My first introduction to Tenkara was about 6 years ago when a customer walked into my favorite fly shop while I was there with a Tenkara rod he had brought back from Japan for the owner. He showed us how to rig and cast the rod. I kept looking at the rod and the way it was rigged and it triggered a memory from when I plied the dark side of fishing while at college in NW Tennessee and we fished a lake called Reelfoot. While my buddy and I flailed away with our spinning gear many of the locals used 12 to 15 foot one piece cane poles rigged similarly to the Tenkara rod. At the time some of them were switching over to telescoping fiber glass rods in the same lengths. It didn't matter whether they fished cane or fiberglass. My buddy and I would come in with our stringer full of hand size crappie and bream while the locals came in with their coolers full of bull bream and slab crappies. Sorry for the digression but it does tie into tenkara fishing. After the owner handed over a sum of money larger than I would even think of paying for the rod, I figured it was a nice idea but not at that price. Recalling my college experience I checked out my Cabala's catalog and they had telescoping graphite crappie rods and the price was right, under $25. Ordered an 11 foot one, and when I got it, rigged it the way I had been shown. Took it out to the shop and we compared rods. Not sure whether he was ripped off or not but the rods were made by the same company, a bit of difference, and mine sure looked like the expensive rod. I did try using it a couple of times but it really wasn't suited for the tree covered streams of SE PA. I did take it to a reunion of college friends back in NW Tennessee three years ago. I fished it off of the dock at the place we were partying and caught a couple of crappie and bream on small white woolly bugger. You know how college reunions are things got very, very fuzzy, and I can't remember whether it slipped from my hand and dropped into the water or I unscrewed the plug in the bottom piece to see what it looked like inside and all the nestled pieces dropped into the water.
I'm planning on ordering a new one, if Cabala's still carries them and give it another shot.
As far as fly fishing, I'll fish for anything that will take a fly I've tied, probably between 20 and 30 percent of my fishing time is spent fishing for trout, mainly in the early spring. The rest is spent fishing warm or salt water.
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