Necessity may be the mother of invention, but sometimes, the best innovations come from the humble junk drawer. Yesterday I was rummaging through (one of) mine and stumbled across two pieces of clutter that inspired me to improve my experience at the bench. They’re extremely simple, but worth a share. You can probably replicate them…
A while back, I wrote an article about how to make your own fly drying patch out of simple materials. It’s easy and a fun project for winter. But I failed to mention that you can use the same technique for making your own fly boxes and they’re even easier. Plus, they give you a…
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…
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…
As fly tiers, we pride ourselves on the reward of catching fish on flies we tied ourselves. But what about catching fish on flies we tied ourselves using tools we made ourselves? I think taking tying to this next level deepens our connections to the humble origins of our craft and strengthens ourself-reliance as anglers.…
Even though in the last few years I’ve almost exclusively fished subsurface flies like sakasa kebari since adopting tenkara for trout, during the course of my overall fly fishing career, I’ve probably used gallons of fly floatant on dry flies; mostly paste such as Loon’s Aquel. And while it’s effective, I’ve never been happy with the application…
Back in May of 2010, I introduced the (then tiny) tenkaraverse to the concept of using EZ Keepers as an on-board line management system. Since then, I’ve seen more and more people adopt this method of storing their line on their tenkara rod without the need for a separate spool. Some people love it, some…
Have you ever found a tenkara rod that has all the right properties except for that one thing you wanted to change? Maybe you wished the handle were longer. Or maybe you just want to get a blank and build your own rod from the ground up. Well, now you can order all the components…
Did you know that when you buy the new level line from Tenkara USA you also get a free line holder? Neither did I (and maybe they don’t either). But since they’ve changed their packaging to include a new plastic spool design, I was curious to see if the wider diameter hole in the center of the spool…
Right out of the box, I loved my Fishpond San Juan chest pack. I’ve had it for about 2 years now and during that time, I’ve discovered a few tricks that make this great pack even better. 1. Added an External Tippet Dispenser I wanted a way to be able to pull out tippet…
If you’re anything like me, you’ve accumulated a bunch of level lines that live in anonymity. You’ve long forgotten the size and have no idea what the length is. And they all start to look the same after a while. Rather than getting the micrometer and measuring tape out every time you uncoil a mystery…
An ongoing dilemma I’ve faced has been line visibility. If you’re using a furled tenkara line, then visibility is usually not an issue. But if you use level fluorocarbon lines, you know that even the brightest line can sometimes be hard to see in different light conditions. I basically use two colors: orange, and bright…
