Yesterday, with the Tenkara Summit behind us, TJ, John and I headed to the Virginia mountains in search of brook trout. Brookies were on TJ’s bucket list. Beautiful fish, and we caught plenty of them.

*Once you click play, click on the gear icon and select the 1080p for best quality!

I went fishing with Steve Schweitzer, author of “Fly Fishing Guide to Rocky Mountain National Park” (an excellent guide book that now includes a section on tenkara). The fishing turned out to be quite tough due to cold snowmelt. Yet, this tenkara experience was great nonetheless, and we even ran across a tenkara angler on the water.

A frying pan and a tenkara Grand Slam in Colorado… Armed with a tenkara rod (I was using the Tenkara USA Ito), tenkara line and tenkara flies I went fishing near Aspen, Colorado yesterday. Caught some pretty good fish, a couple in the 20 inch range. You’ll see a tweak I did to my tenkara fly, the Amano kebari during the video, which seemed to produce results.

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:

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.

Had a fun day of fishing yesterday on the Big Thompson, outside of Estes Park. One of the highlights of the day was a group of rams butting heads on the side of the road.

All we needed was a tenkara rod, tenkara line, and tenkara fly.

Headed out for a phenomenal afternoon of tenkara fishing. Carried a prototype tenkara rod I’m working on, tenkara line and two tenkara flies I tied before heading out. Shot entirely with an iPhone. There are a couple of tips in this short movie too. This video is 5 minutes long, with a song by Takenobu. Make sure to watch it in HD (click on the gear icon, and then 720 or 1080). Hope you enjoy it.

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!

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.
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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:

Maybe we should start featuring more of the images our customers share with us in their experiences with tenkara. The one that Larry Yien, the legendary archer, just shared with us on our Facebook page is probably a good one to start with.

This week Larry went fishing with tenkara for the first time. While he wasn’t going to a mountain stream, that didn’t deter him from bringing along his new toy, the 13ft Ayu Tenkara USA rod. Larry describes the experience to us: Read the rest of this entry »

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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