I used to encounter an issue with line sink and spray early on when fishing adult midges on the surface. No longer. Bass poppers on ponds, adult midges on rivers, small terrestrials on alpine lakes. Whether fishing Tenkara (capitalized proper noun) or "ten colors" hybrid techniques, my line just isn't on the water.

But there are many ways to fish. You may have your own reasons to be concerned about line float that I don't share.

Having said that, I would highly encourage you to look up OSHA and related hazard info on the products you use on the water. Rain-X is toxic to water based life.

It takes very little of many products we use on the water to have an impact. The seemingly negligible amount you use on your line is, in all likelihood, not so negligible.

The best first hand example I can give for this is permethrin, one of the most common insect repellants on the civilian market. Some of my work has been with vector control, and permethrin is one of my favorite products for keeping malaria-carrying mosquitos away. It is a synthetic version of a natural product found in daisies. It is very effective and very safe for mammalian life (if you don't believe me, feel free to purchase the $50 300 page EPA summary document on safety of permethrin).

But it is exceedingly deadly for marine life. One drop of 40% permethrin will rid your home salt water tank of all of its fish. Military "spray exercises" in Okinawa are held in hangars, where runoff is contained, for this reason.

_________________
Rob Worthing
rob@tenkaraguides.com

rmcworthing, The Rain-X was covered with the fluorocarbon over lay and both were melted and baked into the line with the hot air of a blow dryer. I have used similar treatments in ski races where we skied marathon and longer distances (26 miles to 35 miles) and the wax was still on the ski bases at the end of the race. Snow is at least 1,000 times more abrasive than water is, so I do not believe much if any of these treatments I mentioned are coming off of the line, getting into the water and affecting the environment to any measurable extent.

There is a lake that I fish nearly every year that I have been fishing for more than 40 years now. It is only a 3 acre lake. It was first planted some time in the early1950s and received only one stocking of brook trout fry from an air drop. I have used these line treatments on western fly lines and other treatments that I believe are similar (such as Water Shed on flies and on fly tying materials) and there has been no decrease in the trout population in this and other lakes that I fish that I can see as a result of using line treatments and fly floatants. If anything the brook trout are reproducing too well in that lake and have a tendency to become stunted. This lake needs more fishing pressure where people keep and eat what they catch for optimum fish health, which I don't. There have been times I have considered throwing every fish that I caught as far as I could behind me so the fish left in the lake would have enough food to grow into a more interesting size. The midge populations and water boatmen/back swimmers that live in the lake are also doing well. So are the terrestrials, but then they would not be affected by line treatments and fly floatants.

I use 100 % Deet for my insect repellant but I use it as little as possible. If Deet is not good for us, it can not be good for the fish. But I am not feeding insect repellant to the fish or the aquatic critters either. The smell of Deet will also repel trout, so I make a strong effort to keep it away from getting on any of my terminal tackle. It is also hard on rod finishes and line coatings and weakens tippet materials and leaders in a hurry, as well. To the best of my knowledge I have never used the insect repellent that you have mentioned. One of the biggest health issues involved in eating fish is heavy metal contamination from old mines and smelters the fish absorb through breathing, but you do not hear much about that problem, which is especially bad for children and women of child bearing age.

I am not saying that you and the studies you have quoted are necessarily wrong. What I am saying is that my personal experience over my entire fly fishing life does not back up the accusations that are being made. Granted it is a fact that I almost never fish any given lake or stream more than once a year. Many I have only fished once in my whole life. The majority I fish once over a two to a five year period, so I am not impacting any water to a measurable extent that I can see. If I fished the same water every week over an entire season like some people here may do, then it might be a bigger problem, especially if every body else is doing the same thing. Most of the places where people do that are constantly stocked with trout anyway from a fish hatchery or there would not be a fishery there.

The recent flap over the caramel color Coke and Pepsi Cola are using to color their cola beverages with containing carcinogens is a case in point. You would have to drink 1,000 colas a day to get to the level that produced problems with mice. I drink our mountain water unfiltered and untreated and nothing has ever happened to me as a result of drinking mountain water. Are there Giardia cysts in our mountain lakes and streams? Sure there are. But according to a man who has been monitoring our Sierra lakes for more than 20 years now, you would have to drink 200 gallons of water a day to get infected with Giardia. I hold my lines, leaders and tippets in my mouth to tie knots and bite off flies. I wet sinking fly patterns in my mouth to help them sink better before making a cast. Many of those flies I put into my mouth have been fished before in far less pure places than our mountain lakes and streams. Human spit is a fish attractant. Any pathogens found in the water would be pick up in the normal actions of my every day fishing activities. The places where a lot of people swim are a lot less pure than our mountain waters are. And all those poisonous substances used on flies and fishing lines has not done any harm to me yet at nearly 69 years of age, so I believe a lot of what we read and hear about should be taken with a pinch, if not a grain, of salt. As always, you are certainly free to do as you please. And since the treatments can't make a line that is heavier than water float, there is no reason for me or anyone else to use the Rain-X or the fluoroinated ski waxes on Kevlar Tenkara fly lines. So you can rest easy as the problem has solved itself from your point of view.

[/quote]

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

tenkara spit - you're angry or not.
rules to be broken - it's what you think. in fact you are living on the very rules and breaking the law in the United States shall be punished very severely. Try not to travel by car by the rules, stealing in a supermarket and do not pay taxes. I look at you.

in fact - the inability to catch the always and everywhere to kebari - is not understanding tenkara.
Lazy people do not want to go to understanding tenkara and invent different things in his own defense. for example: tenkara is for a narrow purpose or tenkara is only for mountain streams.
Of course, nobody can forbid you to do what you want.
but this does not mean that if you can not, then it does not exist in nature (you can not, but others may).
it has an incentive to learn and improve.
rejection of the new and constant looking around (for fly fishing) and for any difficulty to escape back into fly fishing (not kebari) - it's not like the brave Americans.
I'll tell you - and tenkara and kebari - is the most effective gear is always and everywhere. limit only in the weight of fish. After tenkara - fly fishing is a kindergarten.
the most difficult - is to understand tenkara. It is namely understood, not to depict tenkara.
and first taught by tenkara - the ability to read the river, the ability to find fish.

_________________
Sergey
Vladivostok
Russia

The fact that the Kevlar lines can not be made to float is not necessarily a bad thing in my view. Sure it would have been nice to have a Tenkara weight fly line that would float for fishing dry flies on lakes, where you do not want a sinking line to pull a floating fly under the water for you. But under windy conditions where the wind creates surface currents in the lake waters, causing a belly in your line that drags the fly through the water unnaturally and creates slack in the line that makes it hard to hook the fish when you get a strike, a slow sinking line will still allow you to fish a fly close to the surface if not on it for a long time, and it will allow you to get drag free drifts and feel strikes because the line will sink below the surface currents on a lake the wind creates.

For stream fishing the fact these lines sink should not matter much if any at all, since you will be holding as much of your line up off of the water as you possibly can nearly all of the time in making stream fishing presentations. Perhaps, at some time in the future Daniel will come a cross a floating line material that can be made into a floating tapered Tenkara fly line for we lake and pond Tenkara fly fishermen to use with dry flies and poppers. The level and tapered sinking Tenkara lines work just fine the way they are with sinking and wet flies in my view.

As for the post above, I really do not know how to respond to it. I don't see that it has anything at all to do with what I was talking about. There is no single fly pattern that is all effective in all situations, and no single fishing tackle method that produces the best everywhere all the time. If some choose to believe otherwise, that's OK with me. After all its your fishing and you should do it as you like.

To the best of my knowledge I have broken no laws and I have no desire to do so. And some people could accuse the one fly Kebari fishermen of being too simple minded and/or too lazy to learn about the aquatic insects and the other food sources that trout eat in the waters where they live. I would not do that, but a plausible case for same could be made by the same logic, or lack there of, that was applied above.

The point I was trying to make in sighting the studies that I sighted is that a lot of supposedly scientific studies are so exaggerated and lopsided in their methodology and conclusions that they have little if any practical applications in the real world where we fishermen live and fish.

The lake I sighted was used because it is the one I am most familiar with and where I have done the bulk of my pattern testing over the years. I am not the only person who fishes there. The trout are not stupid and terribly easy to catch, but they are usually co-operative if you use stealth in your approach, cast accurately and fish patterns representing what they are feeding on when you see them working. I usually fish it early and late in the year, but I have fished it through out the whole of the summer season at times. Since it is located at 9,100 feet above sea level, it is not a place that you can fly fish in the winter and early spring months. This lake has seen the most use of the line treatments I mentioned above with no observable decrease in the trout population.

To say that Rain-X is poisonous to the environment is something of an exaggeration in my view. Here is the label warnings. "CAUTION: Do not expose to flame or store at temperatures above 120*F. If splashed into eyes, flush with water for 15 minuets and see physician. Contains ethyl alcohol (67-17-5), ethyl sulphate (540-82-9), isopropyl alcohol (67-63-0) and siloxanes (63148-62-9, 70131-67-8, 68440-59-5). N.Y.F.D. C of A No.4369 - Container approved VYC Bd of S&A No. 672-73-A. Keep From Children"

While no one should drink this product and denatured alcohol is mildly toxic in its various forms, all of the alcohol rapidly evaporates out of the this product after application in a matter of minuets or less. Rain-X is recommended for use on such household items as house windows, glass shower doors, glass tables, patio doors, TV screens and more. According to the manufacturer Rain-X makes all glass surfaces water and soil repellent. While it is listed as an eye irritant, Rain-x is hardly capable of ending all life as we know it on this planet by applying it to a fishing line.

The easiest, least toxic, "floatant" for furled lines is beeswax. All you need is something to keep the water out of the line. I usualy don't float my line unless it is passing under something, but the main reason I wax my furled lines is to keep the water weight out of them for casting, unless I want it there for wind busting. I guess I don't see any point in floating a level line, but that's just me. I have several waxed lines, and one I keep unwaxed for the wind.

Bruce

Bruce, I do not think you could get a level line to float even if you wanted it to float by putting wax on it. Fluorocarbon fishing line has a specific gravity in the range of 1.75 to 1.90, so level fluorocarbon lines aren't going to float very well no matter what you do to them. You might try giving the blow dryer treatment a try with your bees wax treatment, it makes the wax penetrate into the line instead of just sitting on the surface of the line, and helps bond the wax to the line.

The only comparison I have with using an unwaxed line was with the older green line, and I noticed much more water spray with that line than I did with the newer, waxed line. As a matter of fact, in walking from casting place to casting place, whether the line was placed on the EZ-Keepers or just left to hang, the line did not appear to be wet at all when I made my next cast with it. And this was with a high temperature of 60 degrees or so and a lot of shade. I liked how the Gen III line handled the breezes I encountered on that day; I felt it was much better than the older green line was in similar conditions, and this was not one of the new wind lines. So I believe you are right that the wax keeps the line from absorbing water as you are fishing and playing fish, which sometimes take the line under the water whether you want them to or not. Whether that is enough of an advantage to get other people to try waxing their lines, I don't know. Thanks for your input; your comments are much appreciated by me, Karl.