Guest post by John Vetterli, of Tenkaraguides.com

I don’t know how many of you have seen the short video Daniel made of my 6 year old son Jack practicing casting his 11’ Iwana and tormenting our cat. That short video was the first time Jack had cast with his new tenkara rod.

I have learned some valuable lessons from teaching my 9 year old daughter Sage and 6 year old son Jack how to fish with tenkara rods. I want to share these lessons because like most tenkara anglers with kids, I immediately saw the potential for bringing my kids into the tenkara world for a lifetime of fun and learning.
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This weekend we participated at the Wasatch Fly Fishing and Fly Tying Expo. It was very much a last minute decision to attend. The Tenkara Guides of Utah were participating, as was Craig Mathews from Blue Ribbon Flies (one of our dealers and very passionate tenkara angler). Also, Utah is one of the states with most potential for tenkara, with lots and lots of streams in the mountains nearby but where, by perusing the main online forum for fly-fishing in Utah, it seems like many people have the wrong ideas about the method. Thus I decided to come in and help tenkara take over the show. It turned out that we did make a big splash, and introduced tenkara to hundreds of people and “converted” a good number of them. It was hard to look at our corner and not see a crowd. Several people commented that we were keeping people in that area for too long. So, tenkara has now made big strides in Utah.

A big thanks to Josh Leavitt of Rutalocura.com and Holga photographer Brian Schiele who helped at the booth.

Also, a huge thanks to John and Rob of tenkaraguides.com for their enthusiastic participation at the show. Having their booth next to ours provided huge synergy.

It was also great seeing many advocates stopping by and talking tenkara to anyone who came near our booth. Several people said they came to the show specifically to see tenkara. If there is something that makes me truly happy it is to see those who adopted tenkara come to say hi and then hang out talking to everyone about their newfound passion.

The day before the show John and I went fishing at one of the Cottonwood canyon streams. We only had a bit over an hour of fishing time and I landed a beautiful brown trout. Using an ishigaki kebari of course. We fished a small stretch without a bite. The temperature the day before had swung dramatically: t-shirt and shorts weather when I arrived, but a nano-puff jacket and gloves when we went fishing the day after. Caught it by casting upstream and getting my fly to sink a few inches on a small plunge.

In a couple of hours we’re heading to a new-to-me stream outside of Salt Lake City, and I’m truly excited to see what that holds. The tenkaraguides.com couldn’t stop talking about it last night. I think they know something most people here don’t.

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 Tenkara Guides of Utah, Erik Ostrander, Rob Worthing, and John Vetterli, have just posted their awesome video on tenkara online. The video was filmed and produced by Ben Luthy, a student at University of Utah. We were able to enjoy a first showing during the Tenkara Summit in Montana, and the audience was stoked. Needless to say, Ben got an A in his class for a very well-done work. Enjoy it.

The Tenkara Guides of Utah are part of our upcoming Tenkara Guide Network program, and are certified Tenkara Guides by Tenkara USA. This new program, which we hope to roll out in full effect in 2012, will put those interested in learning more about tenkara with those who have learned it directly from us. The Tenkara Guides are also helping us put together the second Tenkara Summit, which will be held in Salt Lake City, UT on July 28th and 29th of 2012.