How can you improve on something as simple as a tenkara line spool? After all, it’s nothing more than a spindle to wrap your line around for storage and transport, right? Think again. Tenkara USA has literally just reinvented the wheel with their latest innovation–The Keeper. The Keeper’s most important innovation is that it features…
Probably the #1 thing that confuses people new to tenkara is the way rod actions are described. And I can see why. 5:5? 6:4? 7:3? What the heck do these numbers mean? While there are many good charts out there that (I think) describe these actions well, I still see a lot of people who…
If you’ve been into fly fishing for any length of time, you might have heard of a pattern called the “Brook’s Stone“. It was invented by Major Charlie Brooks to imitate the big stoneflies on the Yellowstone River. It’s a simple pattern. Unlike most stonefly patterns, it doesn’t even have a wing case. It’s basically…
I’ve had several people ask me about what it takes to become a fly fishing guide. I was only a guide for a couple of years in my grad school days out of a shop in Boulder that was then managed by the great Charlie Craven. But in that short time through my own experiences…
I went fishing with Dennis Vanderhowen a couple of days ago. I usually don’t pay much attention to the gear my fishing buddies use, but something caught my eye as I turned my head to see where he was upstream–his line. Tenkara lines are notoriously difficult to see–both on the stream and on camera. But…
I first heard about zenmai a few years ago in a blog post from Tenkara USA. What is zenmai? It’s a fuzzy fiber that grows on sprouting fern plants in the spring and Japanese anglers use it as dubbing material. It might seem strange to use vegetation as a tying material, but it actually makes quite…
Here’s a video of how I set up the Tenkara Guide Sling Pack from Zimmerbuilt to be my ideal carry system for tenkara fishing around Colorado. This pack was designed by the Tenkara Guides in Utah to be a tenkara-specific pack but could also be used for conventional fly fishing. How do you carry your tenkara…
To me, tenkara anglers are an intrinsically “outside the box” breed. We don’t fish with reels, we reject the prevailing notion that more gear catches more fish, and lets’s face it, our flies look…well…strange. Even stranger are the materials we experiment with. I’ve seen tenkara flies tied with everything from snakeskin to fuzz from a…
New to tenkara? There’s an app for that! Last year, I heard about an English language tenkara app published by Tsuribito Magazine. I thought it was interesting but didn’t download it since it was geared towards beginners. But today, curiosity finally got the better of me. I wanted to see exactly what it was, so today,…
A harsh truth all of us who tie flies have to inevitably face is that our eyes aren’t getting any younger. I remember as a teenager tying size 28 midges in my parents’ basement simply by the ambient overhanging fluorescent lighting without any problem. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve found myself needing supplemental lighting.…
Just off the heels of last week’s Denver Fly Fishing Show, today, I attended ISE 2015 at the Colorado Convention Center. For those of you not familiar with this show, it’s massive. To give you an idea, the floor plan puts the catacombs beneath Paris to shame: Whereas I was really please with tenkara presence at…
As of today, I will be closing my store, http://www.thetenkarashop.com/. I have several reasons, but mostly, I just hate packing things up and going to the post office. Life is already complicated enough with a full time job and toddler, so I really just want to simplify and focus more on fishing and writing this blog.…
I’m excited because I just got my Tenkara no Oni flies back from the framer. I know you can’t see much detail in this picture (my tenkara office has lighting issues) so here is a link to closeup pictures of the flies. I will add this to my growing collection of tenkara art including Dr.…
Yesterday, I made my annual pilgrimage to the Denver Fly Fishing Show and came away with two impressions. First, it was PACKED. In all the years I’ve been going, I’ve never seen a crowd this big. You had to fight just to make it through the aisles and I had to park a mile away.…