Quote Originally Posted by JC_Hall View Post
When I found out that fishing "one fly" meant only one at a time (not two or more at a time) and not using only one patern it solidified my belief that we have an extremely slanted interpretation of tenkara.
JC, The "one fly" discussion really is about one pattern in the box rather than one fly on the line (which is a given). However, by no means do all tenkara anglers in Japan use only one pattern. There may be more, but only one is famous for having every fly in his box being absolutely identical. As you say, Dr. Ishigaki has flies of different colors and sizes in his box, as does Tenkara no Oni, who was actually using a dry fly the day I fished with him. He did not use floatant and it eventually got waterlogged and he then fished it wet - and caught all his fish while using it as a wet fly. Still, the point being the "one fly" thing has been blown way out of proportion. You can fish only one pattern, just as some Western anglers have decided to only fish an Adams or only fish a woolly bugger. Most of the time they still catch fish. Same difference.