Originally posted on October 22nd, 2009. A look at Tenkara in the hands of some of the great names of fly-fishing in the UK. Great picture by Mr. Peter Lapsley. Tenkara has now been tried by some of the most recognized names in fly fishing, this was one of the first groups of notoriety.
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Neil Patterson, John Goddard, Brian Clarke, Dr Tony Hayter

Idaho has been awesome and I can’t wait to visit other states spreading tenkara. Utah in April and July (at the Tenkara Summit), Oregon in May and maybe your state if you invite me for a gathering/presentation and organize something.

Today I held a tenkara clinic hosted by the Idaho Angler. The morning session consisted of going through the history, story and philosophy of tenkara as well as some of the basic techniques used. We then moved outside to practice casting. And, finally, headed to some nearby private water to put into practice the landing techniques.

We intended to fish a small stream that ran near the lake where I could show the main techniques for presenting a fly. However, I decided to start at the lake to go through a few basic techniques together. After a few minutes someone had the first fish on, and as you may imagine at that point no one was really interested in leaving the spot. As you’ll notice on the fish below, everyone of us was using a tenkara fly. The class embraced the idea of not switching flies despite the size 20 midges we observed on the shore. I showed them that by pulsating the fly with a controlled up movement was very effective. As we were in a lake and the fish were deeper, I taught them to keep more line in the water as they did this.

It turns out it was a great place to learn how to land fish properly with tenkara, and we still covered some of the main techniques for manipulating the fly.

During the indoor portion of the class I started talking about how to land a fish with tenkara. There is one thing I always share with people regarding landing fish – with tenkara and western fly fishing: keep your arm low and angle the rod back  and DO NOT EXTEND YOUR ARM OVERHEAD. With the arm extended high one can not control the fish and it can be impossible to grab the line or remove sudden slack from the system. Just as I was demonstrating what would happen when one raises the arm high, I looked at the wall by the front of the classroom and I noticed the picture below, a great example of what not to do but also something all too familiar from action shots we see in magazines.

As I promised on my last  post, here’s a picture of Chris Gerono’s first trout on tenkara. Chris is the head guide of Idaho Angler, in Boise . Fish caught on the Owyhee River, Idaho. About 20″. Chris embraced tenkara and acquired the skills readily. I was mostly impressed by his quick understanding of the landing techniques with tenkara – arm low, steady retrieve and no rush.

And, lastly, here is one of the reasons for me to return to Idaho in the future: the S. Fork of the Boise River canyon. Rick drove me on a road at the top of the canyon. The view was spectacular and the “river tenkara-perfect”.

This is Tenkara Week – Idaho.

For quite sometime I have thought of coming to Idaho, it just never seemed to work out in the past. Then, recently a very dedicated tenkara angler, John Ellsworth, convinced everyone here to bring me over for a presentation and clinics with Trout Unlimited’s Boise chapter (Ted Trueblood Chapter). John, with the help of Rick Williams, one of the owners of Idaho Angler and someone who totally gets tenkara (and is a huge conservation advocate) organized the week around tenkara. Thank you John and Rick, and TU for making this happen. It started off great.

Please read on for what kinds of techniques and flies worked best on yesterday’s outing.

On Wednesday evening I gave a presentation to a packed room at the TU meeting. The presentation went pretty well and there was a great amount of interest aftewards. Prior to the presentation we spent sometime tying tenkara flies, and Carrie showed a couple of flies she had been tying.

Yesterday, Rick and I were joined by Chris, the head guide at Idaho Angler, for a day of fishing on the Owyhee river, about an hour out of town. We had a nice break in the weather, with no rain and great temps.

The fishing was incredible and everyone got a good number of some very shiny browns – a few confused me for rainbows actually. Chris and Rick were great students, very open to learning the techniques and I could see they got a lot out of it because of that. Their humbleness and openness to learning deeply betrayed their vast angling experience.

It was Chris’ first time tenkara fishing, and Rick had been out a few times before. I spent quite a bit of time showing them tenkara – the method – and I believe they learned a thing or two and enjoyed seeing what could be done with tenkara. The trick of the day was to pulsate the fly, a slow and controlled up and down movement did the trick for several fish.

I missed Chris’ first fish on tenkara, but it was reportedly 19-20″ (they got a picture of it, and I’ll have to post it here soon). He caught a few afterwards, with most fish being caught with a pulsating fly.

There were small mayflies being sipped on the surface and a few large stoneflies with egg-sacks drifting around. It was interesting for Rick and Chris not to have to think much of fly patterns. Instead, throughout the day we just referred to the flies as “the large one”, “the gray one”, or “the olive one”.

I caught my first couple of fish by using the Ishigaki Kebari cast to rising fish sipping small mayflies, and at least one more on that fly afterwards. The ones cast to rising fish were caught on dead-drifts, later I caught one by pulling the fly upstream about 1ft at a time.

The large Oki Kebari did very well. I got a monster rise to my oki kebari as I manipulated it slowly on a slow pool by fast water. I would guess, the hump of the fish I saw, it would be a 22″-25″ fish! Chris later hooked two more that could be on that size range, using the same large fly and getting it deep by using the currents.

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.

At recent weeks I have had a chance to spend time with a lot of people who have been doing tenkara for sometime, and others who are completely new to it.

One thing I noticed was the need to tell “old-timers” and novices the same basic things regarding setting up the rod and some of the knots. Particularly, tying the line(s) to the rod tip, and tippet to level line and also the use of the line holders. Most experienced anglers are used to doing things in certain ways (e.g. most people think you should tie loops to the ends of the level line).

So, yesterday I spent some time making a video of the knots used in tenkara. I urge everyone to spend a few minutes reviewing the video, I believe you’ll see at least one or two new things in it, and some very simple ways to connect things together.

UPDATE: Contest Winner(s) at the end of the post

What does tenkara mean to you? (Contest)

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Anthony Naples, who runs the blog Casting Around,  interviewed me for a feature on the website Midcurrent.com. You’re probably tired of hearing my story, but Anthony’s questions are good and could only be asked by someone who’s been following the development of tenkara in the US from the beginning.

On Midcurrent’s email newsletter this morning they announced the interview as follows: “THIS WEEK we look at what may be the fastest growing “style” of fly fishing: tenkara.  Anthony Naples interviews Daniel Galhardo, founder of Tenkara USA and someone who could fairly be called the “Ever-Ready Bunny of tenkara.”

The guys from Tenkaraguides.com, Erik Ostrander, John Vertelli, and Rob Worthing, marked a new milestone for tenkara’s introduction in the US by appearing at the TV program KSL Outdoors with Adam Eakle. They told the story beautifully; the host of the show, Adam, did a great job at narrating it, and the video was very well edited. Kudos to the tenkaraguides.com and thank you to KSL for the interest in tenkara! Love the energy those guys are bringing to the community.

The Pasadena Fly Fishing Show is over, and we consider it another great success thanks to the kind and energetic help of Rick and Sherry Setina, two passionate tenkara customers who volunteered at our booth to introduce people to tenkara. A huge thank you Rick and Sherry for the incredible help! The fact that both of you brought so much good energy to the booth (and did it completely free0 is a reflection of the passion of tenkara anglers for the method! A huge number of people became converts this weekend. As always, it was great meeting tenkara anglers who came by to say hi!

The Bad Jokes and the Good Story

The night before the Pasadena Fly Fishing Show kicked off, my wife and I, and Ben and Brook, the awesome couple who runs theanglingbookstore.com and also help run the Fly Fishing Show itself, headed out to a famous comedy club in the area. It turned out, the comedian for the night was too drunk to remember his routine, if he had one. He kept repeating the same not-so-funny jokes, and what is worse, kept asking the audience for topics which he did not have any jokes for! Well, inevitably we shouted out “fly-fishing!” as a topic. He danced around it and said he didn’t have a joke, going back to the same old jokes he had been telling all nigh. He did, however, say he had a story about fly-fishing that he would tell later, not a joke, but a story.

Later that night he remembered the story, and it actually went well in the context of fly-fishing, the fact that Ben and Brook live in Colorado, and the story behind tenkara’s introduction to the US.

He told us, how he went fly-fishing once. He and his girlfriend went camping in Deckers, CO for a couple of days between some shows (when he mentioned he was in Deckers we could tell he was telling a true story as I was fishing there last year).  They didn’t have anything with them, but saw a dad and his son doing this really cool thing on the stream by their campground: flailing their rods around, making the line do all this cool stuff in the air. They wanted to do something and that looked pretty cool. So, they headed to a store nearby. As they  didn’t have money to buy a rod nor wanted to completely get into the sport they just bought some fishing line and some hooks with feathers on them (flies, I’m guessing). They headed to the stream where the dad and son were still fishing. Not having a rod, he found a branch, tied his line and fly to it and put it in the water. He didn’t believe he would catch anything with that hook. Yet, he kept his fly in the water. A few minutes into it, and after watching dad and son fishing for a while and not catching anything, he had a fish on! Only a branch, line and flies, and he had caught a fish.

The comedian started talking about how the dad and son had all this stuff on them, these vests full of pockets, fancy looking rods and bright lines, and hats and accessories and the whole thing! They looked cool. But, he was the one with the girl and the fish on the line!

We were laughing a bunch at the story. I just wish the comedian knew we laughed not because he was funny, but because of the context.

TFM Spotting:

David Lofthouse stopped by our booth wearing a shirt from www.thefiberglassmanifesto.com.