Greg,
If you want to fish a nymph Polish style, a tenkara rod is a very reasonable choice, although they are too light to fish the heaviest Polish nymphs. But that is really not what a tenkara rod is designed for. The long rod and light line allow you to keep nearly all your line off the water, so when fishing dries or upstream wets drag is minimized. You can fish an eddy across a current seam, and keep the fly in the eddy. When there are multiple, tricky currents, you can fish with the fly and only a few inches of tippet in just the current seam you want, so the others don't wreck your presentation.
Many of the tenkara flies have reverse hackles. With the fly just under the surface and only the fly and tippet in the water, you can make the hackle pulse with very subtle pulls on the rod, giving the impression of life. You just can't do that with a short rod and heavy line.
I still have a lot to learn, but I am pretty sure that the reason tenkara fishing is so effective has a lot more to do with presentation than fly selection, and it allows a delicate presentation that cannot be accomplished any other way.
Edited 11/15/10 to say that I have since decided that a tenkara rod really isn't a great choice for polish nymphing because the tip sections, being designed for casting a very light line and unweighted fly, are really too soft to get good hooksets while Polish nymphing. If you did want to use a tenkara rod for Czech or Polish nymphing, though, I would suggest the Backpacking Light "Hane" which is by far the stiffest tenkara rod available - stiff enough that it would not be my first choice for tenkara fishing where a very light line and delicate presentation was called for.
Reply With Quote