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.

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.

After 2 decades of using an improved clinch to tie my fly to tippet, I decided to give a new knot a real try. This knot was taught to me by Dr. Ishigaki a couple of years ago, but being so used to tying the improved clinch it was difficult to change. Then, while doing some instructional filming for an upcoming DVD and trying to find ways to simplify tenkara instructions , I was inspired to use this knot. It seems to be a slight variation of the Scaffold Knot, with two loops rather than 3, I will call it a “double-loop slip knot”. It is the exact same knot as tippet to level line, and very similar to the level line to rod tip knot. It is very quick to tie, and as I have found out it is a super strong knot. I have not yet lost a single fly to poor knots (that includes fishing with one fly and not replacing tippet at all for 2 1/2 days of fishing on a backpacking trip where I caught over 40 fish on it, and a subsequent trip with multiple 18-22″ fish).

If you’re looking into a new knot, or are new to fly-fishing and want a simpler set of knots, give this one a try. It has become my “one tenkara knot”.

Yesterday I took 10-year old Sofi tenkara fishing for her first time. She emailed me last week to ask if I could teach her tenkara for her “Dream Homework” assignment. On Monday she attended a presentation I gave at the Boulder REI. It was real cool to see how interested and engaged she was.

While fishing, what impressed me the most was how intuitive she was. I gave her a rod and just told her to get her tenkara fly “out there”, pointing to the calm water near some currents. She did in less than a minute with no instruction. A few minutes later, she spontaneously started manipulating the fly – and she did it perfectly too. It was quite astounding. The fishing was pretty slow, I believe because of pressure changes, but she did manage to land a nice brown within 15 minutes of us picking up the rod for the first time.

Written by Daniel

Tenkara USA was just awarded a “Best of Show” award at the International Fly Tackle Dealer show (IFTD)!!! Wohooo! We received the prize for “Best Gift” for the 12ft Iwana tenkara rod, a tenkara line and tenkara flies.

Many people realized that a tenkara rod, tenkara line and tenkara flies make up for the best gift. Either they will be something the experienced fly angler will not already have, or it will be the ideal gift to get someone started into fly fishing.

Here is the Tenkara USA team with the award: (left) Thomas Ferreira (TJ), Daniel, and Masaki Nakano

We also submitted one of our rods as a “Best Freshwater Fly Rod” category. That was a tough one to compete in given that we were going head to head with all the conventional 9ft fly rods in the market. I knew the chances of that prize were extremely slim, but as they did not have a category for “Best Mountain Stream Fly Rod” that was our only chance.

When I asked my friend Tom Sadler what he thought the odds were of the tenkara rod winning the category prize, his response was “exactly the same as the percentage of people doing tenkara within the of fly-fishing”.

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!

Maybe we need to revise the term “fixed-line fishing” slightly. While it is accurate to describe tenkara as a “fixed-line” method of fishing, it should be noted there is more flexibility and versatility in tenkara than most people think. One example of that is how I normally use our tenkara level lines.

Read the rest of this entry »

We just released a new feature on this site: Product Reviews. But, the reviews are trickling in slowly. We really would like for you to review the products you have tried to help future tenkara anglers know more about our products.

To give you an incentive we’ll be giving out a lot of prizes for your honest review. All you have to do is log on to our site, go to your favorite product, and writeup a review before May 10th.

DRAWING: Every review has an unique id, we’ll use a random number generator to pick the winners – reviews already entered will be included in the drawing. The more products you review, the more chances you have to win though, of course, we only want reviews of products you know. The review should be honest – no special consideration will be given to content.

Ah, “what prizes can I get?”, you ask.
So, we will make this very sweet for you and give plenty of stuff away:
1) Complete tenkara set (two will be given)Any tenkara rod you want* along with a traditional tenkara line, tenkara level line, 2 tenkara line holders and set of flies. *rod subject to availability but all should be in.
2) Tenkara net *(US ONLY) (1 will be given).
3) A new tenkara bamboo fly box valued at $63 (1 will be given).
4) Copies of The Fly Fish Journal with Daniel Galhardo’s article on tenkara and his visit to Japan. (5 will be given)
5) Tenkara Sakasa Kebari T-SHIRT (2 will be given).
6) Tenkara baseball cap (2 will be given)

DEADLINE: May 10th. Winners will be selected within a couple of days from May 10th.

Sometimes to improve our technique we must watch examples of how something should not be done.

Yesterday a video showing a tenkara angler in Japan using a very long line was brought up in our forum. The angler is probably using some 30ft of line, which is on the very long end of the scale for tenkara lines but still manageable. However, the video shows very poor landing technique for landing a fish with such a long line. In the Japanese video shown at the bottom of this post, the angler plays the fish much longer than necessary and instead of grabbing the line to bring the fish closer to him, he walks back up the bank and beaches the fish – A BIG NO! NO!

Correct way of landing a fish with a long line:

So that you know better, when you decide to use a line longer than your tenkara rod, the proper technique is pretty simple and consists of simply lowering the rod tip towards your back so you can bring the line closer to you, then grab the line and hand-line the fish closer to you. The video we produced last year and posted  below shows decent technique, I have improved it since making the video: do not lift your arm high as I do in the video below at 1:40, you can keep your elbow bent while you calmly do bring the line and fish closer to you. Then, try bringing the fish to a place with calmer water so you can subdue him closer to you and calmly net the fish

OK technique for landing fish with long lines can be seen here (should have kept my arm lower, this gives more control of the line and of the fish and is less tiring):

17″ Brown recently landed using about 28ft of line:

THIS SHOWS BAD TECHNIQUE:

REPEAT, BAD TECHNIQUE – DO NOT TREAT FISH THIS WAY. READ REST OF POST ABOVE!