Quote Originally Posted by scorpion1971 View Post
Daniel's blog post about What is a Tenkara Rod. As Tom Kirkland from rod builder would say a rod blank is a rod blank. Take a so called fly rod blank and turn it into a spinning rod or casting rod. All blanks have different actions and stiffness. A cane pole could be a tenkara rod with say a 9:1 action. A so called tango rod could be a 4:6 or 3:7 tenkara rod.
I think Tom Kirkland is exactly correct. Many of the threadliners, the extreme ultralight spinning guys, use a fly rod blank for a spinning rod, and 6X or 7X tippet material for a line. The whole point is to match the action and stiffness (and rod length) to the fishing. Part of the problem in evaluating, or at least talking about tenkara rods, though, is that the only figures we are given (6:4 etc.) measure only action, not stiffness, yet people see the number and THINK stiffness much more than action because for the most common brand here, the 7:3 rods are quite stiff and the 5:5 rods are quite soft. It doesn't necessarily follow though. You can have a soft 8:2 rod (which is actually a much closer measure for the longest Soyokaze rods than 3:7!) They have extremely soft tips, but the longer ones in particular have lots of backbone. A "Common Cents" analysis of the 10'2" Soyokaze and the 11' Iwana yield identical ERN figures! The Soyokaze has a much softer tip, so it must have stiffer mid and butt sections to yield the same ERN. They'll cast the same lines and I would expect they'll handle about the same size fish.