Tenkara Style Flies

[Ron Eagle Elk]

Tenkara style fishing, including the use of the traditional loop rod, must be gaining in popularity in the UK. Davie McPhail has a video showing how to tie a Tenkara style fly. http://www.youtube.com/user/DavieMcPhail#p/u

REE

[Steven McGarthwaite]

Tenkara more than two centuries ago, it was first written about in 1878 by Ernest M Sato (a British Diplomat) in his book "Diary of climbing Mt. Tateyama". Tenkara was most used by professional fishermen harvesting smaller fish of the region from small streams. The fishing rods were made from bamboo, and the line was attached to the tip of the tapered bamboo. The flies were constructed on sewing needles that has been heated and then bent, so that the bend needles became what most of call eyeless hooks.

Tenkara fishing poles were constructed from a single young bamboo shoot (not the big bamboo culms that that the western world uses for their bamboo fly rods. The length of the bamboo shoot used depends on the stream that was going to be fished. Some bamboo shoots were as long as 15 feet in length, and the fishing line was equal to the length of the bamboo shoot. A furled leader is a suitable leader to use for Tenkara. Any fly rod that is 9 feet in length, or a spey fly rod can be used for fishing Tenkara. There is no need for a reel or weighted fly line. Even those 12-foot cane pole used for bobber fishing for panfish will work fine for a Tenkara Rod. The angle of the fishing rod/pole is held at a 45-degree angle to the water surface, and the fly line/furled leader extends out at at a 45-degree angle from the fishing rod/pole. The submerged Tenkara style fly is work in the subsurface with a upward and downward movement of the rod tip, to simulate a emerging aquatic bug.

The fly patterns in Japan, vary from the regions and the streams fished. Material for the fly patterns can be sometimes very unusual, such as the "cotton of flowering fern". Fly patterns are basically what we refer to as either Wet Flies, Nymphs or Emergers. A little known aspect of fly fishing was discover by the Tenkara Anglers, that a dry fly would be spat out by a fish in a time span of 0.2 - 0.3 seconds. While a submerged Wet/Nymph/Emerger the time span was 0.6 - 0.9 seconds. The use of a submerged pattern gave the angler a better chance of setting the hook.

My favorite site for the past 12 years is Mr. Yoshikazu Fujioka's "My Best Streams"

http://www.amago.jp.lv/b-streams/flytying/tenkara.html

Over the years others sites have appeared on the internet, but Mr. Fujioka's was the first and in my opinion is still the past. when viewing his site some of the words are in blue, click on for find a hidden article that you will not be able to locate if you only use the options at the bottom of each page. ~Parnelli

[Clay]

Tenkara style fishing, including the use of the traditional loop rod, must be gaining in popularity in the UK. Davie McPhail has a video showing how to tie a Tenkara style fly. http://www.youtube.com/user/DavieMcPhail#p/u

REE

Davie is in my top three all time tiers category. He does a fantastic job of teaching while tying even if the accent did take some getting use to - ha.

[Normand]

davie mcphail link

http://www.youtube.com/user/DavieMcP.../0/L-oWwsEs_0Q

[quivira kid]

That is one beautiful fly!

Hey Ron (or anyone else), is there any way for you to summarize why the fly is tied essentially "backwards"? The forward-facing hackle and wing coming out the front gets more movement perhaps?

Zac

[Normand]

a little research on GOOGLE found this interesting reading material for reverse hackle flies or "Sakasa Kebari"

http://www.tenkarabum.com/sakasa-kebari.html

[quivira kid]

Normand, while that was indeed an interesting read, I didn't see that it really answered my question. I'm looking for the reasoning behind the reverse hackle... What exactly makes it better than "normal"?

[Normand]

What exactly makes it better than "normal"?

i dont recall anybody saying a "reverse hackle" tied fly is better than a "normal" tied fly

from the www

"Tenkara fly-fishing often focuses more on the techniques of presenting a fly rather than the appearance of a particular pattern. The idea of giving life to a fly by motion makes tenkara flies very versatile and effective. For example, one of the most recognizable tenkara fly patterns are the reverse hackle flies (e.g. Traditional Reverse Kebari), these flies can be fished like emerger patterns by letting them sit right on the water-film, or they could (as they most often are) be fished like soft-hackle wet flies, where the reverse hackle makes these highly attractive and effective patterns."

if you look at tenkara flies you will see the hackles being tied in the "normal", "reversed hackle" and "wet fly" positions

see: http://www.tenkarausa.com/index.php?cPath=24

oh well, keep searching the web, youll find your answer!

[CM_Stewart]

I have the greatest respect for Davie McPhail. As a fly tier, he's one of the best. Watching this video, though, I kept thinking that as more was added to the fly, something was lost. I am confident that his fly would catch fish, but I know for a fact and from experience that it would catch fish without the wing or the biot or the dubbing. He mentions that you can tie it with just the hackle and a thread body, and that really is all you need. To me, a lot of the attraction of tenkara is the simplicity. Davie's fly is beautiful, but the simplicity is gone.

I can't say whether the reverse hackle is better than the swept back hackle we are more used to, but I suspect it is done that way to help keep it standing out from the hook when manipulating the fly to give it the impression of life. The flies are generally fished actively, and the hackle pulses as you tighten and loosen the line. With a traditional North Country style soft hackle, when you tighten the line the hackle flattens around the hook shank. With the reverse hackle fly, when you tighten the line the hackle stands out at right angles to the hook shank. When fishing in rapid mountain streams, having the hackle stand out rather than flatten itself may have proven to be more effective. Like their Western equivalents, these flies have survived centuries of evolution because they worked in the streams in which they were fished. And for those streams, it may indeed be the best. (And I'd have to say, the pulsing hackle is absolutely murder on bluegills!)

[quivira kid]

Thank you much! That satisfies my curiosity!