I recently read some comments on this board from Tenkara anglers lamenting the fact that their furled lines do not float for very long. The fly fishing industry makes and markets a number of line treatment products to serve this purpose. However I don't believe they are all that effective and easy to apply to furled Tenkara lines, so I am going to put up a couple of links to non-fly fishing products I know will do a better job of making our furled lines float longer.

The first link is for a video showing the effectiveness Rain-X, a liquid wax product for making rain water run off of automotive wind shields, rifle scope and binocular lenses, as well as eyeglasses lenses.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wTF8Vw7 ... ature=plcp

The second link is for a recreational level cross-country skiing fluorinated ski wax. The fluorinated waxes use negatively charged fluorocarbon additives to repel water and dirt, which are also negatively charged, like the two same poles of a magnet will repel each other. This wax comes in 3 forms, solid, paste and liquid. For our purposes the liquid form would be the easiest to apply to a furled line. Here is the link:

http://www.swixsport.com/eway/default.a ... :0:24,2722

The best way to apply both of these products it to put a little of either on a clean, dry, soft cloth and pull the line through the cloth a few times. Then allow the line to dry. Then polish slightly by pulling the line through another, unused, clean dry cloth. Do this procedure twice and you should be good to go for a long time. Eventually the wax will wear off and the line will not float as well. That will be your sign that it is time to treat the line again.

Brilliant, Karl. I customarily and regularly apply Rain-X to my windshield and know it works like magic there. No reason if will not perform like a champ on furled line. Thanks, and I'll give 'er a shot, pal.

Do keep in mind however that tenkara is fished a bit differently than western fly fishing. One shoul not lay the line on the water, there is no need to do it UNLESS you want to sink the fly.
To be blunt, if you feel you need floatant you are not quite doing it right, IMO
AND
"if you have to mend something it's because it's broken" - Chris Stewart

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Tenkara USA, founder
打仁得流, テンカラ大使
About me and Tenkara USA

I was thinking of the desirability of a floating line when using floating bugs in lakes for bass and bluegill. Does that affect your response?

Paul and Daniel are both making good points. While I realize that most, if not all, of the traditional line should be held up off of the water in traditional Tenkara fishing, I was responding to what other anglers here had complained about in their fishing experiences with the heavier, newer traditional lines.

Like Paul I also fish lakes and ponds with floating flies a lot. And even then my line is held up off of the water if I can manage to fish it that way, but I can't manage that all the time. And what happens when you hook a good sized fish? Does not the fish take your furled line under the water with it when it makes a diving run? These treatments will reduce water spray when casting again after such a battle, which I believe is also a good thing to have going for you.

The reason any thing sinks is because the object is heavier than the water it displaces, and putting some wax on a line that is heavier than water will not keep it from sinking. The line charts for sinking western fly lines indicate that different sink rate fly lines will sink to different depths, corresponding to each particular sink rate. The truth of the matter is that any object that is heavier than the amount of water it displaces will sink all the way to the bottom, given sufficient time to do so. With the furled lines being constructed as they are, with many, many fibers, strands and crevasses as an integral part of their make up that the water will eventually work its way down and get held into, these treatments will prevent or retard that from happening fore some time. The treatments will also keep the line from picking up the additional water weight the "absorbed" water will also add to the line in fishing, which is much greater than the slight weight that these wax treatments add to a line.

I believe both of these wax treatments have alcohol based carriers that quickly evaporate away, leaving the thin, uniform wax coating on the line's fibers, so pure or rubbing alcohol can also be used as a line cleaner if you feel that you need to clean your line at some time in the future. Silicone based line treatments attract dirt as well as helping a line to float, dirt also adds weight and sinking ability to lines, giving you another reason for using these treatments over and above the commercially available ones. So even if you hold your line off the water most of the time, these treatments will not hurt, and may even boost, the performance of your furled traditional lines.

Well I fished the Generation III furled line today in a couple of bass and bluegill ponds. At first the line floated well, but after a few fish had been caught the line became what I would call a slow sinking line. This was after treating it with Rain-X and some pure 100% fluorocarbon ski wax overlay - the stuff that costs $129.95 for 20 grams of pure solid fluorocarbon. I already had the overlay for skiing so I figured it was worth a shot to find out if it would help the Kevlar lines float longer. Both treatments were hot waxed into the line with a hair blow dryer set on high heat. One of the attributes of Kevlar is that it is more heat resistant than nylon and the polymers are.

After getting home from fishing this evening, I did some research on the specific gravity of Kevlar and sure enough it has a specific gravity of 1.44. Water has a specific gravity of 1.00, so Kevlar lines are heavier than water, and unless the water's surface tension is very high due to cold conditions, there is probably nothing you can do that will make a Kevlar tapered Traditional Tenkara line float permanently because it is heavier than water. That density is one of the things that make these lines cast so well. I could have saved myself some time, work, and some very expensive ski wax if I had researched the specific gravity of Kevlar lines in the first place.

I was fishing some floating water boatman and backs swimmer patterns quite effectively, so the sinking of the line was not so great that it pulled the flies under water unless I let it get really deep and I pulled the fly under the water with my rod motion, which was fine because it allows you to fish both surface and subsurface with a single floating fly pattern. When the rod movement was stopped, the fly would slowly float back up toward the surface of the water, just like real water boatmen and back swimmers do. So I caught fish on the surface with the fly rowing its swimming legs, swimming under water as well, and in the float back to the surface mode. I don't have an untreated line to compare the treated line with for sink rate. Perhaps some of you can provide information on how fast your untreated lines sink. Thanks for light you can shed on this in advance if you decide to help out.... Karl

Hi
guys you hear only yourself.
Daniel is trying to convey to you the essence of tenkary while you at it again.
tenkara - a line above the water and wet fly (kebari)
WET, WET, VERY WET, VERY VERY WET, and the name is FLY FLY KEBARI. KEBARI!

all other methods of fishing other flies, and when the line on the water - it's not tenkara. NOT TENKARA. UNDERSTAND.
IT is Fishing WITH TENKARA ROD AND LINE TENKARA other flyfishing flies. BAT , it is NOT TENKARA.

so when you the fish are not on the kebari, write honestly - fishing with a stick tenkara, but it is not tenkara.
You remember the video clip when Ishigaki fished in February 2012 in Japan (little red nymph).
I asked him - what it was. He said - it was hilarious fun, but it was not tenkara. NOT TENKARA.
Tenkara - is above the water line and KEBARI.
Daniel - I understand you.

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Sergey
Vladivostok
Russia

Aw shucks, Classic. I just hate it when I find out I'm not following the rules.

It's a cultural thing.

There is a common saying in Japan "The nail that sticks up will get hammered down."
There is a common saying in the US "Rules were meant to be broken."

I think it is a good thing to understand what is and what is not classic tenkara.

I think it is also good to understand that tenkara rods are superbly adapted to that narrowly defined style of fishing. They do it better than any other rod. They also do it better than they do any other style. That said, and that understood, there is an awful lot of fishing that is not classic tenkara that is an awful lot of fun and for which tenkara rods (or even tenkara-type rods) are an awful lot of fun to use.

When in Japan I will do as the Japanese do. Here at home, though, I will not limit myself to the classic techniques or classic equipment.

Well spoken, Chris. That is more or less what I had in mind, and you expressed it beautifully. I had not thought about the Japanese and American attitudes toward rules, but from what I know about the subject (not a lot) , you are spot on.