As tenkara anglers, we like to push the boundaries and experiment with different techniques and tackle. One area of our sport that particularly lends itself to R & D is using unconventional materials for lines. While early lines may have been constructed of furled or braided horse tail or silk, commercially available modern lines have…
When your fishing partner catches the first fish of the day, the inevitable question is, “what did you catch him on?” It’s as if the fly were the ultimate “magic” factor in catching the fish. And, in fact, we all kind of place that faith in the fly … don’t we? We automatically place the…
I recently had a chance to try out the newly designed NIRVANA 400 tenkara rod from DRAGONtail Tenkara and have nothing but good things to say about it. I’ve known the company and its owner, Brent Auger, for several years now and have always been impressed by how they’ve consistently put out tenkara gear that…
I recently wrote a post about how to make your own DIY fly drying patch. And it works great if you want to switch out soggy flies for fresh ones or just want to dry out your flies before you retire them to the box. But, what do you do when you’re down to the…
Update: This contest has ended. The winners have been announced on the TenkaraTalk Facebook page. If you want to be notified of future posts and upcoming giveaways like this one, please sign up for email notifications here. Original post: It’s simple. Copy and paste the following message to your Facebook page and you’ll be entered…
Whether you need to swap out a waterlogged dry fly for a fresh one or are just switching patterns altogether, it’s never a good idea to put a wet fly back in your box. To avoid rusting the other flies in your fly box and to allow them to dry faster, it’s best to allow…
Midge and blue-winged olive hatches often coincide and two fish in adjacent feeding lanes could be keyed in on one or the other. So why not fish a fly that covers both? The Molive (“midge” + “olive”) is a crossover pattern that can be fished during such hatches and can be mistaken for an olive…
Many fly anglers spend more time with their fly in the air than in the water. Tenkara forgoes all the false casting, shooting line, and line management usually required when fishing with a rod and reel, and keeps your fly in the water more–where the fish are!
Twelve years. That’s how long it had been since my friend Randy and I fished the San Juan together. He had been there a few years ago and we fished together in Colorado since then, but we were overdue for joint venture. So when he first mentioned reuniting on the San Juan a few months…
A common concern in tenkara (and a valid one) is casting in the wind. Of course, there are ways to mitigate this and there’s been much discussion on the topic: adjust your casting stroke, use a heavier line, use the blow line technique, use a titanium tenkara line, etc. But to me, a much bigger…
Yesterday, one of my closest friends and fishing partners, Dennis Vander Houwen, came over as he often does for coffee and our usual conversational acrobatics of politics, culture, art, science, domesticity, gossip, and, of course, tenkara. I posted a video we made about his handmade tenkara line spools the last time he visited, and this…
Probably the thing I love most about fly tying is that there are limitless possibilities for experimentation and how each experiment builds on the lessons of previous ones. You take a certain technique or style you’ve tried in the past and blend it with another (previously disparate one) to create an entirely new avatar. You…
We’ve all been there before. You’re fishing your favorite line and it’s the perfect color for the spot you’re on. You can see the tip perfectly and detect even the gentlest strike with ease. But then, things change. Maybe you move slightly upstream where the lighting conditions are completely different, or the sun suddenly disappears…
I recently found these tenkara line cards during my weekly scouring of eBay for unique tenkara gear and thought they looked interesting, so I ordered a few (well … OK … eight). For those of you not familiar with line cards, they’re an alternative to using the popular plastic line spools and are nothing more…