What kind of tenkara angler are you?

Do you spend hours researching flies, testing gear, and refining your casting technique in the backyard? Do you eagerly jump down Youtube rabbit holes and devour every article with “tenkara” in the title?

Or … are you content to stuff an Altoids tin with a few random flies in your shirt pocket and saunter down to the river with a more laissez-faire attitude?

We all participate in tenkara in different ways and to different degrees. Some take a more casual approach, while others, like my guest today, are “maximizers”, who are dedicated to continually perfecting every aspect of their time on the water.

Keegan Uhl is a filmmaker, leathersmith and up-and-coming tenkara angler from California. He inherited his appreciation for trout from his grandfather, an obsessive angler whose property in Wisconsin featured hand-dug trout ponds, a hatchery, and even an underwater trout-viewing capsule!

You may have already seen some of Keegan’s thorough gear reviews and on-stream tenkara videos on his Youtube channel, MostlyTenkara.

I’ve personally witnessed Keegan make a surprising amount of progress in a very short period of time, and his journey is a perfect example of one common approach to learning tenkara.

In this episode, Keegan explains why he adopted the “maximizer” approach, what the opposite, or, “satisficer” approach is, and we’ll see why you don’t have to be one extreme or the other: there’s a middle way!

So listen in and see if any of these styles match yours, and what all of this means if you’re just getting started in tenkara.

* Special thanks to Keegan for providing the intro and outro video footage and edits!