tenkara flies

[flybugpa]

okay , why do these guys only have a couple of flies and we , regular fly gear fisherman, have so many patterns to choose from?

[billhouk]

It is a Zen thing... I switch between Tenkara and western style. When I fish Tenkara I take a small shoulder bag with everything in it. When I fish western I wear a 28 pocket vest (and have stuff left over). Go figure.

[flybugpa]

yep, 500 flies for a couple of fish

[JohnScott]

For my Tenkara fishing, I take a couple "western" flies to fish.

For my conventional fly angling, I take a couple "western" flies to fish.

Lately, for either approach, it has been three or four of the same FEB golden stone pattern and three or four of the same Duck's Green Drake pattern.

In the near future, it will be a few of the same FEB October Caddis pattern.

Through that timeframe, I'll take along a few of a couple smaller caddis and mayfly patterns and a few Griffith's gnats, just in case.

After that, when the weather gets really cold, it will be a few of the same rubber legs stonefly nymph pattern.

May sound boring, but the fishing ain't.

John

[flybugpa]

no John , i am with you, its just curious to me how many bizzzilion flies there are out there, variants, and how few tenkara flies there are. as a commercial tyer, i just cant keep up with all the newness of gotta have materials anymore and have stopped trying to. its just mind boggling..... in my own pack , i have just a few flies for the places i have dialed in and a couple streamers.

[quivira kid]

I have went from a vest to an over-the-shoulder bag... and I have fished maybe 6 different flies so far since March. It would be fewer, but the different fish I am after require different styles of flies. You can't target bluegills using size 1 bucktail minnows too effectively!

[mahanvey]

I am like the q kid... I went from carrying four fly boxes of everything from clousers to Deer hair poppers and everything in the world all the way down to zebra midges, including stone flies of all sizes and caddis flies, and blu this and pink that and red this and purple that and green this's and brown that's and turkey this's and partridge that's and on and on and on... finally I gave them all to Real Recovery and started tying all over again.

Now I have one small two sided box of things that work both on Bass (Small and LM) on one side, and the other side on smaller pan-fish. Anything from Trout to bluegill and crappie and I still have a great time fishing. And better yet... I'm less tempted to change flies and work on presentation. I found that presentation was more my problem than the fly was. So I didn't NEED all those flys anyway.

[EdD]

Some of us have to start out with four boxes of flies to have any left at the end of the day. I've got a half a box of buggers, all the same size and pattern, in the hopes that I don't end up bereft at the end of the day. I know I was a forestry major in college, but really now... At least least I can identify most of the culprits by name, Latin name. Jason may be Hungintree, but I seem to snag to the whole forest. I'll tell you, retrieving a fly from a quarter-inch thick poison ivy root is a mite ticklish.

I know the alders on the Au Sable River are out to get me. I've had one foot tall bushes jump three feet up in the air to snag my backcast. I turned around and caught one still tucking in his roots. How can you beat that?


Ed

[jszymczyk]

okay , why do these guys only have a couple of flies and we , regular fly gear fisherman, have so many patterns to choose from?

If you mean the Japanese anglers who know what Tenkara is, it is because they typically are fishing only a specific place and time for a specific kind of fish.

I get a laugh out of the "I fish Tenkara" and "I fish WESTERN" comments. Get real, guys. If you are fishing a body of water in North America with your pole and string rig, you're fishing Tenkara in name only. Whatever, I don't care, I just gotta laugh. ( I lived in Japan, and was exposed to Tenkara-style fishing while I was there.) We tend to make a whole lot more out of labels and image than we do out of the activity itself.

[JohnScott]

If you mean the Japanese anglers who know what Tenkara is, it is because they typically are fishing only a specific place and time for a specific kind of fish.

I get a laugh out of the "I fish Tenkara" and "I fish WESTERN" comments. Get real, guys. If you are fishing a body of water in North America with your pole and string rig, you're fishing Tenkara in name only. Whatever, I don't care, I just gotta laugh. ( I lived in Japan, and was exposed to Tenkara-style fishing while I was there.) We tend to make a whole lot more out of labels and image than we do out of the activity itself.

You may be right about the specific place / time / fish thing in Japan. My own take is that they are following a tradition of using a simple, effective system to put food on the table ( kind of like farm boys using worms to bring home some dinner - how many kinds of worms are there ?? ) or have something to take to the market for a profit.

As to distinguishing between one style of or approach to angling and other styles or approaches, words are helpful, at least to those of us who have some interest in communicating about such things. Tenkara is a word that in this country at this time on this Bulletin Board pretty much suggests a certain approach using a particular kind of gear, to distinguish it from conventional or "western" fly angling gear, and from switch and spey gear, for example.

For the vast majority of us, it's not a matter of making stuff out of lables and image, it's actually a way of talking about the activity itself.

I do think that some of your comments disparage the owner of the FAOL website and this Bulletin Board who chose to provide a Tenkara Forum for people to share their experiences, and a lot of good people who enjoy the opportunity to do so. If all that makes you laugh, you are most likely laughing alone.

John