The Tenkara Summit was this past weekend. Most people should have had the time by now to return and catch their breaths. TJ, already said it was well worth the 1700(!!) mile drive.

Erik Ostrander, who I enjoyed having dinner with in Portland, said that the Summit was great and he was enthused. (BTW Erik is a friendly extraverted guy and, Erik, if I'm misquoting you, please correct this .)

So how about sharing what your experience was like? Who'd you meet? Any impressions? Interesting stories and anecdotes? Photos? Anything else?

-Jack

Jack,
It was a great pleasure meeting you. You seem to be very excited about all the new things that are happening with tenkara, and I am happy to call you a friend.

The TenkaraGuides.com crew will be posting trip reports this weekend. As you know I'm on travel this week, but I'm itching to get back and review all the photos. I may even put off fishing to post trip reports!

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Tenkara Guides

Cool, guide trip report!

My experience:

shoot shoot shoot shoot moderate shoot shoot shoot shoot shoot shoot beer sleep shoot shoot shoot shoot shoot shoot shoot shoot shoot fish beer sleep shoot shoot shoot shoot shoot shoot shoot shoot shoot shoot beer beer sleep...

The Tenkara Summit was a great experience. Ashley, Lyn and I shot lots of great footage over the past ten days or so. Now exhausted...

John here from Tenkara Guides. I will share some stories of the first day of our road trip to West Yellowstone.

Wed. Aug 24th 7:30pm cram all of our stuff into the back of the 4runner & hit the road from Salt Lake City to Idaho.

11:30pm arrive at Walmart somewhere outside of Idaho Falls to purchase Idaho fishing permits. You see some strange stuff at Walmart in Idaho about midnight. It was kind of like a cowboy version of the Monty Python Ministry of Silly Walks.

1:30am Lost somewhere in the middle of nowhere on a dirt road in Idaho looking for a place to camp.

2:00am found a place next to a dirt road to set up camp in the middle of nowhere in Idaho.

6:00am wake up & climb out of tent to see that we are in some farmer's yard across the stream form a huge house and barn.

6:10am pack our gear back into the 4runner and scram from the farmer's yard before they call the police.

Now we are off to find a place to do some fishing...

More to follow.

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lmao!!!!

jd

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"The reverse side also has a reverse side"

Tenkara Guides
Funny can't wait to hear more. You got me laughing. I believe you can substitute any walmart location at that hour to find a deep pool of strangeness. Keep em coming.
Jeremy

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テンカラのイモリ
Tenkara Mushroom

Tenkara Guides log, Fish date: 08/25/11: Roaming around Idaho looking for a place to catch fish. Navigating by a map that looks like it was scribbled by a dyslexic pre-schooler in a fishing Idaho guide book. No one knows where the hell we are. Maybe it would help if the driver (me) had a sense of direction.

We found a very cool stream to fish, beautiful scenery, I knew I should have packed the machete. We scramble down this treacherous rock faced, brush covered hillside to the stream. I don't break a sweat often hiking down hill, this was the exception. I slipped on the slick brush covered rocks and landed on my ass in a huge raspberry bush. I now have raspberry stains on the butt of my waders, looks like a red and blue poop stain.

We covered a lot of water today, things look so promising, perfect water, lots of features & currents that should hold beautiful fish, not another soul in sight for miles.

4 hours later, we caught a few trout, nothing noteworthy as far as fish go. It is beautiful here though. Time to climb back up the face of Mt. Doom to the truck and drive on to West Yellowstone.

More Tenkara Guides adventures to follow...
John

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I had a great time at the summit, and it was a ton of fun getting to meet everyone, that was invovled. i do have one thing to add. I love the way the on stream demonstration ended up. I really like how after a little bit of instruction it boiled down into B.S.'n and fishing. I have to give kudos to Dr. Ishigaki for being so open to teach, even though he understands very little of the language, he was not afriad to jump in and offer instruction to anyone that walked up to him with a questioning look on their faces. Im pretty sure I will never forget the bulk of his instruction being sound effects "SHoooooo!" "chook chook chook". I even went through his whole beginners lesson just so I could try his rod
anyway my suggestion for next year "wink wink" is to give the same 30 40 minutes of beginners instruction then, everyone with a rod and a fishing liscense can jump in the water and start fishing. Daniel, Dr. Ishigaki, and other experianced Tenkara practitioners, can just wander around and give instruction and answer questions. and everyone who is new or doesnt "yet" have a rod can buddy up with someone else or just watch. I had my rods with me and would have been more than happy to let some of the newbies give them a try. (i even offered a couple of times) Like so many before have said, you really dont get it until you actually have a rod in your hand.
IMAG0287 by statikpunk, on Flickr

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RODS: Ito&
Iwana I/II 12ft & 9ft
Amago

Tenkara Guides road trip adventures continues: 8/25 about 4pm, we roll into the West Yellowstone area and hit a couple of fly shops, Bud And Lilly's and Blue Ribbon Flies and check things out and get our fishing licenses. After talking to a few people at the shops we are given some directions to a free campsite area along the shores of Hibben Lake (or Lake Mosquito as I like to call it). We eventually find the campsite and begin to set up tents.

The camp site next to ours is inhabited by some good ol' boys who are shacking up together in a van for the night. After exchanging today's fishing stories with our new neighbors, they begin to clean their fish in the camp ground and store the fish in a cooler on the picknick table. I thought that this is grizzly bear country and you should take some basic precautions like NOT GUT YOUR FISH IN YOUR CAMPSITE! more on this later.

We had a pleasant camp dinner and as nightfall came upon us it seemed like a great time to tie some flies in the dark by the light of LED headlamps with tying vices clamped on the arms of camp chairs and mine on a log. Needless to say tying flies in the dark provides a lot of humor and frustration, if you haven't tried it yet, you should.

It is beginning to drizzle so it is time to get some sack time. As we pack up tying gear Rob notices that our camp neighbors left their cooler of fish sitting on the picknic table. I guess that Igloo is bear proof?

3:00am all is well in the abode of ERiK and John, Rob on the other hand has a new friend. Rob is awakened by the sound of a large bear walking along the shore of the lake and coming up into our campsite close enough to Rob's tent that he can hear the water dripping off of the bear's fur and the sounds of the animal sniffing the air. After what must have been a terrifying few minutes, the bear meanders away from Rob's tent and he scrambles out to wake ERiK and I up. "John, where is your bear spray?" Rob whispers through the tent wall. "It's in the truck, why?" "A big ass bear just walked past my tent" Now Rob has my and ERiK's full attention. We do the total Chinese Fire Drill and scurry to the safety of the 4runner. We hang out in the truck for about an hour with no sign of Rob's bear. It seems like the coast is clear and we climb back into our tents with our 1 can of bear spray between us.

We slept like crap the rest of the night.

In the morning we are off to fishing heaven on the Madison River with our one can of bear spray.

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