I've tied and had success catching fish with some clones of various kebari or flies that I have found in different places. Here are a few of them.

To a certain extent I believe ugly flies are attractive to fish. This belief comes from things I have found on line, or read in books about the fly patterns used decades in the past. In Paul Schullery's book, Fly Fishing Secrets of the Ancients, in Chapter 2, which was titled Rag Tag and Rumpled, or similar title. He described a fly, he called the Hank O Hair, that he said was given to him years ago by a friend who said it's a popular fly at a favorite fly shop in Utah. A few months back I sent Paul a picture of my version. His reply was what I expected. That the original he saw had a little sparser hair, and the shank winding was shorter, only long enough to tie on the hair. But my version has caught a lot of fish. And if anything it is simpler to tie than what most people here see as the stereotype Tenkara kebari. If you do a google search for Hank O Hair, you can find a few websites with instruction how to tie them, but they are quite different from Mr. Schullery's description.

Hank O Hair

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Some of my Ugly flies that also readily catch fish. Not a lot different from some of the Kurobe Kebari on the Yoshikazu website.

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http://www.hi-ho.ne.jp/amago/b-strea...g/tenkara.html

This one I saw on an old video of Sebata Yuzo. I just call it a Kyogihimo kebari. Kyogihimo 「松経木ひも」is actually a type of string made from very thin wood shaving. I got a bundle of it from a shop in NYC.

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More in the next post.

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