I got some eyeless tenkara hooks today from Tenkara Bum: the Owner Yamame and Gamakatsu Amago. They’re both great hooks with interesting bends and finishes that will surely make for some fun experimentation. In Japan, tiers would use a silk cord to form a loop “eye”. I didn’t have any silk cord so I’m…
I’ve been asked by several people to make a video showing the basic steps on how to tie a sakasa kebari so here it is. I chose a very simple pattern for the demo but you could easily substitute a lot of different materials to create a wide variety of patterns.
I’ve been getting a lot of questions about the materials I use to tie my tenkara flies and realized that I’ve been doing a bad job of posting them. So, from now on, I am going to try to post the complete recipe for all the flies I post in the future. Here’s the…
[/caption] Even though I already posted about my general experience at this year’s Denver Fly Fishing Show, I left a lot of loose ends. So, over the course of the next couple weeks, I will probably have a few posts here and there telling you about some of the gems I found there. One such gem…
[/caption] Every fly tier has their favorite hooks for certain patterns and I’m no exception. I’ve tried a lot of different hooks for sakasa kebari and wanted to tell you about my favorite ones and why I like them so much. My favorite hook for sakasa kebari is the TMC 2499SPBL. Almost all of my…
In my ongoing experiments with hackle and materials for sakasa kebari, I’ve found an unlikely source for hackle that looks promising: jungle cock. When most tiers think of the prized jungle cock, they think of the gorgeous yellow and black “nails” or “spears” often used for the cheeks of classic salmon fly patterns, streamers,…
Since I can’t go fishing right now, tying flies is the next best thing. In the past few months, I’ve been playing around with some unorthodox body materials for tenkara flies but recently felt the urge to tie some with the more traditional thread bodies. I saw that Tenkara Bum was selling Pearsall’s silk…
I don’t know if this has been tried before or not but I had the idea to play around with the concept of a “double” sakasa kebari. Essentially, it’s just a regular sakasa kebari with two sections of wrapped hackle separated by a “spacer” of thread. My thinking was that if the main…
That’s right–I said “horsehair tenkara FLIES”, not “horsehair tenkara LINES”. Usually, whenever you combine the words “horsehair” and “tenkara” in the same sentence (or Google search), the discussion is inevitably around horsehair tenkara fly lines. But what many people don’t know is that horsehair (or, more accurately, horse tail) also makes an excellent…
I’ve always considered myself a confirmed dry fly fisher but have recently taken an interest in fishing sakasa kebari wet flies. I’ve had a number of experiences lately that are convincing me more and more that they’re not only effective, but just as fun to fish as surface flies (though for different reasons). The main…
One of the nice things about tenkara wet flies is that while they’re very simple in design, they allow for a lot of experimentation in body construction. This is probably the main thing that keeps me interested in them as a fly tier. Recently, I’ve been experimenting with wire bodies and epoxy bodies. Now, I’m…
In my last post, I talked about some of my experiments with epoxy sakasa kebari (reverse hackle tenkara flies). I was tying some more at my desk tonight and an idea struck me… Many tenkara wet flies use a bright-colored thread between the eye of the hook and where the hackle begins. It could be…
Several years ago, I started tying epoxy midges to fish a very tough local spring creek in Western New York. The flies themselves were developed in the UK and were brilliantly simple, yet deceptively effective. Across the pond, they’re called “epoxy buzzers” and are mostly fished in larger sizes on big reservoirs. But I…
All of us who tie flies have our own unique spaces dedicated to the craft. Whether crammed into the corner of a tiny apartment or sprawled out over the entire expanse of a finished basement, they are sacred places. Here is a quick video of my current one and some of the materials I’ve collected…
The Balloon Caddis is one of my favorite all-time caddis flies (and dry flies for that mater). It’s versatile, durable, and easy to tie. This innovative pattern designed by Austrian fly fishing mogul Roman Moser (one of my fly tying heroes) belongs in every fly box (especially for the backpacking angler). Materials Hook: Partridge Mike…
Here’s my favorite, general purpose midge pattern. It’s easy to tie and very effective. While you could tie them in any color I mostly tie them only in black. Materials Hook: Tiemco 2488 #20 – 24 Thread: Red 8/0 Abdomen: Hareline Ultra Chenille Micro, black Thorax: Hareline Ice Dub, Olive Brown Breathers: Polypropylene Yarn, white…
