If you’ve done any research at all into Japanese tenkara patterns, you’ve undoubtedly come across Yoshikazu Fujioka’s excellent site My Best Streams. It’s probably the most comprehensive catalog in English of kebari by region in Japan and as its curator, Fujioka, is a well-known expert on traditional patterns. Back in 2003, I interviewed him about…
Ever since my passion for tenkara was kindled, I had the idea to somehow document the path of its “new” history as it would inevitably develop in the West. Early on, I started collecting what I saw as soon-to-be artifacts that would one day serve as markers of modern tenkara’s coming of age outside of…
Ever since the 2017 Denver Fly Fishing Show when I first cast a Tanuki rod, I’ve wanted one. Though I had corresponded with the company’s owner, Luong Tam, over the years, it was the first time we’d met in person and I got a glimpse into his unique and sharply honed tenkara rod design theory.…
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…
It’s September and for me, that means one thing: IT’S HOPPER TIME! While most people here in Denver will be spending their Sundays watching the Broncos game, you’ll find me pounding the banks of my favorite hopper stream: The Big Thompson meadow stretch in Rocky Mountain National Park. With its lazily meandering currents, deep pools,…
We’re less than two months away from what might be the largest tenkara gathering in the West to date. The Tenkara Jam in Cherokee, North Carolina will feature some of the most influential anglers and early adopters of tenkara in the West including: Daniel Galhardo of Tenkara USA who initially imported tenkara to the U.S.…
When I first heard that Chris Stewart of Tenkara Bum teamed up with Japanese rod maker Suntech to design a new rod, I was really excited. Chris has been fishing tenkara longer than pretty much any American angler I know and through his vast store inventory over the years, has gained an intimate knowledge of…
For many, just dipping their toes in the sport of fly fishing is daunting enough–forget about getting into tying their own flies. I imagine it’s something like trying to rewire the Space Shuttle before learning to actually pilot it. And if you peruse the fly selection at your local fly shop, you can see why. There…
It’s funny how easy it is to forget good fly patterns. I was recently reminded about a good pattern that I had fished years ago with a rod and reel but had forgotten about since starting tenkara fishing–the Teeny Nymph. This pattern was invented by venerable angler Jim Teeny in 1962 originally for for trout. But…
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…
At my neighborhood Starbucks, they used to have this fancy dispenser for those cardboard sleeves you slide over your to-go cup to prevent you from burning your hands while holding your $6 drink (probably to avoid a lawsuit). It was a clever design–a plastic box with two rows of sleeves spring-loaded like a Pez dispenser.…
A couple of days ago, bamboo tenkara rod case maker Richard Kolodny came by Tenkara Talk H.Q. to show me some of his new designs. Richard is truly an artist and his cases (inspired by samurai sword sheaths) are simply gorgeous. I asked Richard to tell us a little more about their history and what…
It might not be accurate to call it a “non-tenkara” day. It might be better described as “the opposite of tenkara” or even “Bizarro World“. With all the local streams totally blown out, I decided to try to sneak in a quick fishing opportunity on a nearby lake. My family and I were planning to…
When I first started tenkara, I fished furled, tapered lines because they were easy to cast. The turnover was very good and loaded the rod well. But they are typically “heavy” and difficult to keep off the water when you want to make a good dead drift presentation. Eventually, I “graduated” to level fluorocarbon lines…
When RIGS fly shop introduced their floating tenkara line and tenkara nymph line last year, they answered the prayers of many tenkara anglers who fish outside the “tenkara box” that were craving specialty lines. The floating line made from an actual PVC running line (same stuff your regular fly lines are made of) was a…
For my birthday my wife surprised me with new waders! But not just any waders. The new Silver Sonic Convertibles from Orvis! These new waders feature Orvis’s patented SonicSeam Technology. Most waders are sewn together with traditional stitching (i.e. a needle and thread). This creates holes in the fabric that have to be later sealed…
While there are plenty of tenkara lines I really like, when the opportunity presents itself, I will always jump at the chance to try out something new. I’ve cast everything from dental floss to dacron in search of the perfect line, and have always found myself coming back to fluorocarbon tenkara lines because of…
After several months of patiently waiting, my Oni tenkara rod has finally arrived! For those of you who don’t know what an “Oni” rod is, it’s the rod designed and used by Masami Sakakibara (a.k.a. “Tenkara no Oni”), who is widely considered to be the best tenkara caster in the world. He is notorious for…
“It doesn’t imitate anything”. That’s the response the 15-year old me got from a fly shop guy when I asked what a Royal Wulff was supposed to imitate. As a young fly angler, I was slowly learning entomology and trying to match up the different insect species with their feathered doppelgangers. Some patterns (like the…
Many of the streams tenkara anglers fish in Japan are fast flowing mountain streams. In those streams, fish have very little time to “inspect” food. If they hesitate, it’s gone–lost to the swift current or a competitor. A good fly for these conditions is a larger, easy-to-spot fly like the Oki Sakasa Kebari. For fast…
While fluorocarbon has proven itself to be the ideal material for tenkara level lines, its density makes it sink. When using subsurface flies, this is an advantage. But when fishing dry flies or other techniques, it can be a real drag–literally. Having the line underwater can prevent you from getting a drag-free drift or even…
If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you’ve probably seen some changes over the years. So I thought it would be fun to give a little history on the site, and where it is now. 1. This website started out as backpackflyfishing.com. Originally, the main focus was on fly fishing and lightweight backpacking…
Tenkara line spools seem simple enough. After all, they’re basically just spools. And this might lead on to believe that they’re all pretty much the same. But I’ve found that some actually better than others. I’ve mostly been using spools from Tenkara USA and Leica and have been very happy with them but when I…
I recently wrote that I’ve been tying and fishing palmered flies for tenkara lately. My theory is that if the hackle is spread out over more of the body of the fly, it will give the pattern more movement and, thus, be more attractive to fish. So I started tying flies with hackle palmered through…
Whenever anyone asks me what makes the sakasa kebari an effective pattern, of course my first answer is the standard one–that the reversed hackle produces a lifelike motion in the water. But this is always immediately followed by an explanation of what I consider an equally important (yet often overlooked) quality of these flies:…
Today, I got some good tenkara gear in the mail. But this time, I’m not hoarding it all for myself–it’s for you too! The first was a box of tenkara rods and lines generously donated by Tenkara USA for our tenkara rod loaner program. I’ll be adding these to the demo page this weekend. I’m…
As tenkara takes hold in the West, many people are experimenting with different techniques, rigging, and DIY gear modifications. As someone who has a deep passion for innovation, I think this is a good thing. But there are many voices criticizing certain types of experimentation in an effort to preserve the intrinsic simplicity of tenkara.…
Today, I came home to a small stack of packages on my doorstep. If you’re an unapologetic tenkara gear junkie like me, you know what such a site causes: an adrenaline fueled, single-minded mission to find the closest box cutter. Oni Tenkara Line Spools The first package came from a friend in Japan who got me…
I’ve never seen any discussion of tenkara where the word “simplicity” didn’t come up at least a few times. It’s true that simplicity is an easily identifiable attribute of tenkara but this seems to put gear addicts like me in an interesting dilema. Is our love of gear antithetical to the intrinsic nature of tenkara?…
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,…
