I just had an interesting exchange with a friend who is heading down to the San Juan River soon. He told me about how he was planning to fish a tandem rig with the river’s namesake pattern (the San Juan Worm) and a beadhead dropper. I relayed the story of how when I fished the…
Tenkara Links & Resources Top 3 Tenkara Links There are a lot of links in the list below and if you’re new to tenkara, it can be overwhelming. I recommend you start with these three sites to get a solid foundation on tenkara basics before exploring the others. Tenkara USAIf I could recommend only one…
Did you know that when you buy the new level line from Tenkara USA you also get a free line holder? Neither did I (and maybe they don’t either). But since they’ve changed their packaging to include a new plastic spool design, I was curious to see if the wider diameter hole in the center of the spool…
If you’ve been following tenkara for any length of time, you’ve probably seen some discussion on line visibility. For traditional, furled tenkara lines, this isn’t really an issue. They’re pretty thick and are often brightly colored so they’re almost as easy to see as western fly lines. But for the thinner, fluorocarbon lines many tenkara…
A few posts ago, I wrote about my initial impressions of the Tenkara no Oni rod and this weekend, I finally got a chance to give it a workout on Clear Creek outside of Golden, CO. Not only was the fishing great, but my field test confirmed a lot of what I had expected of…
Some tenkara rods come with a rod tube, and some don’t. Some anglers are hardcore tubers, some throw caution to the wind, and some are in between (like me). An included rod tube is a nice touch, but whenever someone laments the fact that a particular rod model doesn’t come with a tube, my response…
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…
In my early reseach of tenkara, one of the first sites I came across was Trout and Seasons of the Mountain Village. The site has vast amounts of information on tenkara techniques, and streams and fish species in Japan. But I was particularly impressed with the vast collection of Japanese fly patterns there and to…
Tenkara USA recently introduced their first minimalist fishing pack and I got one this weekend at the Denver Fly Fishing Show. Here is a brief review… The pack immediately reminded me in many ways of a UL pack I designed years ago called the Trico. It’s compact, lightweight, and designed to be carried multiple ways,…
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.…
This weekend, I sat in in a cabin next to a wood burning stove with the Arkansas River not 20 yards away from me. I brought my Yamame and Ito hoping to get some fishing in but it was not meant to be. The winds howled, rattling the wood stove chimney and everything else in…
After a recent discussion with Karel from Tenkara on the Fly, I finally decided to sit down and do something I’ve been meaning to do for a long time: put together a tenkara kit to leave in my car for when those unexpected fishing opportunities present themselves. The conversation went something like this… We were…
Tenkara USA has just updated their traditional furled tenkara lines and I recently got mine and had a chance to do some test casting with my 13 footer. Here are my thoughts comparing it to the 1st generation monofilament lines and 2nd generation spectra lines. The 2nd generation Kevlar lines were an improvement over…
I thought it would be fun to try an informal Google + Hangout to talk tenkara. I’d like to do a preliminary one just to see how it goes, and then maybe make it a regularly scheduled event where tenkara anglers across the US (or globe) can get together and have regular live video…