan. Iwana translates roughly as “rock fish”. Aptly I caught this guy on the Tenkara USA Iwana rod. It is said they can “walk” on rocks to get back to the water, and legend has it that they can use that ability to cross paths and get on different waters if their stream is drying up. I can vouch that they can use their fins to stand, though I haven’t yet seen one walk from one stream to another.

If you’re looking for some fun reading over the next few days, Anthony Naples created The Wintertime Blues, “a one-time only project dedicated to collecting creative writing, photos, and art related to tenkara and fly fishing and publishing a one-off collaborative, pot luck dinner, mix-tape and fanzine for tenkara and fly fishing.” TJ and Daniel have a story each in the “fanzine”. Good reading for sure, and a big thanks to Anthony for putting this together. Click below to download the pdf file.

Story written by Paul Vertrees, 

Photos by Randall Haynes

Driving up an asphalt artery in the dark of a Friday evening, I was trying to shake off the hectic pace and content of a full work week.  This artery was leading me, as it had countless times before, to the very heart of Colorado, and ultimately to that home away from home I call The Stomping Grounds. I’ve memorized every  twist and turn of the road, the locations of the rare and lonely homes along it, and the rhythm and pace as familiar landmarks fly by.  In the dark, all I had to lead me north were road signs, distant ranch house lights, and the topography I knew by heart.

I drove until I found the camp my good friends, Patrick, Randall, and Ori, had set up along a road at the top of a high pass.   Inside the glowing tipi were good friends, good food, and a huge bottle of the very best small batch Kentucky bourbon.  Patrick always knows how to make a friend feel welcome!

The next morning we hiked down from 11,600’ for several miles, stopping frequently to soak in the stunning view.

Reaching the first brook trout in the stream, we deployed our tenkara rods and quickly caught fish.  A former tenkara client of mine, Ori had really caught the tenkara bug since I guided him this past summer.  His casting skills had improved considerably, and he was letting his Ayu put his self-tied sakasa kebari right where he wanted it.  I was working a modified killer bug with my 11’ Iwana.  I had recently started tying my killer bugs with a different colored yarn on heavy scud hooks.  They were working like a charm.

We fished our way down to an old outfitter’s camp, one that Patrick and I had been using for quite some time.  That night we celebrated the autumnal equinox with a feast of grilled brookies and rice.  We topped off the evening with a kotsuzake ceremony, paying tribute to those orange-bellied brook trout and the rare cutthroat that the tiny stream has offered up to us over the years.  Sipping trout-infused sake from a titanium cup at eleven-thousand feet, in the company of your closest friends, is truly a gift.  We talked deep into the night until the campfire died down to coals.

Brookies over a campfire:

Kotsuzake, fish-bone-infused sake. A tribute to the fish, the idea of not wasting any of it. It is better than it looks:

Hanging out by the fire at night:

The next morning was dedicated solely to fishing our way back upstream for two miles.  It had been two years since I’d caught a cutthroat out of this stream, and I was ready for the next one.  I’m always cautiously optimistic, because it took many, many years for me to ever catch the first one here.  Thousands of brookies, just a handful of cutts.  What I didn’t count on was an encounter with my first golden trout in a stream I’ve been fishing since the late 1970s.  There’s plenty of gold in the Stomping Grounds…gold in the trees, gold in the willows, gold along the banks of the stream, and one  finned flash of gold in the water.

After reaching the top of the fishable water, we decided to bushwhack a mile of deep, dark timber, full of steep blowdown.   We were still unsuccessfully hunting dusky grouse.  We knew that ptarmigan were being taken up top on the tundra, and we had feathers on the brain.  After all, I still wanted to tie a kebari with the soft hackle from a nice grouse.  After a mile of deep timber gymnastics with full backpacks, we emerged from the ridge birdless.

It was cold and windy when we finally reached our trucks.  After snacks and beers on the tailgate, we shook up, made promises to get back out soon, and parted ways.  Heading down off the pass, I knew this had been the best celebration of the equinox I’d ever had.  There’s always a certain sadness when I leave the backcountry, like I’m going to miss something important by leaving.  Pointing my truck south into the evening, I followed that same familiar black artery back home in the dark.

——–

Paul Vertrees is an avid outdoorsman who spends much of his time in the backcountry of Colorado. Paul is a Tenkara USA Certified Tenkara Guide who guides for RIGS Adventures, out of Ridgway, CO.

Tenkara has opened the doors to fly-fishing for a lot of people, and it has proved to be a great conduit for plain old fun, no matter the ability of the user.  It is moments like this (and like these other trips) that make me very proud to promote a simple method of fly-fishing. And, it makes me very proud to know and work with the Tenkara Guides, Erik, John and Rob, as they pursue introducing more people with disabilities to fishing with a fly.  The video was shot and edited by Sam, “The No Handed Bandit”.

The Tenkara Guides (based in Salt Lake City, Utah) are really eliminating any limitations people with disabilities may have felt when it comes to fishing. They bring an interesting mix to the table as Rob is a doctor who focuses on rehabilitation therapy through recreational opportunities and John and Erik are great tenkara guides with extensive experience in engineering. All I can say is, “nicely done guydes!”

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Written by Daniel

The idea for a Tenkara Summit originated last year, when Dr. Ishigaki saw pictures of a trip I took to Montana and told me he’d like to go there himself. He needed an excuse to travel abroad, so he asked if I could arrange for him to do a presentation in Montana about tenkara. Not finding other events that matched his schedule, I decided to put up our own. And the Tenkara Summit was born. It really is just an excuse to go fishing in some pretty cool places.

This year’s Tenkara Summit is being held in Salt Lake City, Utah, and we are fortunate to have the participation of 4 special guests from Japan. They travelled to the US at my invitation specifically to show us how they fish tenkara, how they tie tenkara flies, and even how to make a tenkara line – and of course, they were all just looking for a good excuse to go fishing in a new place.

Our guests arrived in San Francisco yesterday. And, today we arrived in Salt Lake City. We have packed a lot in just under two days. So far I took them out for a tour of San Francisco, hitting the touristy highlights of the city; and less than 24 hours later we were fishing in Utah. They are thrilled to be here and really looking forward to meeting all who come to the Summit.

Here are pictures I took yesterday and today.

Left to Right: Daniel, Mr. Ishihara, Mr. Tanaka, Mr. Yamakawa, Yamakawa’s friend who came to greet him at the airport, and Dr. Ishigaki

Mr. Yamakawa, Mr. Tanaka and Mr. Ishihara looking at the Golden Gate Bridge – no tenkara fishing yet…soon.

AND, of course, pictures of some fish we caught today and more fishing pictures. Based on the fishing today, I simply can’t wait for what the next 5 days hold for us!

Oregon has some truly overlooked, yet world-class tenkara waters! As I mentioned on my last post, I had been invited to come speak in Bend, Oregon and decided to stay for a week and enjoy my time here.

The day after my presentation I was joined by eight folks from the Central Oregon Fly Fishers club for a day on the Crooked River. Only one person already had experience with tenkara, and the group’s interest for the method was contagious. It made for a very enjoyable day on the water.

One of the best things about these gathering is how much I get to digest what I have learned of tenkara by explaining and perhaps defending it. A simple question, like “how would you approach this section?”, or “what technique would you use here?” turns into an opportunity to learn more about why I do what I do in some situations.

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It’s been a long time coming, and I have been anxiously waiting for these to come out. We finally received our copies of the latest issue of The Fly Fish Journal with my feature article on “finding tenkara” during my last trip to Japan. The Fly Fish Journal is a new magazine that I’m super excited to work with for their high-quality, “coffee-table” style magazines. They really go well with tenkara, and I’m proud of the essay being accepted.
Stay tuned for when the magazines become available within the next 1-2 weeks – we’ll send out a mass email, so you can subscribe to our site by using the subscribe box above. We got a hold of quite a few copies that we’ll put up for sale on our site. It’s a magazine worth having. Here’s a peek a the first spread page of the essay.

The most common misconception about tenkara it that it is just dapping – that because the line is tied to the tip of the rod, it is only lowered onto the water instead of cast as is done with western fly casting. At the recent fly fishing shows we attended, it was clear that a lot of people had heard of tenkara, at least in passing at this point, but a vast majority would say, “yes, I heard about it, it’s that dapping technique from Japan…” This assumption is all to common among those who have never tried it, but luckily very quickly dismissed by anyone who has or who has seen it in person. I pleaded the organizers of the Fly Fishing Show to give me sometime on the show’s ponds to demonstrate the casting techniques, and that was a huge eye opener to many attendants.

As the first company outside of Japan focused on introducing the method to others, a huge part of what we need to do is education of the public. In this stage in the game, we will be focusing on a new campaign: “Tenkara is Not Dapping”.  The first two products of the campaign are based on the photography and video clips taken by Brian Flemming of www.learntenkara.com.

We’d love to count on your help to post pictures, and videos showing that it is a method of fly fishing where casting is involved. Please inundate the web with the message that “Tenkara is not dapping”!