Big rivers, long lines

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 joining for another episode of the Tenkara Cast. And today we will talk about Tenkara casting more specifically with long lines. actually the episode itself is not about casting per se but rather about how to fish big water with long lines that's a topic that has been brought up several times as a matter of fact a few years ago I did a podcast episode with a friend of mine Brian Fleming from Learn Tenkara where I talked about you know how to use longer lines with tenkara to fish bigger water bigger rivers and today I thought I'd do a little short cast about what works for me in terms of fishing bigger rivers. I do fish large waters pretty often actually even though my favorite kind of water, the ones that I fish more often than not is mountain streams about 40 feet wide or so.

1:43Pretty often I will go to larger rivers like the Colorado River, the Arkansas River, and then we have here the big thompson a couple areas it can be considered kind of large and then i've spent a fair amount of time out in montana fishing some bigger waters and that's just to mention a few different rivers that some people might recognize but the episode itself i wanted to talk just in general terms about what i use and how to go about going to longer lines if that's something that you desire. Before I go any further, I should mention that, you know, it's not necessarily something that you have to do. It's not something that I share because it's better because you have to aspire to do it. It is just one more tool in the toolbox. So essentially with Tenkara, we can do things in a lot of different ways. We can use one line pretty much anywhere we go. We can be accepting some limitations that come with having a line that is the length of the rod and just using that 100% of our time. But if you see a need for it, it's, I think, good to know that it is a possibility to use longer lines with Tenkara because sometimes I think there's also a misconception that, you know, we do introduce people to Tenkara by saying we You should, you know, like when you start off, use a line that is about the same length as the rod, about four feet of tippet at the end of that, and just get started that way.

3:19Sometimes people think that that's the only way to fish, either because they've read an article that talks about, you know, the usual setup, or maybe they just have a misconception that Tenkara means short line fishing. And it doesn't. There's a lot of different ways you can do it. and I think it's important to know that long lines with tenkara are one of the really good tools to have at your disposal when you're fishing larger rivers. So first maybe we will define bigger waters you know what do we mean by big water. I've for the last few years I've kind of tried to stay a little bit away from using the term small stream or big rivers because small and big can mean different things to different people. In general, like when I'm describing Tenkara, I like to say that it's ideal for mountain streams and rivers. That's where you see Tenkara shining the most. And essentially, that's places that have currents and have features. That's where you're going to see it really shiny. But for the purpose of this episode, I think we should discuss a little bit of bigger waters. And usually what I have in mind are going to be waters that might look a little bit calmer to a certain extent because they're not tumbling down as much.

4:46They're just kind of traveling a little bit more of an even kind of pace. You don't have as many features on the top even though that's just a generalization there's going to be of course parts of the rivers that are going to have a lot of rapids and that kind of thing but for the most part like when you're looking at a river it's going to be a little bit more of an even flow and that even flow usually comes also with some depth usually it's going to be a little bit of a deeper kind of river. And in terms of dimensions, usually I like to think of, I'm going to kind of throw a number out there. You know, so like, for example, with the Tenkara rod, you have 12 feet rod, 12 foot line. And that kind of setup, that's the usual setup that you start with, you can reach, let's say 25 feet with tippet and everything. So, you know, once you go above that, it starts getting more like, you know, that's pretty small water, I would say.

5:48When I'm thinking like 30 to about 50 feet wide, that's when I usually think of medium kinds of streams. And, you know, like when we're talking about width of rivers, I'm usually thinking between 40 and 100 feet or even more, you know, in some areas. But anything above 40 feet is something that I consider big water. Now there's a few ways to look at that big water. I'm going to start talking about that and I'll go into the equipment in a few minutes. But one way that I like to think of bigger rivers, any big river or almost any big river, there'll be some exceptions, but almost any big river can be seen as a series of small streams next to each other. So that's something that has helped me with my fly fishing in bigger waters. Sometimes it's a little too easy to look at this big picture, you know, there's big wide open water and get a little overwhelmed by how much water there is, how many options there are, you know, and all of a sudden we don't know exactly where to fish. So just a little something to keep in mind.

7:01not all rivers in my opinion can be seen as a series of small streams some big rivers you cannot access a lot of different areas if you're waiting you know it's if you're floating down those kinds of rivers you know maybe they are best seen as one big river but in any case when you look at a section of the big river you can always find something that looks a little bit more recognizable as small water. Focus on that. So, and what that allows you to do is not think so much of, you know, like, oh, I cannot reach that side, as it allows you to think of, I can fish this water right here. So, let's go back to the equipment. You know, when you're starting off, we like to recommend a rod that is about the same, or the line that is about the same length as the rod. So let's say 12-foot rod, 12 feet of line. If you're looking at a 50-foot river and a fish jumps on the other side of the river, you're going to be like, well, I cannot reach that.

8:04You know, it's beyond the reach of Tenkara. And all of a sudden, you're thinking that you cannot catch the fish that is in the water. And, you know, when you think in those terms, you might forget that there's a lot of fish closer by to you. There's a lot of waters near you that are very good for fishing as well. And so rather than getting distracted by the one fish that jumped on the other side of a 100-foot river, try to look at the waters that you can reach and, you know, see where it is that you can fish with the setup that you have, let's say if you're starting off with a short line. But, you know, there's a place for using longer lines and starting getting reach, I'm a big fan of using longer lines when fishing bigger water. And, you know, it's something I've been kind of teaching for a long time. If you look up long line Tenkara, there's actually a video that I created right when I started Tenkara USA, almost six years ago.

9:05And I'm going to post that video on this podcast page at tenkarausa.com forward slash podcast in this episodes page. so you can see what I'm talking about a little bit more clearly. But the reason I'm a big fan of long lines with Tenkara is because it allows us to reach a lot of water. It opens up a tremendous amount of water. The drawback, you know, it might be just that there's not, it's a little harder to really have a lot of control over the line. You know, you just have to manage this access line in some way or another, and I'll talk about how to do that. but it opens up a tremendous amount of waters and not only in terms of reach but also just covering water as well so the first thing in terms of equipment you know like when you're starting off we like to recommend a line that is about the same length as the rod four feet of tippet at the end of that first thing that i'll mention is that if you think that you have a need to fish with longer lines in bigger waters. First of all, try to take it gradually up. You know, don't go like crazy and just have a line that is three times the length of the rod and try to cast that when you're starting to kind of approach the long line kind of techniques. But rather, just add about three to four feet of line at a time. So let's say your first line is 12 feet long, four feet of tippet. The next line, a good length, in my opinion, is going to be about 15 feet long, you know, three feet longer than that standard 12-foot rod, four feet of tippet at the end of that. I always use four feet of 5X tippet pretty much across the board. After you play it around with the 15-foot line, go ahead and try that 18-foot line and see how that feels. It's a pretty significant difference and it takes a little while especially to get used to landing fish when you're using a longer line because you have to hand line the fish and after that maybe you can add an extra four feet go for 22 feet and that way you can kind of start getting familiar with the limits that you feel comfortable with the limits that just feel right for you or for your rod that you're using. My typical setup when I'm going somewhere that I know I'm going to be fishing larger waters, I always have two spools of line with me in my little pouch and I always have a short line and a long one. The length of the short and the long might depend a little bit on the kinds of waters that I'm fishing. If I'm close to home fishing Boulder Creek which is that kind of small medium-sized stream. I'll have a 12-foot line that is my short and a 15-foot line is my long line.

11:58Now if I'm going somewhere with big water, I usually have a 15-foot line and a 20-foot line and those are kind of my two favorite lengths to use when I'm fishing bigger rivers and usually I'm using that with approximately a 13-foot rod. Occasionally I have been known to tie those two lines together to fish some really big water and reach something that I really wanted to reach. It's rare. It's not something that I do very often, but you do have the option to do that. Usually I'm using a 13-foot rod. And then rule of thumb, for me, like a comfortable length of line is about one and a half times the length of the rod, give or take a foot or two, just approximately ballpark. One and a half times the length of the rod I think allows you to reach a lot of good waters but it's still a very comfortable length for casting all day long. I have used lines that are two times the length of the rod so let's say on a 13 foot rod I might have used 25-26 feet of line plus four feet of tippet at the end of that and I can fish pretty well with that but because I do have a lot of experience, but it's not the most comfortable length of line to use, in my opinion.

13:20It tends to be a lot of work, and it doesn't necessarily translate into more fish, in my experience. I actually have used the line as long as three times the length of the rod, just to kind of give you a sense of maybe what is possible, if that's a word that I should use. I absolutely hated it. You know, using a 35 or so foot line on the, you know, I was using the Ito a couple of times, 14 feet, 7 inch rod. Just really not very comfortable. Actually, so it's not three times the length of the rod in that case. It's like two and a half times. But when you start getting to that kind of length, it's just not very, very comfortable. In my experience, landing the fish, it's a little bit hard, especially when you have a large fish, because you have to hand line a lot of excess line and that kind of thing. It worked and I got fish on it, but it's not something I like to recommend. So one and a half times the length of the rod, in my opinion, is kind of a sweet spot for most rods.

14:23And to reiterate here, that's just if you really think you are seeing a need or if you really want to experiment with using long lines. I really don't want to give the impression in this episode that Tenkara, you know the goal is to use long lines that's not the case you can be very successful using a line that is not much longer than the rod and you can catch a lot of fish you can always reach a lot of water that is effective that way now when i'm fishing bigger rivers my favorite rods are always going to be approximately 13 feet long the two rods that i like to use are actually there's three The Sato is a very appropriate rod. The longest length for the Sato, it's one of our adjustable rods. It's 12 feet 9 inches. If I'm fishing bigger waters, I'll probably fish it at that length pretty much the entire time. My favorite rod might be the Ito. It's 13 feet or 14 feet 7 inches.

15:23It's a very nice, soft rod. I absolutely love using the Ito, and I use it pretty much everywhere, too, in smaller waters and that kind of thing as well. And another favorite for a lot of people is the Amago. The Amago is our big fish rod. It's also kind of our big water rod, 13 1⁄2 feet long. So those are the three kind of rods that we recommend if you're fishing bigger kinds of waters. For lines, the lines that we like to recommend are the level lines for big water. You can use taper lines. You can make your own furrow lines. The longest furrowed or tapered line that we sell is 13 feet long. And the reason that we like to recommend the level line and we don't make longer tapered lines is because tapered lines tend to get heavy. You know, just the way they're built, even if you make a very light tapered line, they will feel a little bit heavier. And the line will kind of tend to sag. When you have that much line out, you'll tend to sag under the tip of the rod.

16:26Plus, another very big thing and big reason we offer or we suggest a level line for using long lines is it allows you to adjust the length as you see fit. If you are to make a taper line or buy a taper line for every single situation or river, you'll kind of go crazy with too many options. You're going to have two foot increments, lines, so you might have 10 lines to have a good variety of lines. With a level line, what you can do is you just have one kind of longer line. If you really think that you want a shorter one, you can just cut some off, save a couple of those feet that you cut off. Later on, you can join it back together and that kind of thing. So it gives you a tremendous amount of flexibility without having to carry multiple lines or buy multiple lines. plus it's lighter as I mentioned. So those are the rods and the lines that we like to use.

17:28In terms of flies, I mean, that's probably a different episode. Big waters can be approached the same way as a lot of smaller rivers, in my opinion. I usually, if I do have a preference of any sorts, it tends to be that I usually like to use larger flies when I'm fishing bigger waters, at least to start off with. It's a little bit counterintuitive or a little counter to what a lot of people suggest in big waters and they might suggest small flies. But I'm figuring if my fly is in this big body of water, I kind of want to give the fish a better chance to see my fly. So I usually just start with a large fly and I might change to a slightly smaller one as the day goes on if I see a need for it. talking about flies I think I just wanted to give an introduction today to fishing in larger rivers with long lines but I'll share a little story about an experience that I had and I'll probably go back and talk a little bit about a couple of different things in terms of line management before I close off the episode but talking about flies just reminded me of an experience I had fishing here in Colorado with a very famous fly fishing guide.

18:50A neighbor of mine had actually hired him for a day of fishing, and his partner bailed, so I ended up joining him on this day. And we showed up, and my neighbor told the guide, and he's like, well, my friend here is going to be using a tenkara rod today. And I think the guide was a little skeptic, you know, to begin with, which I understand. We were going fishing big water. We were going fishing the Colorado River, something that's large fish, large waters. We get to the water, and usually the way I select my flies, I usually just start fishing with whatever fly I had on from my previous trip. So we get to the water. We kind of get to the space, and the guide and my neighbor are starting to set up their rods, their western fly rods. They were using reels. Um, as I started doing that, I tied my tenkara line to the tip of the rod, opened up my spool, and the fly that I had from my previous trip was this relatively large size eight tenkara fly with a reverse hackle. And I had never fished the Colorado River before. It was my very first time fishing there. And I turned to the guide and I showed him my fly. And of course, he had this look to him because he had never seen anything quite like that but I asked him so do you think this fly is going to work okay here and he's like well this is a small fly fishery you know the fish here tend to like very small flies but I don't know anything about tenkara so go ahead and give it a try so with that being said I didn't want to change flies I just wanted to start fishing I went upstream from my neighbor and the guide and cast a couple of times and within probably two minutes I had my first fish on it was a beautiful 16 inch fish I showed it to them and I released it and I noticed that they were still setting up their rods and their reels I went to do another couple of casts and I caught a second fish and they were still not done setting out the reels which I always think it's kind of funny but a little bit later that day the guide apparently like my neighbor had told me that as soon as I walked upstream the guide had told him that poor guy he's not going to catch a single fish today his flies the size of a hummingbird and it turned out not to be true we caught plenty of fish I actually got the guide hooked into Tenkara a little bit. He caught some fish as well. But it just kind of goes to show that Tenkara can work in big waters as well. Big river, we got some pretty good sized fish that day, including a 20-inch fish on a Tenkara rod. So that was just a little note about flies when it comes to big waters. You don't have to follow conventional wisdom to fish big waters with Tenkara. Now let me just talk a little bit about technique and line management because that's just probably going to help you a little bit. As I mentioned don't jump out to long lines immediately. Try to take it gradually up and part of that is so that you can learn how to manage the line especially in terms of landing fish. When you have a long line in front of you you don't want to be bringing it to your hand all the time and you have to be careful to control the slack that happens when you're actually in the middle of fishing so typically you're going to be fishing a little farther of course than you normally do because you have a longer line and one thing that I always like to point out is try to avoid having your line become slack in the middle of a drift. So if you're casting directly upstream, let's say I have a 13-foot rod, 20 feet of line, 4 feet of tippet. So I'll cast far upstream, and maybe I'm reaching, let's say, 30 feet.

22:50As the fly starts coming towards me, there's going to be a point when the line's going to start getting slack, because I cannot keep up with it. And in my opinion, it's really important, when you're using long lines to recast before the line becomes slack. It's going to depend a little bit on the length of your line. The longer the line is, the farther out you have to stay. But typically, as a rule of thumb, when you're fishing directly upstream, I like to think that, well, it's hard to have a rule of thumb here, but I was going to say, you know, like a six-foot drift is probably a pretty good drift when you're fishing directly upstream because the line is coming straight towards you and it's going to become slack sooner. If you're fishing more a quarter upstream or directly across, then you can usually get a little bit of a longer drift. And then it's going to depend a little bit on where the current is pushing your fly. If the current is kind of pushing your fly a little bit towards you, the line's going to get slack sooner if the current is pushing the fly a little bit away from you then typically you can get a very long drift as your line stays taut the whole time but the main thing here is observation see at which point your line's going to kind of create some slack and recast before that happens and the reason for that is twofold first if your line is slack it's going to be much harder to cast again second if a fish were to take and your line is kind of slack and your tip you know the rod tip is kind of pointing up already there's just nowhere for you to go to set the hook so you might miss a strike so I like to usually recommend that you fish rivers with long lines in small kind of sections as opposed to trying to get the longest drift you can, work on getting the most effective drift that you can. What I mean by that is just getting a drift where your fly presentation is really good and your line is staying taut most of the time. So that's to me one of the most important things when it comes to fishing with long lines in big rivers, being aware of where your line is going to become kind of slack.

25:09now the second thing is what happens when you hook a fish and that's where you just have to be mindful and it takes a little practice it really sure does take a little practice it's something that's probably hard to share just by speaking about it but essentially when you're using a line that is longer than a rod with tenkara there's no reel to take up slack so what it means is that by default you're going to have to hand line the fish to get it closer to you and there's plenty of videos i've created a video if you look up big fish tenkara you'll see me landing a large brown trout out in montana on a very large section in madison river with a 20 inch brown trout at the end of my line and i have to hand line the fish and it's really no big deal but it takes a little practice you just have to have the sensitivity of knowing where to let when to let the fish kind of run away and want to bring it back. You also want to avoid touching the line if the fish is in a very heavy current. So try to bring the fish to calmer water before you start grabbing the line and bringing it in. And then, you know, as you bring the fish in, you have to kind of keep some tension on the line because if the line becomes slack in your hands, the rod cannot kind of take off that slack and if the fish shakes it's going to free itself you lose a lot of fish in the very beginning especially the smaller fish like the eight to ten inch fish because they can wiggle themselves off of a hook really quickly when you're using longer lines i like to recommend going after you know some smaller fish a place that has a lot of fish and trying the long line technique because that helps you learn how to land the fish.

27:04My first few times out with long lines, I lost a lot of fish because they would free themselves. But I learned and I really don't feel like I lose that many fish anymore. But one of the tricks that I learned is that when you're using a long line, instead of pulling the line straight towards you, try to keep some upwards pressure on the line as you bring it up towards you. So instead of bringing like in a horizontal plane towards your waist, keep a little bit of a vertical kind of angle on the line in your hands, kind of like towards your head, so that the tension is kind of always up in the jaw of the fish and that kind of thing. So that, to me, helps a lot when it comes to landing fish. um i think that actually long lines do help uh fight and bring in a large fish a little bit better than shorter lines you have a little bit more give and that kind of thing but you have to learn how to control it and you have to acquire that kind of sensitivity to playing fish i'm going to give some more thought about techniques for landing fish in general and that's probably another episode of the Tenkara Cast that I'll create eventually here because that's a whole chapter a whole episode in itself landing fish but for now just being aware of how to keep the line tight and getting some practice under your belt is probably the most important thing and then the last thing is line management you know what do you do with all this slack line when you're you have to move from place to place and that kind of thing. So typically when in the middle of fishing all I'm doing is recasting the line and I'm keeping the line kind of in the water as I step up into the stream and I go further up. I'm just trying to cast and keeping the line in the water pretty much all time. But then if I have to move kind of a long distance to go between trees and that kind of thing then I'll bring the line into my hand and I can do a lot of different things.

29:06If it's an open terrain that I have to walk through, just grassy plains or meadows and that kind of thing, I'll bring the line and I'll just do a few loose coils, very loose, like maybe two feet long coils in my hand. Put the fly on the cork so I don't have to worry about it poking me. And I just walk with the line kind of loosely in my hand. If I have to walk through brush of any sort or slightly longer distances, then I absolutely like to use a holder like the keeper that we have put the fly in there wind the line around collapse the rod get to the other side take the line out of the spool and extend the rod and start casting again so those are the two systems that I usually the three systems either keep casting loose coils in my hand or using the keeper so that's what I do well um that's most of what i wanted to cover in this episode of the Tenkara Cast a little bit of an introduction to fishing big waters with long lines um i suspect i'm going to elaborate on a few of the things that i talked a little bit about today uh in the future i will post those two videos that i mentioned uh the uh long line fishing and the one of catching a larger fish in big water with a long line on our podcast page, tenkarausa.com forward slash podcast.

30:36And if you have any comments, any suggestions, any requests, please let me know on our podcast page or via Facebook or you can always email us at info at tenkarausa.com and I'll try to get to your questions whenever I can and maybe cover that in a different episode in the future. Hope you enjoyed learning a little bit more about Tenkara in general and about how to fish bigger rivers. Hope you'll not be so intimidated by big rivers with a Tenkara rod in the future. It's plenty straightforward, and I think you can all have a great time out there in bigger waters. Thank you very much for listening to the Tenkara Cast. I'd like to extend a special thank you to Nick Ogawa, also known as Takenobu. Check out his music at takenobumusic.com. We'll be posting links to any references we made in this podcast, such as Takenobu's music, on our website, www.tenkarausa.com forward slash podcast.

31:44And until next time on the Tenkara Cast. Thank you.