Dry fly fishing and Tenkara fly fishing may appear to be separate disciplines, but they are really quite complementary to each other for a variety of reasons. How often have you heard the saying: 90 percent of what trout eat is consumed under water? While 90 percent of what fills a trout's stomach may appear to be nymph life forms of various aquatic insect species, that is a long ways from being the whole story about what trout actually eat. Look at any fly fishing catalog and you will find that dry flies will make up almost 50 percent of the total count all the cold fresh water fly patterns that are offered for sale. If dry fly fishing only accounts for 10 percent of the fishing action on our lakes and streams, then why are so many dry fly patterns offered for sale in the fly fishing catalogs?

RUNNING WATERS: On western rivers, according to Gary LaFontaine in the Postscript to his book - THE DRY FLY, trout spend 10 percent of their time eating adult insects on top of the surface film, and another 10 percent of their time eating emergers or drowned adult insects from just below the surface of the water. Drift level insect nymphs account for another 60 percent of the trout's feeding time, and bottom feeding fish make up only 15 percent of the feeding time the fish activity spend, with the other random water level feeding time accounting for the final 5 percent of all the trout's feeding activity. So right off the bat we can see that 20 percent of the trouts feeding time in running waters is devoted to near or on the surface feeding activity, and not the 10 percent that is so often quoted as gospel.

But that is only an accounting of the time that the fish are spending feeding at the different water levels, not the actual amounts of bugs that are consumed at each level. Actual stomach samples show that 35 to 50 percent of what the trout are actually eating is taken at the surface of running water because the trout feed so much more efficiently at the surface than they do anywhere else in the water strata. The surface is where the trout's food forms can be seen seen in bright contrast against the sky. The roof of the stream allows the fish to rise regularly and with unerring accuracy. Trout prefer to rise even if nothing is happening hatch wise on the water because they are naturally adapt at feeding on or near the surface of the water. Any fly presented on top of the water is a natural temptation to trout with a very special appeal.

STILLWATERS: On lakes we have a slightly different environment and a different set of conditions for the fish, but a very good case can still be made here as for fishing with emerger and dry fly patterns. J. N. Ball did a study on the feeding preferences of the Wales brown trout living in Lake Llyn Tegid, he broke the trout's feeding activities down into two primary time periods: The period of October through April, in which the trout fed mainly on bottom-living organisms, and the May through September time period, in which the browns preferred to feed mainly at the surface of the lake in which they were living. Here is the monthly surface feeding activity percentages break down by individual months:

May,......... 88 percent of surface food was consumed by the trout in the month of May.
June,........ 78 percent of surface food was consumed by the trout in the month of June.
July,......... 59 percent of surface food was consumed by the trout in the month of July.
August,.... 59 percent of surface food was consumed by the trout in the month of August.
September 95 percent of surface food was consumed by the trout in the month of September.

THE TROUT'S VISUAL HARD WEAR: So why do trout show such a strong surface feeding bias? Where is the trout's eye placed in its skull? The eye is placed in the upper third of the bony skull, making it far easier for the fish to see things above it than below it. Binocular vision in the trouts is also much better above and in front of the fish due to having each eye placed on the side of the fish's head. The packing of the fish's rod and cone vision cells is also the densest at the bottoms of its retinas to make up ward vision easier, in part because fish can use the mirror on the surface of the water to see prey below them, on the bottom or on the other side of logs and rocks under the water that the fish can not see through. A food form on or near the surface is a sitting duck and an easy target that trout find hard to resist if you do your part of the presentation right.

CONCLUSION: Add in the accidental falls of ants, beetles, grass hoppers, spiders, leaf hoppers, bees, wasps and the up-slope-blow-ins of all of these and other land based terrestrial insects, which can provide 50 percent or more of the trout's food on small streams on a daily basis over the summer, and combine terrestrial insects with the aquatic insects found on lakes that are eaten at the surface and you can end up with as much as 90 percent of the available food forms for trout living in lakes over the summer period to be eaten at the surface of the water. So there is ample and many good reasons to fish with dry fly patterns and a Tenkara fly rod, even though dry flies may not be looked upon as being the traditional way to Tenkara fly fish.

Maybe this is a good time to bring this up - I find that dry fly fishing with a tenkara rod is less than ideal. There - I said it.

Let me explain: On high gradient streams with nice pockets, plunge pools, etc. where I can fish fairly close in - without spooking fish I've used dry flies very successfully, with my tenkara rod and flourocarbon level line.

But when I try to fish streams that I'd like to fish a little further out I have difficulty. What happens is this - I cast out and attempt to keep the line off of the water, but the dry fly drags back toward me until it is fairly close in. Without the anchoring effect of a sunken fly in the water I can't keep the line off of the water at any kind of distance without dragging the fly back to me a bit.

Has anyone else noticed this?

So what I end up doing to combat this is basically just use the tenkara rod like a long western rod. I cast upstream, maybe quarter across a little and let the line lay on the water. This allows me to fish further out without dragging the fly back to me. I'll even use nylon mono when I do this (for floatation).

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Ebisu, Iwana 11'ft (with additional short handle), Amago, Ito, Ayu II

I have not noticed the problem that Anthony is having but then I may not be fishing as big of streams as he is fishing. So far I have only used tapered lines on the streams that I am fishing, both the traditional furled line and hand tied tapered FC lines I have made up myself, usually with a total line length including the tippet and fly of a couple of feet shorter than the rod is long, because I do a lot of bow and arrow casting on the brushy streams I am fishing. About the only way I can see to get around Anthony's problem other than the way he has solved it would be to move your casting position in close enough to the water being fished to be able to hold the desired amount of line up and off of the water. Or go to using a thinner, lighter weight level line.

In Gary's book the DRY FLY, he brings up an interesting point that as he got distance casting coaching and improved his distance casting skills and abilities while working as a fly fishing guide, the numbers of trout he was catching declined significantly as his ability to cast longer and longer line distances increased. Going back over his fishing logs and comparing the presentations of present day anglers to the presentations that anglers made 25 years ago showed that the successful anglers of the past were within 25 feet of the fish they were casting to, regardless of the fly type that was being fished. The more modern day fishermen were casting from much farther away, using half the number of casts to cover the same stretch of water, scaring and putting most of the fish down with dragging fly lines and careless approaches, putting the fish down for a minimum of 20 minuets or more at the least. Of course there are even more fishermen today than there was back then, and as often as not the next angler to come along will be fishing the water where the trout had been put down by the angler before hem, with the fish not recovering from their fright by the time the next angler got there, so there was little chance for any angling success after the first angler hit the pool.

I believe the invention of spinning tackle has very negatively impacted the sport of fly fishing. Now nearly every fly fisherman there is out there wants to be able to make 100 foot plus casts, and believes that kind of casting distance is necessary in order to catch fish, and or believes that the more line you can throw, the more fish you will catch. Actually, just the opposite is true for stream fishing. I also think that the Long Line branch of Tenkara fly fishing is an off shoot of this same kind of flawed logic. Even with a very long Tenkara fly rod, you can not manage a long line nearly as well as you can manage a shorter line. One of the real positives that I see to Tenkara fly fishing is that the limited casting range forces the angler to work within the most effective fly fishing range of 20 feet or less for running water trout fly fishing, regardless of type of fly tackle or line being fished. Having to carry a pouch around to put your long line into to be able to land the fish is a very untidy process in my view. But what the hay, it is your fishing do it any way you like. Especially with dry flies on turbulent waters, shorter casts are always better than longer ones. And I would include nymphs, soft hackles and Sakasa Kebari type flies in that list as well.

I wonder is using a lighter 3# or 3.5# Level Line would help in these cases.

I have not done the dry fly thing yet but from what I have read, the 3.5# Level Line is easier to keep off the water at distance compared to Traditional Lines.

tj

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TJ, I am sure the lighter lines would help a lot. My first Traditional line was one of the older the nylon lines, which I didn't care for at all because of the kinking and twisting when you had to break a fly off the line. My first tapered lines were hand tied western fly fishing lake leaders that I had tied up with 15 and 12 Lb. Amnesia for the butt sections. Then I went to tying up all FC lines, starting out with 10 Lb test FC line and going on down through 6 Lb. test, with a 5X tippet to finish the line off. So even though this was a tapered line it was not a very heavy line at all because the butt section was comparable to a #3 level FC Tenkara line. This line was not too good in a lot of wind though, and I have sense tied up additional tapered and weight forward lines with 10, 12, 15 and 20 Lb. FC line, as well as level FC lines in the same line weights.

I have one of the new Traditional lines to try out for this year, which I made into a 7 foot line or a 10 foot line by marking the line at 7 feet with a felt tip marking pen and coating the mark with Zap-A-Gap super glue. Then I tied a Perfect Loop in the line on the long side of the mark and cut the line in the middle of the mark. The dried glue welds the furled line filaments together so the line does not come unwound when it is cut. Next, I tied another Perfect Loop at the end of the marked short piece of line, which allows me to have a shorter Traditional Tenkara furled line or close to original length furled Traditional line. A drop of super glue on each Perfect Loop knot is good insurance that everything is and will remain secure.

Fishing the line in the short mode works well with the shorter Tenkara rods and lightens the line considerably. It is also great for making short presentations on small brushy streams. To some extent the lost length can be made back up by adding a longer length of tippet material to the shorter line, or by looping back on the butt section of the original line will bring the line back to very close to its original length and weight. The knots do not add any weight to the line aside from the weight of the glue dabs, so the casting is pretty seamless and accurate in either the short or longer line modes. I really like the no memory characteristics of the new Traditional lines.

I fish dries and wets at the same effective distance - size 3 line no longer than the rod length, plus about 3.5' of tippet (shorter than the rod length when using the Ito). If you use a size 4, it will definitely cause more "catenary drag" ( the drag caused by the line hanging from the rod tip - not the right use of the word catenary, but perhaps close enough). Size 4.5, which is only 5 microns thinner than a size 5, is much too heavy for dry fly fishing in my opinion.

To fish a dry with a size 3 line, it has to be either a pretty small fly or very aerodynamic, which is one of the primary reasons the only dry I fish is a CDC&Elk.

If you are fishing far enough away that you have to have line laying on the water's surface, I think you've lost all the advantage that tenkara offers from a presentation standpoint - you still have the simplicity, portability, light weight, of course. You may need a longer rod. That way you can shorten the line and greatly improve your drifts.

I have not fished a line as short as Karl's line plus tippet shorter than the rod, but you could get phenominal drifts that way, you just need a long rod or you have to be very stealthy.

I agree with what Chris has just said on the light weight line issue completely. And here is where fly pattern choice and the terrestrial imitations come into their own because these low riding foam fly patterns give your line much more of an anchor point effect than a high riding hackle fly pattern ever will.

Although some of my terrestrial patterns include soft hackles in their construction, the hackles on the foam beetle and foam spider patterns contributes nothing to floating the fly. The foam ant pattern has Madam-X style round rubber legs construction. And there is no hackle at all used on any of my down wing caddis/stone fly and High Country Hopper patterns. And if you get some drag or twitch the fly with these damp terrestrial fly patterns, it will often attract the fish to the fly rather than put them down the way a pure, riding high on its hackle tips, dry fly will because the fish expect to see terrestrial insects kicking and struggling, vainly trying to get themselves out of the water.

With the parachute foam spider pattern, I have had fish attack the fly with the stream current and the leader pulling the fly away from the fish so fast that the fish had trouble catching up to the fly to take it, with the fish often pursuing the fly out of the pocket it was cast to, into the next pocket downstream, and even the pocket below that one, trying to eat the fly the whole time. I believe the fish think the spider is being pulled downstream by a piece of its web, which is not an uncommon happening with spiders seeing as how some species of spiders disperse to new territory by drifting on wind currents hanging down from their webs. Obviously, the Foam Spider is one very entertaining and fun fly pattern to fish. It also hits the water with more delicacy than the ant, beetle and hopper patterns do and is very easy to see on the water. It is a great small stream fly but not an effective lake fly pattern.

Apparent from the above discussion dry fly fishing is not "ideal" with tenkara, which is why I brought up my issue. Once we start going through contortions to make it fit, it's pretty clear it's not a perfect fit - and so less "tenkara" than, say wet flies and nymphs.

I'm not implying that there's anything wrong with dry fly fishing on tenkara rods - just that it is a compromise. So whether you compromise by fishing a shorter line, or lighter, or longer floating line - it's all a compromise which takes you away from the simplicity.

Again - no value judgement, but I think to fish dry flies with tenkara is a Occidental, western, and is definitely outside the realm of the "ideal".

All that said it can be a blast, none the less

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Ebisu, Iwana 11'ft (with additional short handle), Amago, Ito, Ayu II

Anthony,
There are lots of ways to fish a dry fly with tenkara, some even more effective than with a western rod.

1. Dapping. Yes the "D" word. Using a furled line especially, but even with a light fluorocarbon line, sometimes I just use the wind. Skittering a dry with a tenkara rod is nearly irresistible at times and you can get a long way out. Just keep tapping the surface with it.

2. At short distances I can place a dry fly very accurately when there is not much wind, and keep everything but a few inches of tippet off the water. A tippet that will manage the fly is important. For bushy flies I use a stouter tippet than would be necessary with a nymph. You are not going to get as long a dead drift as you will with a western rod, and you need overhead casting room to land it and suspend it, but for those quick takes and a drift of a couple feet especially over an obstruction, a light short line is pretty killer.

3. At longer distances though, the line is going to be used much as a western line would. Yes, I confess it , I am going to lay line on the water and consequently it must float. This is one of the reasons I prefer a furled line made with floating material. It's why Misako uses a section of Amnesia nylon. It is probably why Yvon uses PVC running line. I love to fish dry flies at times, and you have to have enough weight in the line to cast a bushier dry, and enough floating anchor (now there's an oxymoron) not to drag it away. Though some line is bobbing on the surface, it is usually less than the full length snake I put out there with my 5-weight, and I can still avoid a lot of currents a shorter rod couldn't.

Tenkara is not always a fit, of course. Yesterday as the sun was leaving the hemlock spruce river gorge I was fishing, I was sitting on a boulder 15 feet above a long run that was as black and smooth as a mirror. It wasn't long before a spotted I feeder dimpling the water a mere 18 feet out. The canopy above ruled out any overhead moves at all. The 3 to 4 foot brush at the stream edge completed the window. Even dropping down the bank was going to be tough without setting loose a gravel slide.
I first laid on my moss covered seat and tried to sling shot the dry fly to the water below. The sling shot just didn't have the power to roll out 14 feet of line, 4 feet of tippet, and a bushy Rapidan dry. As I carefully dropped over the edge and creeped my way down the steep bank, keeping a tree trunk between me and my target, several more fish were maddeningly dimpling the surface. Each gravel tick threatened to undo me, but thankfully they stopped rolling before reaching the water. Finally I got my feet planted on the few rocks edging the drop into deep water, and reaching my rod upstream over the brush, got my rod over water, fly in hand.
My wife, who now was just a unseen voice reporting from above the rocky bank, kept up her report, "Oh my there is another one, " and "the same one is coming up again." "Oh Kevin, you've just got to catch one of them."
The only back cast I had was upstream left along the bank, so letting the fly loose, I pitched it, able to keep it off the water, but the forward cast was also parallel...only 12 feet out into the stream. Not close enough for a take. Next, I used the drift to position it downstream, and tried to angle a lob upstream and further out, to let it drift down. I waited on the drift, but it was still too short. In desperation I false cast it back and forth, trying to add a fling to the end of my cast to gain inches into the stream. No go. I had no back cast, and couldn't roll it or sling shot it out there. I added a little nymph for some weight, but was essentially bombing the fish then. They shut down.
I just couldn't get it there with a tenkara rod and a roll cast with a 3-weight would have been a breeze. As I wound my line around the keepers, I swear to you, the fish gave a leaping jump and splash. my wife teased, "I think he's mocking you."
Oh well, sometime you just get story.
Kevin

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Kevin - yes. That's what I'm talking about and glad to hear your words on it.

I always like to put myself in the place of a beginner.

When I started tenkara - I didn't know "better" and I fished with Suffix and Amnesia nylon monfilament level line - or tapered mono leaders that I'd tie for western fishing or furled nylon leaders. And they worked and I caught fish. I was essentially western style fishing - especially when I used dries - but I caught a lot of fish. Apparently the fish didn't know I wasn't supposed to use a floating line laid out and mended.

Somewhere along the line I found out that i was going about things the "wrong" way. So I figured I'd learn the right way and I've spent time with that correct tenkara method. But then, you know you come to these times when you say to yourself - "Self, this is not working". And that's what happened to me recently. I found myself thinking - "I wish I had a long floating leader that I could lay out and mend and, damn-it all - fish this dry fly across this current without it dragging back to me! And I don't want to re-position myself, and I can't because there's a guy below me and one above me - if I had my fly rod I could..."

Anyway - so lately, I had been so focused on "proper" tenkara that I didn't even have any line with me except for hi-viz fluoro, and 5x tipped. So you know I struggled with it - but...If I had had my leader tying kit....

Some of my best days "tenkara" fishing have been with dry flies fished on a long floating line.

So I like to think of beginners and remind them that it's okay to backslide.

My name's Anthony and sometimes I fish dry flies with a floating leader and mend it.

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Ebisu, Iwana 11'ft (with additional short handle), Amago, Ito, Ayu II