To western fly tiers, typical tenkara flies like sakasa kebari might seem boring. After all, many of them are nothing more than hackle and a thread body. No wings, no tails, no intricate bodies. It might seem that if one wanted to fish tenkara flies exclusively, they’d quickly tire of tying the same old thing.…
In tenkara, we talk a lot about level lines and tapered furled lines but there really isn’t much discussion on “weight forward” lines. Yes, I do mean “weight forward” in the western fly fishing sense. In fact, I had never even considered it until Tenkara Talk reader Tony Wee mentioned it in the comments section…
Long before I started fishing tenkara, I had given up on wearing a vest. I guess one day I finally had enough of the heavy, bulky, and hot garment holding me back like a straightjacket. I didn’t use 90% of the stuff I carried in its multitude of pockets anyway so why carry it? I…
Recently, I tried out some red Amnesia for a tenkara level line. I was impressed with its high visibility, but not so much with the way it cast. Being nylon monofilament, it isn’t as dense as the fluorocarbon level lines I’m used to fishing and didn’t turn over as well. It casts, but you have…
The “Calligraphy Brush” is basically a slightly more dressed up version of the Kamikaze Kebari with cufflinks and a collar. The ingredients are almost the same except “the brush” is tied on a slightly longer hook to accomodate an ostrich herl thorax. The ostrich thorax gives a little meatiness to the fly, absorbs water to…
Today, I got an email asking a question I get so often, that I thought it was worthy of a blog post: “I’m using sakasa kebari and having a hard time telling when a fish takes my fly. How can I tell?” The question came from an experienced western fly angler that knows how to…
Today, Karel from Tenkara on the Fly, Joe from Dragon Fly Fishing and I headed up to the west side of Rocky Mountain National Park to fish North Inlet Creek just above Grand Lake. I normally fish the east side of RMNP and haven’t been to the west side in years so today was a…
Not too long ago, I wrote a post about using Red Amnesia as a sighter for tenkara level lines. Having fished it for a while now, I can say really like it. The bright red Amensia is easy to see in all lighting conditions and makes it much easier to follow your fly and detect…
In western fly fishing, a lot of emphasis is placed not only on the fly pattern, but also on fly size. It’s considered standard practice to carry both a wide variety of patterns and a variety of sizes of each pattern. The mentality seems to be that if you don’t have a good selection, you’re…
While fishing with some of the Japanese anglers the day before the summit, I found myself admiring a strange looking contraption at the end of Masami Tanaka’s tenkara rod. It was a clear plastic sleeve with a black strap around it. Much different than the wooden rod plug most of us in the West are…
I recently wrote about some of the flies I got from the Tenkara Summit. Two of them were very special to me since they were from Dr. Ishigaki. I was tempted to fish with them but decided to have them framed instead. I figured I’d get more joy by hanging them on my gear room…
It’s with great sadness today that I announce my resignation from Tenkara USA. Some of you might know that about two months ago, I joined the Tenkara USA team to help out with marketing and content development. It was a great opportunity and of course I jumped at the chance but after getting into it,…
Today, I was lucky to head out to some absolutley gorgeous water with fellow tenkara angler Paul Vertrees. We saw tons of animals, caught tons of fish, and absorbed more scenery in four hours than many people see in a year. Here’s my trip report… The Stream Paul took me to a spring creek outside of…
I’ve written before about some unique line tenkara holders such as the bamboo line holder I got on eBay and the wooden line spool Dr. Ishigaki donated for an auction at the Tenkara Summit and the moose antler line spool made by Chris Kulhow. At the summit, I was able to add to my collection…