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.
The idea seemed to make sense–pull out one sleeve and the ones behind it are pushed forward to make it convenient for the next one to come out. The only problem was that when you pulled one sleeve out, 5 or 6 more shot out of the it like ducks flying out of the reeds after hearing a shotgun blast. Obviously, the spring was too powerful.
I can’t count the number of times I witnessed people jumping back in surprise as if a bomb just went off in front of them. It kind of became an ongoing inside joke with myself. While waiting in line, I’d scour the counter making mental bets on who the next victim would be. Maybe it’ll be the woman with the big purse or maybe the old guy with the pacemaker (so much for avoiding that lawsuit).
Then, one day, I went in to order my quad venti latte and noticed that the contraption was gone. It was replaced by a simple wire basket. The sleeves were just laid out in 2 rows without any mechanism controlling them. People took one out and slid it over their cup without incident or surprise and it seemed, well, natural.
Someone at the shop obviously noticed that the overly ambitious complexity of that dispenser was ruining customer experience and decided to drive down to Target and replace it with a simple basket. Whenever I have a bad UX, I always wonder if designers ever actually use the things they design. In this case, some barista probably got fed up with seeing the same customer frustration day after day and decided to override the corporate mandate in order to improve the customer experience. Kudos to them.
So, what does my local coffee shop experience have to do with tenkara? It’s more than just about simplicity. It’s about assumptions. According to the principle of Occam’s razor:
…among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected. Other, more complicated solutions may ultimately prove correct, but—in the absence of certainty—the fewer assumptions that are made, the better.
In fly fishing, we tend to make a lot of assumptions. We assume that the more fly patterns we carry, the better our chances are of catching fish. We assume that the more gear we carry, the easier our on-stream experience will be. We assume that the more books we read and the more videos we study will make us better anglers. But is this really the case?
As someone who has succumbed to all of these assumptions (only to turn to tenkara in the end), I don’t think so. I catch just as many fish today with my minimal tenkara setup as I did when I carried a fly shop in my vest (not more mind you, but just as many). So, that tells me all of those other things are empty assumptions. Maybe they’re perpetuated by a dying industry that’s trying to make a last ditch effort at self preservation or maybe they’re notions concocted by egotistical fly fishing authors who need something to cling to to sound smart. But empirical evidence tells me otherwise and I’ve always trusted experience over presumption.
So, that leads me to opt for the simplest solution that works for me–the one with the least assumptions. And that’s tenkara–the Occam’s Razor of the fly fishing world. Why clutter an otherwise simple and natural reverie with artifice and assumption? At the current stage in my fly fishing career, it seems like anything else would be a corruption.
To keep this simple. You nailed it.
Ditto!
After reading Mr. Chouinard’s “Simple Fly Fishing” I can’t agree with you more. Rather than “hunt” for Japanese “Tenkara” line I recycled the tail end of a PVC fly line and really like it. make a custom rod from parts of an Iwana and Amago, used mostly “wet flies”: killer bug variations. Guess what I am now less of a consumer and more of a recycler. After that movie came out the yuppies got into fly fishing because it was fashionable, drove the prices on everything up. Starbucks isn’t that one of the guys in Moby Dick?!!
No truer words were ever spoken. I wish to thank you for all the insight and education you give to all of us. I am 70 years old and am now enjoying fly fishing more than ever from small streams near home to carp in city lakes.
great stuff, jason. i sincerely enjoy your take on things.
Harsh, but true. I’ve made to effort to buy at my local fly fishing shop. But when I use the word Tenkara, I’m met with blank stares. Boxes of dusty fly stuff stacked to the ceiling, crusty old fly dudes and a shop on the verge of irrelevance. The only words I hear are “we don’t do that here”…
I tend to think that there’s not nearly enough tenkara data yet – in enough different conditions – for instance I tend to see a lot of Western US bias in tenkara discussions – and In know when I go out west to Colorado say – my fishing experience is a fairly different thing than back home here in Pennsylvania. In Colorado I can often feel like a fishing god. And I try the same thing back home and it just doesn’t fly.
Even the mechanics of tenkara and gear wants and needs are different in different regions.
I’m not saying everything “new” in western fly fishing that comes along is necessary- definitely not – and there is of course marketing and competition driving much of that. But – I do believe that the cream rises to the top and there is much of value in the accumulated wisdom of western fly fishing. In fact I think when you really break it down – much of what continually crops up in western fly fishing, when you look at all the books and mags and listen to what experienced anglers say – is essentially very similar to what you hear in tenkara circles.
I still think of tenkara as fly fishing – rather than as something different – if you read a book, such as Paul Arnold’s Wisdom of the Guides: Rocky Mountain Trout Guides Talk Fly Fishing – you’ll see many of the same mantras as in tenkara. Technique over fly – small fly selection – let the river tell you what to do – learn to read water… throw in the idea of regionality. That is not a “one-fly” technique but the idea that that once you know a stream or a region you can narrow your selection down pretty nicely. But that this selection might vary from place to place.
I’m a huge outdoorsman and simplicity has left most things hunting and fishing related. I also went from a more simpler time in the outdoors to slowly adding more and more stuff. More tech , more toys all in the name of having more success. One day I ran into another hunter who made everything they hunted with. Bow , arrows , tips , knives and so on. Most people pass this off as a person taking a rode less traveled for the sake of being different. Much as I feel some people still look at Tenkara.
I however did not feel this way. I thought to myself this is a real sportsman, a person who can harvest an animal this way is a true woodsman. Plus with practically -0- dollars spent he is having as much success as others touting thousands of dollars worth of gear into the woods and certainly having just as much fun. If you have thousands and thousands worth of tech you should be more successful but many simply are not? Does tech make you a better outdoorsman? Or does it help you survive and be sucessful despite your lack of knowlege. If your not more successful what’s the point of all the tech?
I think it’s what drew me to Tenkara when I first seen it. How bad ass is the fisherman that can bring a fish to hand the exact same way as a $800.00 rod?
I’m not proposing going simple, primitive or cheap. However I’m positively a proponent of getting by on the minimum required to get the job done. It’s not mystical , Zen, primitive or anything else . It’s simply all you need given the circumstances at hand. Without everything else that is not required the experience is more pleasurable. I’m amazed that the majority of outdoorsman do not understand this.
An interesting quote I just read today ….
“As such, I worry that, in this day and age, it’s getting too easy to “pay to play,” and create your own wall-hanger photo with your wallet, rather than with your boots and fly rod. I don’t think that money should ever be the shortcut to “legitimate” trout angling success. I think that should all depend on what’s in the angler’s noggin, and not what’s in their back pocket”
Jason, as always I enjoy your thoughts and writing.
I tend to agree with Anthony. As one who is new to Tenkara, but also as one who has fly fished for a long time, over time, you can narrow your fly selection and what you carry down substantially.
Tenkara as a method might be simple, but for someone who is just starting out, trying to wade thru the various rods, lines and Kebari flies that are available could be overwhelming. Trust me, I know!
But when you come down to it, it’s just fishing. Whether one choses Tenkara or Western, you can make it as simple or as complicated as you wish.
I came to Tenkara because I was seeking some new and different challenges in my fly fishing carrier, and because I believed that Tenkara fly fishing tackle offers some distinct advantages over western fly fishing tackle’s ability to present flies to the fish I fish for in my small stream and high lake fly fishing environments, which has worked out to be much truer than I ever could have imagined it could possibly be.
But like Anthony, I have also found that the most productive methods for me have been a blending of western fly patterns and techniques with the Tenkara style tackle that I use in my fishing, in my areas. My favorite rods for Tenkara style fly fishing are not Tenkara rods, but Seiryu and Keiryu rods. The type of rod to be used on any given day will depend on the demands of the fishing environment and the size of the fish that are to be caught, as well as the fact that I have been finding highly effective uses for western style floating fly lines in fishing dry and wet flies on the high lakes that I so love to fish so much with my Tenkara style tackle.
While this is some what more complicated than the traditional Tenkara simplicity model being promoted by most Tenkara promoters, traditional Tenkara is not used to fish in stillwaters with at all in Japan. So, there is a positive return I am getting on the investment of slightly more complexity in my fly fishing with Tenkara style tackle. But compared to what it was like before, when I fished with western fly tackle exclusively, things are exponentially simpler, and more compact, and much lighter in weight now than they were before. And like Jason, I am also presently catching just as many fish as I did before, but they have improved in their size range over what they were before, (I believe) because of the better presentations I am able to make with my Tenkara style tackle compared to my older western fly fishing tackle.
I also believe that the 10 Colors of Tenkara is an extremely valuable and valid concept, and it is true that each of us as an angler has to find and develop the fly patterns and fishing techniques that work well and the best for us and the fish, in the fishing environments where we are fishing in, which can differ considerably from place to place. Simplicity in and of itself can be good and efficient, but the same patterns and fishing techniques can not be applied with equal success for everyone, everywhere. As anglers, we all need to find our own ways to reach the success we are seeking, and Tenkara style angling will help those who wish to use it realize their dreams of success sooner rather than later, at least that’s how it has worked out in my experience.
” The more you know, the less you need “