The first Tenkara Summit in the US was a great success, over 100 people attended and enjoyed awesome presentations as well as an on-stream demonstration with Dr. Ishigaki. This will be a quick post. Even though the event is over, we’ve been sleeping little and fishing pretty hard today with the day starting at 6 and now being 12:40am.

Originally we had expected, optimistically, that about 70 people would show up. The conference room was setup to accomodate 100 people, but that was not enough. Over 100 people showed up yesterday. People came from 23 different states, and from 3 different countries specially for the Summit (well, they did come to fish in Montana…). I’d really like to thank all those who came and helped make this an extraordinary event; it was the best crowd ever. Thank you!

The Tenkara Summit had the presence of special guests Dr. Hisao Ishigaki, the leading authority on tenkara in Japan; Chris Stewart of tenkarabum.com; Craig Mathews of Blue Ribbon Flies who gave a very passionate presentation about tenkara in Montana and showed some great clips of large fishing being caught; Ryan Jordan of backpackinglight.com as well as ryanjordan.com; and Tom Sadler who spoke about the advantages of using tenkara as a guide and as a way to introduce new people to fly-fishing so they can continue conserving the environment in the future.

In the afternoon we headed to Yellowstone National Park for an on-stream demonstration with Dr. Ishigaki and myself. The fishing in the middle of the day was very difficult. I ended up catching a 5″ rainbow and that was about it as for fish. Nevertheless guests were able to see what tenkara looked like in person.

A personal highlight of the event for myself was the presence of Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard, whose business philosophies greatly inspired Tenkara USA from day one – these are mostly found in his book “Let My People Go Surfing”. I had become a great fan of Patagonia and Yvon long before the start of Tenkara USA. When creating the business plan for Tenkara USA I used his book as a roadmap for our business philosophies and his business as a benchmark for Tenkara USA. Along with Craig Mathews, who was a presenter at the Summit, they founded the 1% for the Planet initiative, which is a “set-on-stone” commitment to donate at least 1% of revenues to environmental organizations. We have been a member from day one. When I learned that Yvon, himself, had recently become a huge fan of tenkara fly-fishing my jaw just dropped. How could this happen? Really? He wrote a beautiful article about Fly Rod and Reel magazine on tenkara and simplicity, converted Craig Mathews to tenkara, and has been one of our best ambassadors introducing people to tenkara almost daily and on an almost weekly basis telling people to talk to us. Yes, I was stoked that they were there for the whole event, we spent a good amount of time talking, and are scheduled to go fishing together tomorrow… in about 6 hours. So, time to go to bed now!

Of course, Dr. Ishigaki was also very happy to meet them and they got along great despite the language barriers.

The first Tenkara Summit in the US is only 2 days away! Can we accomodate over 150 people?

Dr. Ishigaki landed in San Francisco today. We had an enjoyable day, and he’s very excited about the summit. He also brought some very cool items for our auction and giveaways!

It’s very late, 12:50 AM to be exact. We will leave the house at 6:30AM tomorrow, I figure I can manage on about 5 hours of sleep this time. I’m so excited, can’t stop doing last minute things. I prepared some auction sheets for the higher value items (bamboo rod, tenkara net, etc!). Then, I became curious about how many people are actually coming and decided to tally it up. I knew it was near 100. But, we have 119 people registered!!!  This number doesn’t even take into account my own party, speakers, a handful of people I know will be there, and a few drop-ins. Can we expect about 150 people? We may actually not have room for so many guests. For what I hear we may end up getting more people than most fly-fishing shows these days.

The stats are also cool: we have people from 4 countries coming especially for the event, including Japan (of course), Canada, Italy and Norway. There are people from 23 different states registered too, and I know most booked a flight especially to be there.

I’m simply stunned. It’s kind of funny because I have never been very good at throwing parties. But, this is looking like it will be a heck of an event – but don’t expect a super well organized event….I have no idea what the heck I’m doing.

See you there!

*** PS. Orders are being shipped as normal through our automated fulfillment, however, no customer service will be provided from tomorrow (August 25th) until we return on August 30th.

Launched this week, by filmmaker Brian Flemming and his assistant Ashley, is an exciting new website to check out: learntenkara.com. Their website is a content-rich, independent resource that somewhat follows Brian’s feature film project – a documentary on tenkara and its introduction to the US.

According to their site:
“LearnTenkara.com emerged from a feature-length documentary about tenkara that is still in active production. While shooting this movie since September 2010, we have acquired hours and hours of great fishing footage and interviews with tenkara luminaries such as Dr. Hisao Ishigaki, Daniel Galhardo, Chris Stewart and Ryan Jordan. A lot of this material happens to be instructional in nature, and for that reason it is not likely to make it into the final film, which will focus on the overall tenkara phenomenon and not so much on the nitty gritty of “how to.”
In addition, Ashley, who has been fly-fishing since she was 11 years old has discovered a new passion in tenkara through her work with Brian, and will be documenting her experiences learning tenkara.

The website will be a work-in-progress and a great chance to preview footage and photography captured along the way to the completion of the film; learntenkara.com is definitely worth bookmarking. There is already some great media on their pages, including excellent photography documenting pieces of the film, and the exciting video clip embedded above, where I hooked and landed a strong 20″ brown trout on the Madison during my last visit to Montana.

Around January of this year the vision for a tenkara gathering started taking place, now the first Tenkara Summit in the US is only one week away! For more information about the event, or to RSVP, please visit: www.tenkarausa.com/summit

How the event originated?

Last September I had been invited to speak about tenkara at the Ennis Fly Fishing Festival. It was my first visit to Montana. As one would expect, fishing was absolutely great, and it was a tenkara-perfect state. About one week after the festival, Dr. Ishigaki visited California. Still excited about my visit to Montana I showed him many of the photographs of my trip. He returned to Japan, and soon asked me if I could arrange for him to speak about tenkara in Montana. Not being able to match the dates he was available with any existing events, I thought the best way to go about it would be to organize our own, the Tenkara USA Summit.

Who is coming?

At the moment there are about 100 people registered for the event, which is free of charge and being held in West Yellowstone on August 27th. In addition to visitors, we’re counting on the honorable presence of Dr. Hisao Ishigaki, as well as the enriching presence of guest speakers and participants such as Chris “Tenkara Bum” Stewart, Craig Mathews of the Blue Ribbon Flies and our retailer in the area, authors Kevin Kelleher and Misako Ishimura, Ryan Jordan from Backpackinglight.com, Tenkara guide Tom Sadler, and more.

What will be happening there? When?

A detailed scheduled is available here. I’ll kick off the event at 8AM on Saturday, the speakers listed above will give a presentation on their topics.

We’ll have lunch at around 12pm (sandwich buffet will be available at the hotel, a donation of $12 will be requested for those wishing to eat at the event to cover the cost of the lunch). At lunch time we’ll be holding a raffle and silent auction, among some great items there will be an authentic tenkara net from Japan, a complete tenkara gear of rod, line, line holder, flies and and the exclusive UL tenkara net and ebira rod quiver which were donated by Thom Darrah from Trail Lite Design, and more.

Then, guests will be welcomed to drive to a nearby stream for an on-stream tenkara demonstration. This is not going to be a fishout, but rather a great opportunity to see what tenkara really looks like. Most people use tenkara the way they would use western fly-fishing equipment, and may lose out on some of the refinements of the technique, I strongly encourage you to join us for this portion of the event.

Will gear be available for purchase at the event?

This is not a sales event and items will be available but on a VERY LIMITED quantity. Blue Ribbon Flies will be selling our gear at the event, and items will definitely be available for trying out, but do not expect any guarantee to get your gear during the event. If you’re interested in any particular items, or would like to guarantee you have a rod in Montana, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND that you purchase it ahead of the summit, through our site or Blue Ribbon Flies and later exchange if you saw something that you wanted instead.

In addition, we just received some very cool t-shirts with artwork by Anthony Naples (see first picture on top of this post) to celebrate the event. These will be available for purchase at our table.

Backpackinglight, Blue Ribbon Flies, Tenkara Bum, and other partners may have additional items for sale too.

Even those who really like Japanese food and enjoy eating slices of raw fish, known as sashimi, are often surprised to learn that trout can also make awesome sashimi. This includes people from the big cities of Japan, who are accustomed to eating sashimi from ocean fish. This picture was taken soon after I arrived in Japan in May, and the two friends from Tokyo that accompanied me were trying iwana (Japanese char) sashimi for their first time. I had eaten iwana as well as amago sashimi before, and was in agreement when they said it was their new favorite sashimi.

In the mountain areas of Japan, where trout are raised in farms with cold and very clean water, residents have access to some of the best sashimi anywhere. Iwana, a Japanese char, is the preferred fish for sashimi as it is slightly fatter. Other trout, such as Amago, can also be used and are delicious to eat as well, but their leaner meat has slightly less flavor. In fact, the availability of trout in these areas, and the long distance a sea fish would have to be carried to be served, also make trout sashimi the preferred option in more isolated mountain regions of Japan.

I do wish I had the opportunity to enjoy freshly caught sashimi on the stream-side. But near the end of my trip, when the opportunity did arise, I was feeling very bad with the idea of eating even one of the few wild trout left in Japan. Fishing had been poor, primarily because the idea of catch-and-release is still not a normal part of the culture, and I certainly preferred not to contribute to the diminishing stock of fish in the streams. I wonder, however, how often the professional tenkara anglers of old times enjoyed uncooked, fresh iwana and amago sashimi to nourish their bodies during a day of hard fishing.

The leaf below the slices of fish is the shiso leaf, a mint-like leaf often eaten with sushi and sashimi. I actually have been growing shiso at home for a few months as it is a bit expensive to buy, but very handy when my wife and I make sushi at home. The flower stem on the left of the slices of Iwana are the shiso flowers. The small petals were taken out and placed on the small tray of soy sauce for added flavor.

A combination of post-trip lack of inspiration, moving to a new house/office and adopting a new high-energy dog have kept me completely away from writing on this blog. To the readers of this blog, my apologies for not having provided you with recent posts on tenkara. Many of you have written asking for more, and I probably responded I would when inspiration hit. Today I spoke to my grandfather and he told me he missed my posts; that was good motivation to see what I could write about. So, I decided to open my picture album of photos from Japan and see what I could find.

Alas, the first picture of the album is of Dr. Ishigaki showing his fishing rod with a custom built rod plug. This is a great picture for a few reasons. First, several people may lose their rod plug and need a replacement (btw, we do offer replacement parts here). Second, Dr. Ishigaki works closely with a major rod manufacturer in Japan on designing their rods. In such capacity he has access to all spare parts and about as many rods as he wishes. And, even though he’s not a craftsman, he chose the fun route of making his own wooden rod plug. He chose the fun route, and made a small wooden plug by quickly carving a small twig to fit the rod. On top of the plug he drilled a small hole, and attached a small wooden fish he had.

Dr. Ishigaki really enjoys starting conversations with others about tenkara. Thus he may use a beautifully carved wooden fly box, line holder and nipper holder and he likes using very exquisite tenkara nets. He knows those items are not necessary for fishing, and he doesn’t need to carry them. However, each and every one of these items provides an opportunity to start a conversation with a stranger, a student, or someone who may have shunned the concept of tenkara.

The wooden plug is one of the simplest things to make and add customization and personality to your tenkara gear. Next time you lose yours (hopefully you won’t, by dedicating a pocket specifically for it), see it as an opportunity to carve your own. You can make one in about 5 minutes, or spend an evening making it instead of tying flies. Besides being asked if you broke your rod next time you show up at a stream with your 20″ collapsed tenkara rod, people will sure be intrigued by that wooden plug at the end of your broken rod.