Banned from Tenkara USA Forum

[CM_Stewart]

I suspect I will become a bit more active on this forum as I have just been banned on the Tenkara USA forum. I will not make public what was contained in a private correspondence, so I'll just leave it at that.

I do hope the tenkara community, the entire community, will feel welcome here.

Best regards,
Chris Stewart

[NewTyer 1]

Dude, we don't care what happens on other forums, as long as it doesn't happen here. You are more than welcome and I look forward to reading some of your post because my interest in Tenkara fishing has been peaked since I saw an on water demo. Welcome, you will find a great bunch of guys here.

[Rick Z]

I certainly hope you feel welcomed here.

Rick

[MSD53X]

CM;

I remember a number or your posts here. Welcome Back

[texfly]

I can't imagine how that could happen. I always thought you and Daniel had a good relationship. You have always been a stand up guy in my book Chris and have helped me with quite a few things over the last couple of years. I hope its not because your site and product line has really grown and they just wanted to get rid of the competition. I think everyone here will agree that you are most welcome to this board and I look forward to your future post.

[JohnScott]

That certainly does not speak well for TenkaraUSA.

I trust that Bulletin Board members here on FAOL who also post on the TenkaraUSA Forum make that known to the powers that be over there.

John

[MR.JML]

I am so sorry that such a thing like that would happen to a stand up guy like you. It does not speak well of Tenkara USA (whether personality conflict or what). I am not new to the Fly Fishing and Fly Tying arena, but a little new to Tenkara. I wrote a review of the book co-authored by my friend Mikasa Ishimura. I started out with adding this style to my arsenal because of interest in the History of Japanese Fly Tying. Dirty politics as such is certainly not a way to promote their style. I remember another person on smallstreams.com who felt he was the god of fly fishing, then Boo Rod Building, and now the god of Tenkara. This certainly has put a gray cloud over my perception of Tenkara USA and even any future relationship they have with me. Fly Fishing (no matter what style) is a "Gentelman's (& Women's) Sport", not a snobbery club. I have become very diillusioned by the snobbery cliques that have built up in this arena, and thus the fragmentation (which could damage the future of Fly Fishing and its' conservation efforts. Such toxic people have no place in a way of life where I find peace and serenity) !!!

[Bpfrocket]

I wondered where you were Chris, although I haven't been on over there much myself since the "Flea Swap". I realize that the T-USA forum is a manufacturers forum, but it's hard to claim to be the voice of a sport when you only allow one color of the "ten colors of Tenkara" and refuse to consider anything non-traditional as a new "color". I love my T-USA gear, but I also love my Daiwa Soyukaze, my AFB Wakata and my horsehair lines. It will be interesting to see how things will change now that Orvis will be selling T-USA gear. I don't see Orvis caring too much about tradition, or the Orvis retailers trying too hard to keep the Zen purity aspect of Tenkara foremost in their minds.
I'll still be active there, but other places as well.
It's good to find you "Sensei"
Bruce

[Dusty]

It's a shame that many people's first encounter with tenkara will be through what is essentially a site built for marketing one company's rods and lines. Chris' site, as well as some of the other great blogs/sites out there (tenkaraonthefly; tetontenkara; tenkaragrasshopper; troutrageous, tenkara-fisher, etc.) provide history, experiences, objective reviews, fishing locations, etc. At this point I won't even include TUSA on a list of recommendations to people who ask me about tenkara (although the original video of Daniel's exploratory trip to Japan is still worth watching: http://vimeo.com/22824065). Tenkara existed in Japan for hundreds of years. There was a tenkara renaissance in Japan in the 1970s (many books - see Soseki Yamamoto's books from the mid '70s - '80s on Adam's site: tenkara-fisher - and many new practitioners). Misako Ishimura introduced tenkara to the US when she brought Dr. Ishigaki, who became Daniel's teacher, to the Catskill Fly Fishing Center and Museum. Certainly Daniel has turned many people onto tenkara, and certainly he can claim to have founded the first comprehensive commercial tenkara gear site in the US, but that's a small part of a bigger story. The fact that Daiwa, Shimano, Nissin, Sakura, etc. have continued to make and sell tenkara rods should provide a clue that tenkara was alive and well in Japan, even if it has been a small niche in an otherwise big sportfishing industry. You can't "discover" something that's been around in modern form for 40 years.

I have high hopes that FAOL will become the host of a truly active tenkara forum. It's only natural, right?

[JC_Hall]

Dusty I am hoping the same for this site that is why I came here. I was asking Chris if there was another forum besides TUSA. That site turned me on to tenkara and turned me off at the same time. So here I am.