Conversations: Graham Moran (aka Tenkara Grasshopper)

0:00This is Daniel Galhardo and you're listening to the Tenkara Cast, a podcast about the simple Japanese method of fly-fishing, Tenkara. In the Tenkara Cast we'll be sharing information on techniques, history, philosophy, and Tenkara stories from anglers all over the world. This podcast is brought to you by Tenkara USA, introducing Tenkara outside of Japan since 2009. It's only possible we create content such as this podcast and videos because of your support. So we thank you so very much for purchasing Tenkara USA Rods, Lines, and Flies. I hope you enjoy learning more about the simple method of fly fishing. Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in on the Tenkara Cast again. Here I am in early June and today I have a guest here in the office, Graham Moran, and some of you might know him as the Tenkara grasshopper. So we're going to be talking a little bit about Tenkara and his experiences with Tenkara and guiding with the method as well.

1:02Graham, thanks for joining us today. How are you? Definitely. I'm doing awesome. It's a total pleasure to be here. And so, you know, let's start with your name, the Tenkara Grasshopper. Where did that come from? So the Tenkara Grasshopper actually came about sort of from Khoi Chang Kane being, I'm learning Tenkara and I'm still a grasshopper and I will continue to learn up until that point so do you feel like you're still a grasshopper still learning yes every day is a new experience that being the case I do learn there's a lot that I already know but there's still I'm always finding something new every day well I think that's a I always say that's like one of the beauties of Tenkara it's a very simple method you know to learn the basics but there's always like nuances you know there's like tiny little things that we learn along the way yeah you know it's kind of using kebari and learning what to do with the kebari and why is it not working but then i just tweak one little thing and all of a sudden it works but i don't necessarily know why it works yep and that's uh you know somebody said like you know the moment we stop learning we should just shoot ourselves because it's life wouldn't be as exciting anymore so thank god i have tenkara Yeah. Absolutely. And so tell us, why don't you just give us a little bit of a background? How did you get into Tenkara? I think, you know, our listeners want to learn a little bit more about you. You have a blog. Sometimes you write a little bit more often. Sometimes you don't write so much because you have a couple of new kids. And we'll probably talk a little bit about that later on.

2:34But how did you get into Tenkara? So it was actually kind of an accidental thing. I was It was after Christmas one year and I was flipping through a fly fishing magazine and I saw this ad for Tenkara USA Fly Fishing Simplified. And I looked at it and I went, what is this? So I got online, went to tenkarausa.com, got on the forum, started asking about it, talked to a whole bunch of people. And everybody just kind of jumped on board and welcomed me to this thing that I didn't really know anything about. And after probably 48 hours of perusing every single post on the forum and responding to forums without any sleep, by the way, I finally decided to order a rod. And my first rod was a Tenkara USA Iwana 11-foot rod. And the rest is now history. Did you fly fish before Tenkara?

3:35Yeah, I started out bait fishing and then got into fly fishing when I was like 16 years old. So I got into Tenkara when I was 33. And so how was the transition between going from Western, what we call Western fly fishing, to Tenkara? What did you think of that? You know, I think the transition was a little difficult at first for me because I was thinking like a western fisherman. I was trying to hold the rod, and because we're using a fixed line, I'm trying to think, what do I do with my left hand, which I'm normally stripping or holding line that I didn't have to? So getting some of those things was a little more difficult. That being the case, I will say that going with the one fly was a lot easier for me because I wasn't trying to figure out what I was trying to match. I just threw one fly on and played with it.

4:37And when I got lucky, I got lucky. Nice. So, you know, did you use a lot of flies before? I mean, like, were you one of the typical Western fly anglers with dozens of flies, you know, in fly boxes in your pockets? Or how was your fishing before Tancada? When I actually cleared my fishing vest out, I had 18 fly boxes all divided up by species and size. So all of my midges were in one box and I probably had close to 12 dozen of those midges in that box. And once I actually emptied everything out, I was about 18 fly boxes total. And now I'm actually down to an Altoids 10 of flies. You know, I think that's probably one of the most challenging concepts, I think, of Tenkara. I always say that I share the idea of using one fly pattern just to show there's a different way of thinking about fly fishing, that you don't have to necessarily match the hatch if that doesn't match your personality or your interests.

5:43But it's very challenging, especially if you have grown accustomed to using a variety of flies. that must have been a very big transition right there right huge transition trying to come to that realization that i don't need to go through my entire box to find what works um i do typically carry 12 different patterns but i typically select one pattern and that's all i will use for the day so what kind of patterns are you carrying uh ishigaki kebari amanu kebari killer bugs utah killer bugs oaky kabati um and then a couple of my own random creations like a red butt kebari um so it just has a little indicate a little indicator on the back end of it is it kind of like a reverse hackle fly with a little red yarn on the back or something exactly yes this would be tied as a traditional tenkara kabati but we're actually just putting a little extra a tractor on the back of it okay kind of pulls that attention from most fish and they go oh wait what is that yeah so primarily i mean with a couple of exceptions a lot of the sakasa style flies the reverse hackle style flies yes pretty much what i've done is i've even taken the patterns that are non-sakasa and i've actually turned them into sakasa oh so you're reversing the hackle You're one of those people who is saccassifying flies.

7:13I did. I don't know if you watched the video that I did with Jason Klaas here. He lives in Golden or Nevada. And he asked me to talk about my predictions for Tenkara. And I'm like, well, I think we're going to see a continuation of the trend of saccassifying flies, western flies, putting a reverse hack on it and calling it a Tenkara fly. So you're one of the perpetrators. Yes, I am one of the perpetrators. Guilty as charged. What is one of your favorite flies to psicosify? One of my favorites to psicosify. Actually, just as an experiment, I have actually tried to psicosify a San Juan worm. Why? I don't know. Will it work? I should be more on the loop on that, but does a San Juan worm use a hackle typically? No, it typically doesn't. It's just a little rubber. yeah it's just rubber chenille that you're tying to the hook and i just wanted to see what happened if you put a hackle on it yeah just from a why not how have you done have you caught any fish on that i actually have caught some fish they've been warm water fish but i haven't caught anything in any of the rivers with that fly yet well you know and that's uh one of the things we talked a little bit about one fly you know simply flying flies and i think i've mentioned it quite a few times it's not about using this one fly or a tenkara fly but the idea is that almost any fly within reason you know could work you know a lot of times we tend to overthink fly choices we think that the fish are going to be incredibly selective and they just want food you know so the idea is like any fly really works I think you know I think I call it one fly to begin with because most tenkara anglers in Japan they have one fly and they stick with it but they're all different too and they all catch fish.

9:05So I don't see why the Sun-1 worm with a reverse hackle wouldn't work. Well, I think it's one of those things where, like with that history that the Japanese anglers had, they didn't have a fly shop to go to. So they had what materials were available to them. The fact that we're here and we have a fly shop within a couple miles. Or a toy store, right? Yeah, it's the man's toy store. Well, but I'm actually thinking the Sun-1 worm uses, like isn't it a toy like a squishy you can use the squishy balls squishy balls with a little kind of hairy rubber i don't know what you'd call it i don't even remember what those things are i used to have one but those come from a toy store yes right yeah exactly they didn't have toy stores to go buy squishy silicone rubber balls so they had to make something with what they had uh-huh so um so yeah that's kind of why i've done that but at the same time as you said it's not about necessarily just using a tenkara fly some of my crazy days due to kirk warner were actually because of all of the woolly bugger i've tied a woolly bugger on and i've thrown that and i've caught fish with it yep so that's you know and i think that kind of encompasses the the range you know some of us kind of simplify you know simplify just because you know we don't want to carry too much or tie too many different types of flies but you know at the same time it doesn't take away from creativity and tying just some funky flies and going and see if it works i think that's a fun part of tenkara too yeah exactly the video that was shot um back at the 2014 tenkara summit of the teenage mutant ninja kebari that i tied was one of those why not i'll uh i'll look it up and i'll try to post these references that Graham is making on our on our podcast page so tenkarausa.com forward slash podcast and so I'll post a fly that he tied at the Tenkara Summit and maybe a couple of the patterns that he mentioned that he carries. We'll see if we can get a picture of his San Juan warm style fly but for those of you who are interested in seeing what is it the mutant ninja turtle? The teenage ninja kebari. Yeah Yeah, definitely log in to our website, tenkarausa.com forward slash podcast.

11:29Now, tell me about your blog excursions, the Tenkara Grasshopper. First of all, where can people find that? What is the website? So the website is www.tenkaragrasshopper.com. The theory behind it is me being the Tenkara Grasshopper is that I want to go out, try different things, be able to come back to you and let you as a reader not have to go through the same hoops that I have had to go through as I'm learning. Hopefully I can cut down some of your time on the water where you can actually know what works and what doesn't. And what kind of things have you written there? Like if you can give us some examples of posts and that kind of thing. So some of the posts we've done are what we call Tenkara tips, notes from a Tenkara guide, and those are actually little tricks that I've found along the way for rigging or casting.

12:32How do I cast in the wind? Different things like that that the beginner will be able to use, but also somebody who's maybe a little more experienced but has maybe not actually come across something will actually be able to look at those same things and kind of go, wait a minute. why did I not? Why did I not get that idea? And I keep seeing posts from you. I think the more frequent posts that I see from you, and I'm going to put you on the spot, is like, hey, I'm back, or I'm about to be back. Watch out for a new post. What's going on with that? Well, I have a two-year-old and a six-month-old at home, so I finally kind of get my life in order, and everything starts working and I'm ready to roll stuff out and then kids happen. And then I get distracted with the kids and then I have to figure out a way to get back to the website. So yes, I've been doing a lot of that and I apologize, but it keeps you guys coming back for more. And I thought I'd put you on the spot. I mean, I know the reason, but I have to tease you because it's a, yeah, I think I saw one post. It's like, hey watch out I'm about to be back and then like all of a sudden it's like oh actually watch out I'm about to have a new kid at one point so hopefully you know I hear that the first six months with a baby are probably the hardest is that yes that being your experience very very much so it's even harder when you have a two-year-old that runs around the house all the time and when it gets quiet you don't know where the two-year-old is and you're trying to pay attention to the six-month-old and things get really exciting really quickly yeah so maybe in In the next month or two here, we'll start seeing new content from the Tenkara Grasshopper.

14:15Yes, definitely. Nice. And one thing that we have to do, too, is to go fishing together. You and I haven't fished together in a little while. I think between your babies and my travels, it's been a little tough. Yeah, it's been a little hard. I mean, we've tried to work to get things to work. And then we get weather and floods. And then we get runoff. Excuses. There's an episode, by the way, on the Tenkara podcast page. where I talk about all the excuses not to catch fish, and I think maybe I'll have to do an episode about excuses why we didn't get out to fish. You know, I think that might be... You and I can come up with a lot of different excuses. Yes, we can. Well, so let's talk a little bit about your fishing with Tenkara. I mean, you know, obviously, you know, you might have mentioned, but, you know, you learned a lot of Tenkara through the website, a lot of, you know, the writing that we've done. You also experimented a lot. Um, but tell me, tell me a little bit about your favorite rig, you know, like what is your favorite setup to get out and, uh, fish?

15:18So right now my favorite setup would be the Sato rod with either a orange or pink level line, normally in like a 3.5. Um, I generally go over the length of my rod. So right now I'm at 15 feet plus three to four feet of tippet off of the end of that. And then whatever fly of choice I decide is going to work that day or not work that day is the case maybe. And what kinds of waters are you fishing? We're, well, me, we're, sorry about that. But typically I'm fishing a lot of tailwaters in the area, Clear Creek, through the canyon. I think we might have not mentioned this. I mean, you're here in my office in Boulder, but just so our listeners know, Graham lives here in Denver, Colorado. So that's, you know, we're talking about some of the local waters nearby. And maybe you can describe a little bit about the waters that you like to fish, like, you know, how big and how close they are and that kind of thing.

16:22so typically I like the slightly wider waters that have lots of pockets that I can fish not super deep the the holes that are super super deep or just kind of I don't use a lot of weighted flies so therefore that deep water isn't gonna really work but I just love to fish little pocket waters and particularly going into places where most people don't go are going higher up into the mountains such as Rocky Mountain National Park outside of Wild Basin the higher you go there's awesome little creeks awesome little pocket water and little brookies that will eat anything that you put out there but most of them are far enough off the beaten path that you're guaranteed that some of these fish and some of these holes you're gonna go into they've never seen an artificial fly let alone a human being so so a good variety of waters and uh yeah the sato and 15 feet of line three four feet of tip that's pretty much similar to what i use the most as well um you know i think you and i fish a lot of similar waters i do you know sometimes i tend to go a little bit to the larger rivers that we have as well i love fishing like the arkansas and colorado kind of rivers and then I might use the Ito as well.

17:42And I know you do too when you go to those, but pretty similar. Yeah, definitely. So the South Platte out of Deckers would be an Ito water for me. I was curious. I was actually just talking to somebody online about lines, and we're actually about to release a couple of new lines that I'll make sure that you take home with you. But have you experimented with a lot of different types of lines? Because now you use the level line, but have you tried a lot of different types? I have tried a lot of different types. I've tried, obviously, the furrowed lines that were kind of the originals or sort of the teaching line, so to speak. I've used some of the tungsten lines, a few of those, but I find with certain rods, you have to balance the weight of those lines with the rod. I feel sometimes like a tungsten line can sometimes overpower a rod. Or if I'm using a heavier rod. Or a titanium line, I guess, is what you're talking about. Yes, the titanium.

18:43Yeah, sorry. With, you know, like, say, an Amago, a level line, I tend to find maybe is just a little too soft for the stiffness of that rod. So that's when I'd look at like a titanium or, you know, something or a weighted line that will just kind of balance what it is, just like you would with a Western rod and reel. If you've got a five weight, you want a five weight line. But if you want to go a little on the heavier side, you can overweight it with a six weight. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. I think I ended up settling, maybe not be the best word, but kind of a, I stick with the level line just because I, I find it to be simplest. It kind of works across the board more than other specialized kind of lines, I think. Yeah, and I think one of the nice things is that with a level line, you can select that length. And if I am, say, in more of a red rock country, I can switch my line to a pink. But if I'm more of a green, then I'll switch to the orange so I can actually get that color variation between the two.

19:47And I can actually see my line when I'm fishing. And the other thing I wanted to talk to you about is the guiding that you do. So you became, you were not a fly fishing guide before, I believe, but you became a Tenkara guide on our website on the Tenkara Guide Network. So people can find that if they go to tenkarausa.com and you can type forward slash TGN for a Tenkara Guide Network. How has your experience with guiding with Tenkara been? Guiding with Tenkara has been a really, really cool experience. It has brought a lot of new people to Tenkara that they've bought rods. They don't know exactly what they're doing. So being able to get out and get them into that has been really cool and have them actually get into their first fish, watch that smile cross their face when that fish hits, and then kind of watch them flail around trying to figure out how to bring that fish in is really entertaining.

20:48But the smiles and the excitement that continues from that is a super, super cool experience for me. And it's one of the reasons that I make as much time as I can to get out and take people out on guide trips. Do you guide the same waters that you mentioned you like fishing pretty much? Yes. Yeah. And the reason that I guide a lot of those same waters is because I'm familiar with those. so when i take hypothetically you daniel out i can get you i know where there's actually fish and we're not going to go out and kind of explore together it's going to be i'm going to take you where i know i can get you into fish and then i know tenkara is a what do i want to say i guess a functional system for for those locations that makes sense yeah you don't want to take somebody on a wild goose chase i was taking a friend of mine foraging the other day i really this time of year I love foraging for mushrooms and uh and I told her you know like I'm exploring right now I'm learning the places and we ended up going on a wild goose chase trying to find new spots and unfortunately we didn't find any and if she was a paying client I think that would be frustrating but she was totally a good sport because she's a friend yeah and you do get you know as some of my clients have discovered we've gone to places where particularly after the floods we had a couple years ago up in Rocky Mountain National Park and through Estes, we got into some holes where I thought there should have been fish, but due to the floods, things kind of get wiped out. The cool part, we were able to get out and actually experience parts of the park that they weren't aware of. So you can make a positive out of a quote negative, but... That's a good attitude for a guy to have, you know? You know, the way I look at it to be honest with Daniel is a bad day of fishing is better than a good day at work. So, well, which in this case for you would be the same thing, right? Yes, exactly. Now, what are the, you know, like when I'm teaching people and I think as a guide, especially as a Tenkara guide, you're, you know, also a teacher big time because a lot of people might be new to the system. Do you have some tips that you typically share with beginners or even people that are experienced in terms of Tenkara? You know, I do have a couple of rigging tricks that I like to use that just make things maybe a little bit easier for people when they're not trying to learn different knots a few things like that but then one of my favorite tricks to use when it comes to Sasoya or presentation is that we try and do every once in a while do a pulse where the fly just kind of bounces towards the surface of the water a lot of people will lift their rod and they you're lifting that fly so fast and so far it's really not a natural movement so one of the tricks that I teach people to get that pulse is actually to while you're holding your rod imagine you're shaking somebody's hand and you're gently giving it a squeeze and you just kind of over a little bit of time you give it like two or three light squeezes and stop and if you actually watch your rod tip every time you give it that squeeze you'll see the lillian bounce just a little bit and just that little bit of bounce is actually going to lift that fly up in the water and that's where you get a lot of that's where a lot of people get those takes is because the fish is actually seeing that fly move through the water therefore it looks like it's alive that's a good tip you know it kind of makes it kind of a rhythmic thing because if you're kind of doing the squeeze motion you kind of it makes the rod move just enough up and down at the same time kind of thing where the fly kind of moves.

24:30That's a pretty good tip. What about the rigging? What do you mean by rigging tips? So one of the rigging things that I use is I actually tie a perfection loop out of fly line backing onto the end of a level line so that what you're doing is you just have to do a girth hitch onto your lillian. The reason I do that is a lot of people, particularly starting out, have not had a lot of time practicing tying the one knot or anything like that. So if you do happen to hook into a tree, which happens frequently, and if you do lose your tippet and your line gets all tangled up, you're not having to try and stand there and remember what knot it was. It's just a quick girth hitch. You can rip one line off. You put another one on, and you're back on the water as quickly as possible. That makes sense. And I will drop a little thing. Actually, Graham, you get to see our new line that we're about to release. and we'll put the announcement out. So it's something that kind of combines the best of the taper lines and the level lines.

25:32And one of those elements is kind of making a little bit of a loop at the beginning of it so that people can girth hitch it. It makes it a little bit simpler, I agree. Although my philosophy, too, is like, you know, it's really hard. Like, as a guide, I completely understand. Like, you don't want to be teaching a knot to somebody. I'm a rock climber and I'm a fisherman. I've been doing both equally long. When somebody teaches me a new knot, it takes me forever to learn it, it seems like. Not super natural, just picking up how the knot works, I have to practice it. So as a guide takes somebody out, I would not try to teach a knot. I think the girth hitch is the right way. But if you're learning on your own, I'd highly recommend you learn the one knot, which I'm going to post on this podcast page, and practice it at home before going out. and then your time with a guide like Graham is going to be much easier simplified as well and the reason I do teach that is because if you were to lose that girth hitch for whatever reason or that one line you can get more line out of a spool and you don't have to worry about like oh what do I do now so that's kind of one of my main motivations but hopefully you enjoy the line that's uh I'll give you a packaged one before you leave and hopefully you enjoy that and And I think your clients will probably enjoy that quite a bit.

26:52And for you guys listening, I think we're probably one week out. We're just working on packaging right now for the new line before we announce it. In any case, enough talking about that. I don't want to give too much away. What about in terms of landing fish? So that's like one thing that I always joke that, you know, I started Tenkara, you would say, seven and a half years ago almost or just over seven years ago, publicly anyways. And, you know, like the one thing I tell people, like over seven years, we have never gotten a call from a customer saying, hey, I caught a fish. What do I do now? It's a very intuitive part of Tenkara. Do you have any tips for landing fish? Yes. Yes. One of the biggest things that I see people doing is whenever they hook into a fish, the first thing that happens is that fish is running all over. Because of the flexibility and the sensitivity of a 10 car rod, that rod tip is going all over the place.

27:53So the biggest thing that I tell people is imagine that when that fish hits your fly, answer your phone. Bring your hand up, put it next to your ear, and if you have to, break your wrist and tip that lily in further back behind you. the other thing that I typically suggest to people is so that you can actually get that fish closer is do what we call a hand sweep so you're actually going out with your non-rod hand and you're literally actually doing a scoop wrapping the line around your hand bring that line in to your rod hand slip it under your fingers hold it down get your hand out of the line out of that loop that you've created and then what you're going to do is you're actually going to slightly release the line on the handle your rod is going to extend and it's going to lift that fish up once you actually have that fish up and it's closer you now you can actually take your net and you can scoop that fish out of the water if you're using a longer line if you're using maybe a 15 or 20 foot line then you may have to do a second hand sweep to get more line in to bring that fish in close yeah that's gonna been that's been the quickest way yeah and hand sweep actually i was just uh reviewing some photographs on uh for the book that i'm uh hoping to publish in a few couple few months here and uh there's a sequence that i'll actually post this sequence of photos because i just worked on that on our podcast web page for this episode so people can see what the hand sweep kind of looks like at least the beginning part of it and the rest once you grab the line, as Graham mentioned, just kind of let it go so that the tip is not bending and, you know, let it go on the upper part. And then you just kind of hand line it, you know, if you have a long line, pretty straightforward. The one thing that I did when I was reviewing the riding on that, I've seen it a few times where, let's say you're right-handed, it doesn't matter actually, but if you point your rod tip on to the outside of your body, so if you're right-handed, you start pointing your rod a little bit to the right, then all of a sudden you cannot do the hand sweep. So the main tip before you do the hand sweep that I like to mention is point your rod into your body. So from your right hand, you point your rod to the left and then you can sweep with your left hand and grab the line, bring it in. But if you point it outside of your body, then the line is completely out of reach, if that makes sense. And I've seen that only a couple of times, maybe three or four times, actually. But it was actually really interesting to notice. I was teaching a few folks, you know, over the last few years, and I noticed it's like, why are they having a hard time landing fish? And I noticed they were pointing the rod out, you know, away from their free hand. So you want to point the rod into your, towards your free hand to be able to do the sweep.

30:46So I'll share that on the podcast page here. And, you know, I think this is really good information, you know, for anybody getting started with Tenkara. And they can keep an eye on your blog as well for hopefully new posts coming up. And, again, they can find you to guide both on our Tenkara Guide Network page. And I'll put the link on our website as well, tenkaragrasshopper.com. But do you have any parting shots or parting words, not shots, for why people should try Tenkara? Tenkara, you should try Tenkara because it's just an awesome way to fish. And just a shameless plug, within the next month, and I promise it will be within the next month, the new version of Tenkara Grasshopper will be going live for everybody to see. Cool. I'm looking forward to that. And I'm excited to see what comes out now that the babies are, you know, not quite as hard to manage.

31:49Well, I'd imagine they're still hard to manage sometimes. So bear with me. I know Daniel's given me a lot of heat about this. But bear with me. I promise that eventually things will all actually fall back into place where they belong. Oh, and let's plug into, you know, we talked a little bit about you're doing a Father's Day fishing derby. Where's that? Where can people find more information? Do you know? That is actually going to be in Grand Lake at the YMCA up there. And it's actually, I believe, going to be from 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. I will be there with a selection of rods that people can try out. We'll have a bunch of flies that people can check out. And hopefully we can get some people into a couple of additional fish. Perfect. So that's going to be June 19th, and I got a little bit of information here. Snow Mountain Ranch in Winter Park, Colorado, and you can find more information on that on our website, on the events page.

32:52I'll try to post the link as well. But if you're interested in learning more about Tenkara and you are anywhere in Colorado and you want to do something fun, that could be a fun thing to do on Father's Day. But, Graham, thanks so much for coming up and meeting and having a conversation about Tenkara. I'm sure this won't be the last episode of the Tenkara Cast that we are going to do together because you're not too far away. But, you know, just kind of a nice short introduction for those people that are going to be driving for half an hour. Yes, I agree. Well, I really enjoyed talking to you. And for everyone, thanks for tuning in again to the Tenkara Cast. And until next time on the future episodes of this podcast. And as always, I want to thank my friend Nick Ogawa, also known as Takenobu, for letting us use his music, which we use in the introduction of every episode of the Tenkara Cast. Nick Takenobu just released a new album called Reversal, and you can find that at takenobumusic.com.

33:56This song is called Che, and I want to say that I really, really enjoyed having his music on my iPhone here when I traveled. Tremiano's music as always. So take a listen and go check out his album at Thank you.

35:05guitar solo Thank you.