by TJ Ferreira

Phew!

What a great couple of months!  The experience at all of the fly fishing shows these last couple of months left me thinking of adopting the name TJ “Kebari” Ferreira, or TJ “FLY” Ferreira.

As some of may know, Tenkara USA had a booth at almost all of the Fly Fishing Shows throughout the USA, and for the first time we also had a booth at the International Sportsman Expo held in Sacramento, CA. All in all we attended 6 of the 7 Fly Fishing Shows and 1 ISE show. What a whirlwind tour for myself, Daniel, John, and our guest helpers. We really enjoyed being  able to spread the joys of tenkara to the masses.

The 3 of us at Somerset Fly Fishing Show. Daniel, John, and TJ.

If you do not like a long blogs, you can stop reading here knowing we all had a great time. But… if you would like to come on a little trip with me, hop in my 1967 VW Bus for a little ride, a little chat, and lets get this tenkara peace pipe smoking!

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Thanks to Mike from Troutrageous, the “The Secret To Tenkara’s Fish Catching Superiority” has not been a secret for about a year. He spilled the beans on the fact that we put unicorn mane hair inside our rods, and that allows people to catch many, many fish when they go out. But, there is something else that I have noticed over the last several weeks of attending Fly Fishing Shows.

Tenkara is the unicorn of fly-fishing. Most people have heard about it by now, but only a select few have seen it in person. You may have noticed that when you tell a friend, “hey, I have this rod that is 12ft long, but it collapses down to only 20 inches and weighs only 3 oz…ah, and it uses no reel, doesn’t even have guides…” They will immediately respond with a “get out of here…I’m calling the psych ward.” They become incredulous and your reputation as a truth-telling angler goes down the drain. But you know it exists. You have seen it. You have touched it. It feels unreal, and “magical”. Every time you see it, you approach it slowly with a sense of wonderment; you touch it, then you tame it, and you use it. But, you’re one of a select group of people who can see it.

Our job is to show the unicorn to more people. That’s the reason we’ve attended 6 shows in the last month and half. Every time a new person sees the unicorn, they come away believing in magic and wonder. It’s one of the coolest things to witness, a person’s first encounter with the unicorn. It exists.

Today I have been asking people what they think about tenkara.

Here are a few people we met today and their thoughts about this simple way of fly-fishing.

We’ll be attending several of the Fly Fishing Shows in the next two months. We’d love to see you coming by our booth if you’re near any of these locations. Additionally we’ll have presentations and casting demonstrations at each one of these shows. Looking forward to meeting as many of you in 2013 as possible:

January 4-6: Fly Fishing Show in Denver, CO 

January 10-13: ISE in Sacramento, CA 

January 18-20: Fly Fishing Show in Marlborough, MA (Daniel Galhardo will be at the Bear’s Den booth for this one and doing presentations and demonstrations)

January 25-27: Fly Fishing Show in Somerset, NJ

February 9-10: Fly Fishing Show in Wiston-Salem, NC

February 16-17: Fly Fishing Show in Lynnwood (Seattle), WA

February 22-24: Fly Fishing Show in Pleasanton, CA

The Pleasanton show ended yesterday, took me about a day to recover. What a show! For tenkara, this was the apex of the fly fishing show season, and the beginning of the “year of tenkara”.

This time the impression that we had a busy booth was confirmed  by multiple reports that indeed we had the busiest booth in the show! Our inventory dissipated like crazy despite the careful planning with experience from previous show. So, yes, I’m stoked – the tenkara community grew considerably this weekend.

Connecting with customers in person was certainly the highlight for our team. A new tenkara adopter, Mike Sevon and his wife wrote to us after the show,  ”Tillie and I  really enjoyed the show and being able to handle the different Tenkara rods was the highlight.  I spent the entire day on the internet learning as much as I could about Tenkara…Since we only bought one Tenkara rod, the 12 foot Iwana, I have a feeling we will be fighting over this rod until I get another one.”

Photo by Mike Sevon

TJ, our customer service face, and Masaki lent us their very passionate and energetic enthusiasm for all three days. It wouldn’t have happened without their help. They helped customers left and right and allowed me to give a couple of demonstrations or interact with other vendors and friends. A winning team.

The casting demonstrations again served to dispel the “myth” that tenkara is dapping. I couldn’t keep track of the number of people who stopped by our booth and said, “oh, so it’s just like dapping…”. I would respond that no, it is not, and invite them to watch the casting demo a few minutes later, or take them behind the booth and let them cast the rods themselves.

Next up, Pasadena! Please join us next Saturday and Sunday at the Fly Fishing Show in Pasadena. 

Our booth has been up and running at the Pleasanton Fly Fishing Show the last couple of day, and again I have to consider it a wild success! The show, again, is being greatly run by the Furimsky family, and I am very pleased we signed up for it – definitely will be coming back next year!

Masaki and TJ have been of immense and very passionate help in manning the booth with me. In these last two days we have introduced a huge number of people to tenkara – way more than I could have predicted even after attending the large Somerset show – so if you want to guarantee you get a tenkara rod this weekend, and are reading this, come early tomorrow!

A shoutout to The Fiberglass Manifesto blog run by Cameron Mortenson.

In Denver, Massachussets, Somerset and now Pleasanton we have spotted folks wearing his t-shirts. He has a passionate crowd of people who appreciate the work he’s doing, and we’re very happy he’s a guy who gets tenkara!

Today we had a visit by Derrol Hammer. He agreed we should get a cool TFM Spotting picture on the Tenkara USA booth. The first picture was supposed to be a funny picture, where the “manifesto” guy gets put against the tenkara wall. The other picture is just a good picture of him trying out the glassier-feeling tenkara rod, the Ayu.

“Otsukaresama deshita” can be taken to mean “thank you for being tired”, more literally “you are tired”, and is usually used to express “good job” after a hard day of work.

Thank you everyone who came by our booth at the Somerset Fly Fishing Show! This was a terrific event. The interest for tenkara was nothing short of phenomenal. A special thanks goes to the tenkara anglers who came by and helped with the booth. That level of passion was awesome to watch. A huge thank you goes to Chris Stewart who helped man the booth this weekend, Tom Sadler who was a regular and very passionate presence, and the many bloggers and friends who came by: Lou of Fly and Fin, Matt of Funcfish, Bart of The Jersey Angler, Michael of Troutrageous! and Richard Dooley who I don’t believe has a blog but who was the winner of multiple tenkara nets and bamboo rods we auctioned for the tsunami victims early last year (pictures of Richard with his prized nets below) and who was there often helping many people with their questions as I gave a few interviews on the side or otherwise ran to my presentations.

Richard Dooley helping out a customer. Great watching it. Thanks to all who did that.

Bloggers of tenkara and friends hanging out at the welcoming booth of Tenkara USA!

Richard was the winner of several items that helped the victims of the tsunami that struck Japan last year. He brought two of the nets he acquired and it was great seeing those again!

Wow, what a show this is!

Today was the first time we held out own booth at a Fly Fishing show, and the first day at the Somerset Fly Fishing Show. It was a blast. AND BUSY! Of course, I imagine anyone who works at their own booth feels they were the busiest booth around, but I suspect we were one of the busiest, for real. I mean, no one could miss our large overhead banner from anywhere in the pavilion. Many people mentioned they saw our sign from the entrance and came by to see us. It’s really cool we were the only company featuring one of those – the show organizers suspect we just started another trend.

We met at lot of people that have been tenkara fishing for sometime and came by to say hello, and I really appreciate that. Especially as they may have hung around and talked to others who were interested in giving it a try – I mean, we can not get better support than those who do it and share it with others just because they love it.

Chris Stewart (Aka. the Tenkara Bum) was a great help at the show today. His enthusiasm for tenkara really showed at every interaction with our customers and he was a great help.

The day started with a presentation on tenkara at 11AM. I thought  this was going to be completely empty as many people were still trying to get in the show, but turned out to have the presence of some 20 guests or so.

Then, it ended with a great interaction with a group from Italy, the TLT Academy. There were some 5-6 guys from Italy who came to the show and had their own booth about a method of fly casting they teach. I turned out that one of their people, Mr. Massimo Pulze, has been practicing the Italian method of “tenkara”, called Pesca alla Valsesiana, since he was a young boy some 50 years ago. The methods are similar, but we also learned of some differences – such as the Italian’s preference for a very soft rod – Mr. Pulze LOVED the Ayu rod, “bella cana” he would say. I learned they prefer the softer rods for the ability to keep the line off the air by casting wider loops, and this may have derived from the fact that early on they used live bait, which would fall apart if being cast with a stiffer rod. In any case, we had a terrific interaction and I look forward to spending more time with them.

Somerset, NJ Fly Fishing Show, January 27-29: This will be the big one! 

Not only is Somerset the biggest fly-fishing only show in the world, but Tenkara USA will be having its own booth! We will also count on the participation of Chris Stewart of the Tenkara Bum who will be manning the booth with Tenkara USA’s Daniel Galhardo. We are there to support our two dealers: Mossy Creek, and the Bear’s Den.

Schedule:

Friday, Jan 27, 11AM: Tenkara presentation @Destination Theater Princeton Room
Saturday, Jan 28, 10AM: Tenkara presentation @Destination Theater Westfield Room
Saturday, Jan 28, 12PM: Tenkara Casting Demonstration @Pond 2
Sunday, Jan 29th, 12PM: Tenkara Casting Demonstration @Pond 2
Sunday, Jan 29th, 2PM: Tenkara presentation @Destination Theater Bedminster Room

On Thursday I head to the East Coast to participate in a couple of Fly Fishing Shows. Please come by to check out tenkara. And, don’t miss the casting demonstrations – especially the ones right before Lefty Kreh’s!
SCHEDULE:

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Being at the fly-fishing shows has been much more fun than I thought it would be! Originally intimidated by the prospect of participating and introducing tenkara to the large Fly Fishing Show audience, I have realized this was unfounded. Tenkara was very warmly received by hundreds of anglers who stopped by yesterday and today.

Today was our second day at the Fly Fishing Show supporting our dealer, the Rigs Fly Shop.

These two days went by as in the blink of an eye, not a moment to stop and I am not complaining. I have given 3 presentations so far, and several casting demonstrations (2 official ones) – showing to a lot of people that tenkara is not dapping after all.

It has been great to connect with a lot of customers, many whom I was meeting for the first time, and some whom I had already met. We – meaning myself, the great folks from Rigs and yes! our customers – introduced loads of people to tenkara in these last two day. One of the coolest things to see was our most passionate customers stopping by the booth and hanging around and introducing friends and passersby to tenkara. To all of you who have stopped by today and who stop by tomorrow, thank you!

It was also very pleasant to reconnect with John Gierach, Ed Engle and hang out with Steve Schweitzer, author of the super useful book “A Guide to Fly Fishing Rocky Mountain National Park”. These guys are very well known in the fly-fishing scene here, with their badges clearly stating “celebrity”. So, being able to spend time talking to them and know they are into tenkara, lends a lot of comfort to our work here.

Thank you to Jason Klass, of Tenkara Talk, who took a couple of nice pictures, posted on his website and allowed me to use them here.

After 3 years in business we have decided it was time to come out of our shell a bit and get both our feet wet at the Fly Fishing Shows! Well, one foot wet first as we support our dealers in Colorado and Massachusetts in their booths, and then both feet … in no waders but hoping the water will be warm as we hold our own booth at the Somerset, NJ show and likely the Pleasanton, CA show. Journalist and tenkara enthusiast Morgan Lyle picked up on these news a couple of weeks ago and wrote an article about the historic news!

This is the year tenkara will dominate the Fly Fishing Show route and we look forward to your presence and support.

Schedule

Denver Fly Fishing Show, January 6 – 8: Daniel Galhardo, Tenkara USA founder, will be supporting Tenkara USA’s Colorado dealer, RIGS Fly Fishing by sitting at their booth to talk to anyone interested in tenkara. Daniel will also be holding demonstrations and presentations scheduled for:

Friday, Jan 6th, 4PM: Tenkara presentation @Destination Theater Room D
Saturday, Jan 7th, 12:15PM: Tenkara Casting Demonstration @Pond 2
Saturday, Jan 7th, 4:00PM: Tenkara presentation @Destination Theater Room C
Sunday, Jan 8th, 3PM: Tenkara presentation @Adventure Theater

Marlborough, MA Fly Fishing Show, January 20-22: Daniel Galhardo, Tenkara USA founder, will be supporting Tenkara USA’s Massachusetts dealer, Bear’s Den, by sitting at their booth to talk to anyone interested in tenkara. Daniel will also be holding demonstrations and presentations scheduled for:

Friday, Jan 20, 11AM: Tenkara presentation @Destination Theater Room B
Saturday, Jan 21, 11AM: Tenkara Casting Demonstration
Saturday, Jan 21, 3PM: Tenkara presentation @Destination Theater Room C
Sunday Jan 22, 10AM: Tenkara Casting Demonstration
Sunday, Jan 22, 2PM: Tenkara presentation @Destination Theater Room C

Somerset, NJ Fly Fishing Show, January  27-29: This will be the big one! Not only is Somerset the biggest fly-fishing only show in the world, but Tenkara USA will be having its own booth! We will also count on the participation of Chris Stewart of the Tenkara Bum who will be manning the booth with Tenkara USA’s Daniel Galhardo. Our booth at this show will be for fun only! Come and hang out, tie a tenkara fly and learn more about tenkara – we will not be selling you anything! Instead, we are there to support our two dealers: Mossy Creek, and the Bear’s Den. Somerset Tenkara schedule:

Friday, Jan 27, 11AM: Tenkara presentation by Misako Ishimura @Destination Theater Princeton Room
Saturday, Jan 28, 10AM: Tenkara presentation by Misako Ishimura @Destination Theater Westfield Room
Saturday, Jan 28, 12PM: Tenkara Casting Demonstration @Pond 2
Sunday, Jan 29th, 12PM: Tenkara Casting Demonstration @Pond 2
Sunday, Jan 29th, 2PM: Tenkara presentation by Tenkara USA founder, Daniel Galhardo @Destination Theater Bedminster Room

Pleasanton, CA Fly Fishing Show, February 24-26. PRESENCE TO BE DETERMINED.

PROGRAM DESCRIPTIONS:

Tenkara presentation: A fascinating and very engaging presentation on tenkara, covering its history, techniques, fly patterns and more! Presentations given by Daniel W. Galhardo, Tenkara USA founder, and by Misako Ishimura at the Somerset show.
Tenkara Casting Demonstration: Daniel will show you that tenkara is not dapping, and will likely wow you by showing you what tenkara really looks like.