An interesting thought
I was talking with a guy about tenkara and he suggested that using a tenkara rod might be good for someone who has a hand injury and can't use both hands or has a brain injury and where coordination might be a problem as well. The idea struck me as being valid and was wondering about others thoughts on this.
Tenkara seems way more intuitive and well simple. I actually have a tendency to stick my left hand in my pocket (while casting) until I actually catch a fish that is.
Local fly fishing club contacted us about helping one of the club members. He had a severe stroke and lost use of one of his arms. With a Tenkara rod he's still able to fly fish, which was something he was struggling with. He still neess help getting fish in the net, but he's still fishing. Made us feel good to be part of this.
Brandon
Tenkara USA has been working with Vets on just such a project.
We've started giving some of our guys in Project Healing Waters tenkara rods instead of traditional fly rods for similar reasons
The guy I talked with was with project healing waters as well. I had never thought of it from that point of view.
Tenkara Guides is way ahead of the curve.
They are a great resource for adaptive gear.
6 years ago I ended up with a frozen right shoulder that won't allow me to lift my right arm much of anything and has defied fixing. I think it was about 2009, that I heard about tenkara and started looking into it. I can still cast a tenkara rod with my right arm. But I usually switch to my left hand to use a net with my right.
Senior Member & Sponsor
LynnMCF, have you tried two handed casting? Use your right arm mostly as a fulcrum, pulling back with the left arm on the rod butt to make the cast. The guys I took a two handed casting class from said a number of their students took up two handed casting because of shoulder problems. He loved the Daiwa Kiyose 43M as a light two handed rod. I told him it was a one handed rod. He smiled and said "try it." He was right.
Tenkara Bum
Good on ANY of you trying to help out a fellow fisher.
Jim
Born to fish - forced to work.
Chris, I have a 43M-F and I have used it two-handed in the way you describe; but I can usually manage it one-handed if my line doesn't exceed the rod length. I've found most rods are light enough that if I keep my right elbow tucked into my side that I generally have no problem. Some weeks though the shoulder is bothering me so much that no other technique will help because of nerve pain running down the arm. Those are good times to fall back to another past-time - genealogy!
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