Hook: Owner Amano Tenkara Hook #2 or #3 Thread: Uni 8/0 Light Cahill Hackle: Light Dun Hen Body: Pale Yellow Dubbing I’ve been playing around with my Amano tenkara hooks and thought this simple pattern might be a good fit for their smaller size range. If you want to match the hatch, this would be…
I recently got some #2 and #3 Owner Amano Tenkara hooks to play around with and thought I would share some info on them for anyone who is looking for smaller hooks for sakasa kebari. These hooks feature a slight down eye, short shank, wide gap and, are made of fairly heavy wire to help…
If you’re interested in using horse tail as a fly body, here is another horse hair sakasa kebari I have found to be effective.Hook: Owner Super Yamame #7
Some tenkara anglers in Japan prefer to tie their sakasa kebari on eyeless hooks. Rather than a metal ring for an eye, these flies have a loop of flexible material to which the tippet is tied. I’ve heard some people say that this connection gives the fly more movement in the water than flies with…
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:…
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I came from a good family. I grew up fishing dry flies with bamboo rods on spring creeks. I learned all the latin names of aquatic insects and could tie patterns that imitated them right down to the last abdominal gill. I filled Wheatly after Wheatly with beautifully…
Maybe “giant” is a relative term for a size #8 sakasa kebari. After all, in Japan they regularly fish flies that large (or larger). But for me, a #8 is huge. You see, I got some grouse feathers from Tenkara Bum that were too large for the #12 and #10 sakasa kebari I normally tie,…
Sakasa Kebari are great attractor patterns and most classic attractors incorporate some kind of contrast or bright colors. So I thought why not carry this idea to tenkara flies? The idea is simple–the body is made up of two different colored threads. The brighter (contrasting) thread color covers 50% of the back of the hook…
If someone asked my what the best all around hackle for sakasa kebari, I would answer (without hesitation) that it’s brahma hen cape from Whiting Farms. Here’s why… Two Hackles for one I think probably the main reason I think this is such great hackle is that every cape really gives you 2…
These flies might not win any beauty contests above water, but I’m sure they’ll be sexy enough down below. With some classic color combinations, nice contrast, and a bit of weight and movement, I can’t see how these “plain Jane” sakasa kebari wouldn’t catch fish. Here’s the recipe… Hook: TMC 2499 SPBL # 10 Thread:…
I recently got some eyeless tenkara hooks from Tenkara Bum and have been having a lot of fun trying out different patterns. But I was curious…are the claims about eyeless hooks having more action in the water true? So, I decided to do a (very unscientific) test and see. I tied two flies with identical…
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…