Confusion and Consternation Over Rod Action Selections Is The Order Of The Day:

There seems to be a lot of confusion and consternation around here over which rod action (5:5, 6:4 or 7:3) to chose by both new and more experienced anglers visiting this forum. A lot of people get all bogged down in the angling considerations, such as the size of the fish they will be catching, which rod action handles big fish the best, which action handles wind the best, and what rod action is the most pleasurable to fish with. Other considerations are also worried over a lot, such as which rod length to use for which stream size, which weight and action of rod casts which line type (traditional tapered lines, level fluorocarbon lines, tapered fluorocarbon lines, and even retrograde and modern horse hair lines and their synthetic equivalent substitute) lines the best. And there are probably as many different answers for all these questions as there are anglers out there asking the questions.

Daniel's Good And Accurate Advise:

Daniel has stated, and rightly so, that there is an adjustment period that every beginning Tenkara fly fishermn must go through. And no matter what rod you chose to buy and fish with, you will probably be well satisfied with the results you will get after getting through that adjustment period, as all the rods he offers for sale are quite capable of handling fish up to at least 18 inches with just about any Tenkara USA line that is offered for sale. That is not to say that some rods may not fish a little better than others in some situations, for some anglers. And the devil as always is in the details. This situation is not quite so bad for the more experienced anglers among us, but for people who are new to fly fishing or fishing in general, they are often left with out much information that is very reassuring to help them go on. So I am going to offer up a different point of view here in addition to what others have said, one I believe will lessen the confusion and give the proper prospective for a Tenkara rod buyer to utilize, something that is a good deal more concrete and positive to get a handle on what type of rod will work out the best for you, whether you are experienced or inexperienced.

All Anglers Are Different, With Different Capabilities and Needs:

As anglers we are all different, with different temperaments and physical abilities that the rod must be complementary to and in agreement with for us to be truly satisfied with our rod purchase as a fishing tool that really fits us. The fishing considerations are secondary to the primary ergonomic angling rod considerations specific to each individual angler. To determine which rod action is best suited to you, you need only to ask yourself as series of questions and answer them truthfully as you can to the best of your ability. Determine where you actually are on your life journey in angling, not where you aspire to be or where you hope to get to in the future.

Active Aggressive Angler Personality Types:

Are you a type A Personality angler? Are you a hard charging angler, ready to hit the water all day long from before the sun is up to well after the sun has set, making as many casts and hooking as many fish as you can in an angling day? Are you young, athletic, strong and with a lot of endurance? Do you have quick reflexes and impeccable timing? When you cast, do you want a speedy response from the rod and line with pin point accuracy, and lazier fast line speed delivered directly on target? If you can answer yes to most of these questions, then you will be best served by choosing a rod with a casting action on the fast side of 6:4 or better yet the 8:3 or faster action Tenkara rods.

The More Laid Back Type Of Angler Personality Types:

On the other hand are you a more relaxed angler, willing to take the time to smell the flowers in your fishing day? Are you more into the total experience of angling than just into the catching all the fish that you can catch? Are you getting older, not as strong as you once were, with reflexes and timing that is not quite as good as it used to be? Do you like casting a rod that you can wait for the rod to throw the line for you, rather than rushing things and over powering the tip of the rod, creating a tangled mess in the line when you over do it with a slower action rod. Are you more into careful approaches and stealth than into covering all the water that you can in a day? If your answers are yes to most of these questions, then you would be best served with one of the 5:5 action rods in what ever length you like the best.

The Middle Of The Road Anglers or Anglers Unsure Of Where They Fit In To The Total Angling Range:

If you are somewhere in the middle between being a hard charger and a more relaxed angler, then you will probably be best served with a more middle of the road 6:4 action rod, in what ever length appeals to you. The 6:4 action rods have models that shade into the other two types, so this middle ground is the broadest in its total applications and will cast either traditional tapered or level lines well. Like a lot of middle of the road compromises, the 6:4s are probably not the best with either a tapered or a level line in their casting abilities that can be had, but they are more than good enough to satisfy most enthusiastic anglers. So if you are in doubt of where you fit in going down this particular Tenkara fishing road, it is hard to go wrong with the middle of the road approach to rod selection in Tenkara fishing, and that's probably why the Iwana rods are so popular, because they do everything reasonably well.

Conclusions:

So if you have bought a rod that is out of your personal personality type for you and your angling capabilities, all is not really lost. Especially if it is a slower, softer rod. You see, none of us stays strong, young and quick forever. A rod that may be too slow for you now will be grown into later. So if you have to error, it is better to error on the side of slowness rather than fastness in your rod selection processes. After you determine your personality type, physical casting abilities, and which action type will work out the best for you, then it is time to take the more fishing specific aspects of rod selection process into account and make the more refined rod model decisions that are available to you. But your personal personality and physical casting requirements should always come first, well before the purely fishing related rod model selection process is considered. Most people do it exactly the other way around, with no consideration being given at all to their personal, temperamental needs, which dooms them into making many rod purchase before they accidentally fall into the right rod purchase for them. Hopefully, this little piece will shorten the learning curve for you right now or in the future.

INTJ here, and I like the 6:4 Amago.

Great info. It helped me clear up some things even though I already have two tenkara rods.

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Loften
テンカラの子 Tenkara No Ko

Oh great! Now I have to visit my psychotherapist to determine which Tenkara rod I should use!

grampa, cheaper to just buy them all and on any given day you use the one you feel like.

+1



tj

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Tenkara USA, Director of Customer Service

Tenkara Junkie - Tenkarajankī
Now sporting all of the Tenkara USA Rods!

Some of the responses I read on these forms cause me to wonder if the person writing the response has even bothered to read the post before they responded to it. There is nothing about picking a rod or a rod action that matches your temperament and casting abilities and preferences that requires anything remotely resembling psychoanalysis. It is really a pretty simple and straight forward process, once you understand what you are looking for. Perhaps the remark was made in an attempt at humor.

A rod that does not match the angler's temperament will be a constant distraction to him on the water. It is much easier to fish with a rod that matches your abilities than to constantly be fighting with a rod that does not pair well with you and your abilities. A rod that matches your temperament will automatically become an extension of your body, doing what you want and need done, when you need it, without you having to give your casting any conscious thought or consideration, which is far better than you trying to force the rod to bend and yield to your will all the time. Having a rod that sings in your hand allows you to pay more attention to the more important stuff, like the catching of fish and the totality of the Tenkara fly fishing experience.

Fine tuning the rod to different fishing conditions is largely done by your line selection choices. If you need to cast farther distances on larger waters, since all rods cast best within the specified weight range that they were made to cast, you would choose a longer and lighter weight line. Probably something in the 3 to 3.5 or perhaps the number 4 line weight range at the most for level lines. The lighter weight lines will provided the needed weight in their increased length, and the additional length will be easier to hold up off of the water because the lighter weight lines have thinner diameters, yielding less total weight for a given length of line.

I see Tenkara fly fishing as essentially being a short range style of fly fishing tool. The present momentum in western fly fishing is toward ever faster rods, higher line speeds, ever tighter line loops and the extreme casting distances that can be accomplished with such equipment. Heavily weighted nymphs, multiple fly rigs, the addition of split shot to get the flies to sink even deeper in the water, and the use of wind resistant strike indicators big enough to float all of this extra terminal tackle requires stiff rod tips, stiff mid sections in the rods and overly sturdy butt sections in rods that makes such rods completely unsatisfactory for fishing dry flies with light tippets. Tenkara rods are revolutionary movement back to what western fly fishing has moved so far away from, fly fishing's traditional beginnings.

When the typical western fly angler buys a new fly rod, he or she (but women are much more sane in these matters than we men are), the angler test drives a number of rods out in the parking lot, buying the rod that he can throw the most line with, not even bothering to consider that most of the fish he actually catches are caught at much shorter distances on streams than what he is casting in the parking lot. This is what I believe is the spin fishing legacy rearing its ugly head in the fly fishing industry, the angler mistakenly believing that the ability to cast more line will automatically guarantee that he will be able to catch more fish. Actually just the opposite is more likely to happen - the more line you have on the water, the less likely you are going to be able to catch a lot of fish. Or, in fact, any fish at all. And this where the beauty and fish catching efficiency of Tenkara fly fishing comes in to play, there is not a lot of line to cast in the first place, and you can hold almost all of the line you are casting up off of the water. The need for distance is solved, simply by moving your body closer to the fish, which requires the development of stealth skills in the angler.

Contrary to the pundits' assertions to the contrary, I do not believe that Tenkara fly fishing requires any more stealth skills than western fly fishing does. The trout require a certain level of stealth in order for them to be caught, regardless of which style of tackle you are using. If anything Tenkara fly fishing requires less stealth-full skills because the much longer Tenkara rod allows you to make a comparable cast from farther away from the trout you are fishing to. On free stone streams, casting western fly fishing capable distances practically guarantees that the angler will fail to catch any fish because that quantity of line can not be effective managed on the water with out spooking most of the fish lying in between the angler and his fly. Less line cast on the water equals more fish to be caught in free stone streams. So whether you are fishing western or Tenkara, moving you body closer to the fish will always get you better results in catching fish.

For short line Tenkara fishing techniques, a little more line weight will load the rod better, making casting easier and more accurate with out the need to force the rod by applying short, sharp, crisp hand and arm movements to the rod that are not necessarily natural for you. If that casting style is you cup of tea, you need a fast action rod. Because the rod will be relatively longer in ratio to the line length being fished in short line techniques, the slightly heavier line will be easy enough to hold up off of the water because you will not be fishing very far away, so a slightly heavier line is not much of a handicap in short line long rod fishing.

I may be wrong on this but I primarily see tapered lines being best suited for the fishing floating fly patterns, although there is no good reason why you could not also use tapered lines to fish with wet flies as well.

Fish all the rods you want to fish, for sure. But once you have experienced fishing with a rod that fits you like a glove, you will have little desire to fish with any other rods but that one magic wand, or other rods that are built to be as similar in their casting actions as possible to that one glove rod, or rods. Making lite of this just shows a lack of knowledge and understanding of what a properly fitted rod can do for you.

Karl, Now I know why I choose the rods that I do,

After reading your theory, I started looking at my fishing.
I do use the Amago 6:4 when I am aggressive and going hard charging for certain fish.
On the days I choose the Ayu 5:5 I'm just out to have fun be on the water. Any fish caught is just icing on the cake.
Good read, good fun... keep on posting the stories.

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Why let the truth stand in the way of a good fish story.