Tenkara

[JohnScott]

Nicely done of course, but I am curious as to what triggered the desire to try one. Remember I'm the one with the bum shoulder who is trying to find something to fish that gets the job done without doing my shoulder in.

... I fished the spots in the third and fourth photos with standard gear - in the form of a Winston Ibis 7'6" for 3 wt. At the little pool in the third photo, it was almost impossible to keep the fly on the water with any kind of decent drift. It occured to me at that time that a really long rod like a Tenkara might be just the thing.

As luck would have it, I was talking to one of the guys at the Grizzly Hackle the next day. When I mentioned the experience I had the day before, and mentioned Tenkara, he told me about his experience. That was all it took to get me started. ( You probably don't recall that jburge started a thread last summer about using a Tenkara on his small stream / backpacking adventures in the Sierras of California ?? That was my first awareness of this kind of fly angling. )

The Ayu weighs in at 2.7 ounces. The line and tippet are roughly the equivalent of a 14-15' furled leader and tippet. No reel. No fly line as such. No backing. Just a very well balanced slow action 13' rod casting effortlessly, even with a fly too big for the tippet ( size 10 LF Golden Stone on 5X ). And it is so intuitive that after a couple casts with my left hand, which I never do with standard gear, I was casting accurately and following the fly almost as well as with my right hand.

A couple other points. This is NOT for distance fishing. The rod I had is TenkaraUSA's longest rod. The total reach could go to about 30' with a very long tippet attached to the furled leader. It is not for big fish, although the Ayu handled that last cutthroat just fine. The Iwana 12' model would probably handle a 20" trout nicely. I'm going to demo that model as soon as Dan gets one in from TenkaraUSA early next week.

One of the great things is the portability. This is a telescoping rod. When closed, it is just about 21" long. Along with the overall portability, transporting it between fishing spots is really nice, even when bushwacking really nasty stuff. Telescope it all the way down, take the line and tippet up in a few large loops and head off to your next spot. When I finished today, I headed back to the road through some really rough, heavily forested terrain. Hardly gave the rod a thought. Even with a broken down four piece fly rod, getting through that stuff would have taken a lot more attention.

This approach to fly angling does have obvious limits. But the biggest limits are probably the ones self imposed by the angler who doesn't really give it a fair chance.

John

Deanna - the LF Golden Stone rules the water I was on today