How to fish a mountain stream

0:00This is Daniel Galhardo and you're listening to the Tenkara Cast, the podcast about the simple Japanese method of fly-fishing, Tenkara. In the Tenkara Cast, I'll be sharing information with you on techniques, history, gear and philosophies, as well as 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 is only possible we create content such as this podcast and all the videos that we create 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 Japanese method of fly fishing, Tenkara. Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Tenkara Cast. it's been a couple of weeks actually it's been about 20 days since I've been able to record a podcast apologies I've been wanting to do these for you know about every two weeks or so but some of you might have seen that we held this mystery box sale about 10 days ago and that what that was was you know we just had all these products that we had accumulated over the years that we couldn't really put back in inventory, whether it had some damaged packaging, some of them were demo rods that we used for shows, some of them were missing cases, you know, so we had a bunch of stuff.

1:31And we were doing a little bit of spring cleaning. I decided that it would be fun to, you know, just put those out there. Instead of having them sit in our storage, let's put them to good use. So we put these mystery box together, just an assortment of things. and something that I expected to maybe be on our website for a week at least. We sold out in less than 10 hours. But in the last couple of weeks, Faith, my wife Margaret, myself, have just been really busy packing all of those boxes. It's been a lot. It's been a lot of work. But it was a lot of fun putting those together. And we're excited to have people start getting them in their hands because we put a lot of thought into that, into the boxes, making them really fun. So that's one of the main things that has been keeping me busy. The other thing, we have a new shopping platform that's going to come out on our website at tenkarausa.com very shortly. So we're in the middle of tweaking it all, getting it all ready. Hopefully within about a week, we're going to have the new site up and ready.

2:35It's not going to be a completely new website. we're just kind of making the shopping interface more intuitive giving you some tools to look around for the products that we offer and find what you need but also stay tuned for those future mystery boxes we kind of get stuff out of inventory once in a while into our office, out of our warehouse so I think we're going to have to based on the success we've had instead of trying to do one huge one And maybe we'll try to do something a little bit more frequent, a little smaller. So that's kind of what's been keeping me busy. But today I wanted to talk about how to fish a mountain stream. I realized, you know, it's the type of fishing that I love doing the most. It is the type of fishing that I do the most by far. Yet I have never covered that as a topic in this podcast. and part of the reason that I thought about it was because a couple of weeks ago I went on a hike with a couple of friends right by our house here and the hike a large part of the hike follows a little stream close to my house called Bear Creek. Bear Creek does not have trout. I really wish it does. It did because I can walk to it from my house and it'd be really fun to fish but in any case, you know, we just kind of went into the mountains here, started hiking, followed Bear Creek for a good amount. Some of it really looks very fishy kind of water. Disappointingly, it doesn't, as I mentioned. But at one point, my friends wanted to turn back around. I think we were about four miles into our hike, and they just wanted to go back. And I realized that I've lived next to this stream for almost eight years now, seven and a half years. And I didn't know exactly where Bear Creek originated. You know, I've seen it on maps. I've seen kind of like the potential source on a map, you know, like, and I know the topography of the terrain above, and I kind of had a hunch of where it could start. But, you know, in reality, I just didn't know the stream that well. And it just kind of started making me think about how one of the things that I love about fishing mountain streams is getting to know the stream. So that day, you know, my friends turned around, I decided to keep hiking. And I went off the trail, following Bear Creek, which kept getting smaller and smaller and smaller. And eventually, after my friends left, it was probably about two miles in, I found the actual source of Bear Creek. And it was really fun. It was not exactly how I expected it would have originated. It got really, really small. And then like near the top, it kind of looked like a spring creek, you know, the beginning of a spring creek where it had like some little weeds and like just kind of like very shallow water, but a little bit more widespread. But that wasn't quite the source. So I kept, at least not at the moment. So I kept hiking up a little bit more and found a place where the stream disappeared. And it was essentially kind of like a meadow-y area and it was groundwater feeding into Bear Creek. But it was just a really kind of nice window into getting to know a stream. And it was a day that I wasn't focused on fishing.

5:59I've talked a little bit in the past, a few weeks ago, about getting to explore a stream close to home. And I also talked in an episode before that about the idea of going out to maybe observe fish to get to know a stream, not necessarily with the intent of fishing, but just to kind of observe things. And that's kind of what I did that day. It was just a little bit of a, you know, thing to pay attention to things other than trout. And there's some really cool little things that I saw, some undercut banks that I didn't expect to be there. And I saw some wildlife kind of tracks. There were some places that I expected to be bushwhacking, but to my surprise, it was actually pretty open. So there's all kinds of cool little things. And so today I'm going to talk about mountain streams. And the first thing that I think we need to talk about is trying to define what a mountain stream is. When I started introducing Tenkara to the U.S., we used to use the term small stream. You know, Tenkara is perfect for small streams. And very quickly, I realized that small streams, they have all kinds of definitions, you know, they can mean different things to different people. So it was really kind of hard to convey why Tenkara was ideal for small streams when we're using 12-foot long rods.

7:21There was not a very clear definition of small stream for somebody who's fishing, Pennsylvania is going to be vastly different from a small stream that I'm fishing here in Colorado, for example. Some people like fishing small streams up in headwaters, which are going to be really tight, very canopy, kind of choked up, canopy-heavy streams. Other people might like to fish the small stream close their homes. So same thing is kind of applying to mountain streams. We have all kinds of mountain streams. Some of them are going to be really small, very tight with a lot of canopy overhead. Other parts of mountain streams are going to be very open, like no canopy whatsoever overhead. Some of them are going to be very narrow. I fish mountain streams that are three feet wide, and I've caught fish out of those. I've also fished mountain streams that are maybe 60 feet wide and perhaps a little bit more shallow because the water kind of got spread. Some of them are open, some of them are closed in terms of trees overhead and so forth.

8:25So today I'm going to be covering all of those in a way. But the one thing that all those mountain streams have in common is going to be moving water and well-defined features. So when we're talking about a spring creek, you kind of see this flowing water. A lot of times the features may not be super well-defined. When we're talking about lakes, we don't have moving water. So I think the one thing that ties a mountain stream together with another one is going to be the presence of moving water and well-defined features, whether that's going to be bigger boulders that may be sticking out of the water or submerged. It's going to be whirlpools. It's going to be like little undercuts that you can see well. So that's kind of what I want us to envision, whether it's a very small mountain stream or a larger one. They're going to have those features. Now, what I like about them the most is exactly that.

9:27So first of all is the moving water part. I just love the water kind of rushing by. But more important, what I love about them and what keeps me going back to mountain streams is that every time you step into one, every step you take into a mountain stream, every step that you take upstream, it's going to reveal a different body of water. And it's amazing. It's almost like an infinite number of possibilities because, you know, like you get to a pool and if you're looking at it facing upstream, you know, from the tail end to the head, that pool is going to look one way. If you move upstream a little bit and you look at it across, you're going to see a whirlpool on the other side or some kind of seam in a current on the other side. That's a completely different situation, scenario, and that kind of thing. If you go to the head of the pool and you look down to the tail, it's going to be different. Now, you step onto the next little pool and you go around the next band and you have a completely different body of water. So, you know, if you get to a stream and you're fishing for a day, maybe you're going to cover a mile of a stream, you fish like an incredible variety of waters, an incredible variety of conditions.

10:38Some of them are challenging than others. Some of them were, you know, trees overhead. Some of them had whirlpools. And that, to me, is really, really interesting and very, very different from, let's say, a meandering kind of metal river or even a stream or a lake. You know, yes, you get some variety but not quite as much. So that's part of the reason that I like fishing mountain streams. Other ones, of course, you know, there's clear water. I am a trout fisherman. Even though during runoff I will, and as I have, I will fish for carp and bass and that kind of thing. I like those. But I think a mountain stream is what keeps really kind of coming back, pulling me in. Now, the other part of it, you know, like one part that we need to discuss, you know, how easy is it to fish mountain streams? You know, like are they the easiest bodies of water? Are they the hardest bodies of water to fish? and that's something that kind of comes up oftentimes when people are asking me like where should I go like you know I'm a brand new angler what is the easiest place for me to get into fishing and there's a couple of ways to look at it so oftentimes lakes and ponds close by they're going to be more accessible oftentimes they're going to have like more kind of fish activity in terms of like you might see the bluegill, little bass kind of moving around, but you might kind of have to find them.

12:07Everybody at water has its own challenges, but what I like about in terms of telling people to go fish a mountain stream when they're starting to fly fish is because you see these really well-defined features. It's a different type of fishing altogether, but you have the currents, and one way to look at it when you're starting off in fly fishing is that the currents are bringing the food to the fish, So you know of that. You know, the mountain stream is going to be doing that. And the other thing is that where are the fish going to be hanging out? So we know the food is going to come with the current. Where are the fish? The fish are typically going to be close to those currents because the currents are going to be bringing the food to them. But a fish does not want to be fighting a current all day long because it's going to be exhausting. It's going to be spending a lot more energy than it might gain. So the fish, you know, specifically trout in this case, even though we can also fish for other species, and I can talk about that in a second. The trout in particular, but other fish, they're going to like to hang in calm water close to currents.

13:11So typically where calm water meets fast water, that's a good place to fish. In a mountain stream with really well-defined features that's a little smaller, it's typically a very good bet just to target the slowest pools of water that you can see, the slowest moving water amongst all the fast water. So in that sense, it makes fishing a mountain stream fairly easy because you can identify where you think the fish are going to be and how is the food going to be moving and that kind of thing. Other bodies of water, you have different types of things. The challenge of fishing a mountain stream is that many times, especially when you're beginning, you may not be able to see the fish. They're really good at camouflaging. With time, you start picking up on them a little bit more. Polarized sunglasses help a lot here, so that is one of the challenges. The other one is how to deal with the canopy, the trees overhead, if it's a smaller or a slightly tighter stream.

14:15So that's a couple of things that I'm going to be talking about today. And just kind of try to kind of give you an overview. So let's deal with the first one, challenge. How to deal with trees because that's kind of a big one when you're fishing mountain streams. You know where to find a fish, now let's get the fly in the water and not get it snagged as much. So when you're fishing a mountain stream that has more trees, the trees might be behind you, they might be overhead. And I think one of the most important skills to have is to have a really good awareness of where those potential snags are going to be. I have done an episode in the past about snags, how to avoid them, how to deal with them. When you do get snagged, how to try to get your fly out. So look up for that podcast episode. I don't want to get too much into this right now. But the one thing that is really, really important is going to be every time you step into a new body position, you know, you're facing a different angle, or you move up a foot or two feet up, if you don't know exactly where the tree branches are, look up.

15:30It takes you one second to look up over your shoulders, look up behind you, and identify where those potential snags are going to be so that you can try to avoid them. And in a mountain stream, when we're fishing it, that's the number one step in reducing all frustrations that you might have is going to be knowing where those potential snags are and then adjusting your casting accordingly. So you're typically going to try to get your rod to move towards the openings in the canopy. If there's a lot of trees above your head, you might have to start getting into different techniques or casting over water. So awareness is number one, and adaptability, you know, just changing your casting style a little bit. So instead of always doing the up and down cast, if there's more trees, you might have to do more of a sidearm cast. If there's a lot of trees, you may have to move your rod tip completely sideways over the stream. So you're doing a sidearm casting to get your line moving, to get you where you want to.

16:36Every single cast is just going to be the same exact motion, just using different angles to avoid those snags. So that's mostly kind of what I want to get into in terms of that. always take a look at what's up above you, especially when you're getting started. With time, that kind of awareness starts becoming a little bit more natural. It's going to be a little easier to just know before you move what you're going to want to avoid, that kind of thing. With that being said, we all get caught. No matter how much experience you have, my teachers in Japan who have been fishing for decades, myself, we all get caught on trees on occasion, and we all have better days than other days. I've had days that I fished an entire day without losing a fly. Not very often, but I've had those. I've also had days that it seemed to me like I was losing a fly in every couple of casts. That just kind of comes with, you know, like our mindset that day, like are we distracted, Are we more aware and so forth?

17:40So when those frustrations kind of happen to you fishing a mountain stream, do not be too discouraged by them. We're all going to have those days. Try to get your fly. Listen to my podcast episode about snags and that kind of thing. Hopefully that's going to help. The other thing with a lot of mountain streams is going to be your technique, you know, like in terms of particularly in terms of the drifts that you're going to get. They're going to be a little bit shorter. So let's talk a little bit about techniques here. In Tenkara, oftentimes you might come across articles, writing that we've done about fly manipulations. And in my book, I cover the main techniques that we use. But with that being said, I want to mention that a dead drift, where your fly is drifting with the speed of the current, is going to be your main tool, your main technique in a mountain stream. oftentimes as I mentioned the current is going to be bringing the food to the fish and that food is essentially bugs that are caught in the current and yes sometimes they're going to be moving but oftentimes they're just kind of drifting depending on the speed of the current and they're going to think they're going to move less or more but a dead drift is the main skill for you to master and that's typically in any kind of situation But I want to make sure that I mentioned that sometimes we focus so much on the fly manipulation.

19:11You know, it's a really important skill of Tenkara that we forget to emphasize how important a really good drift is, a really good drag-free dead drift is. So one tip that I'll share here with you today, you know, focus on those. and one tip is always start with your arm close to your body when you're fishing across or you know like as soon as the fly kind of starts going a little downstream from you anytime the fly is going to go from in front of you to downstream start with your arm close to your body as the fly starts going downstream you know in the current that you picked out start pushing your arm out towards the other shore and downstream at the same time. That's a technique that can vastly improve your drift. Even like those times that you think you're getting a really, really good drift without doing that, if you do this, it just kind of pushes the, let's say, the efficiency of that, you know, the efficacy of that drift from a 95% good dead drift to 100% good.

20:20You know, so that's one little tip today. any time the fly is going from in front across from you to downstream, push your arm out towards the other shore and downstream at the same time to keep up with the fly. And what that does is it keeps the fly in the lane that you picked without making it drift a little bit towards you. So it's a very effective thing. Now, in the other part of it that kind of goes along with techniques is how do you kind of fish a mountain stream? One of the really cool things about fishing a mountain stream that I kind of alluded to a little bit earlier is that every pool that you come across gives you a variety of vantage points. And what that means is that it's also a variety of fly presentation angles that you can have. So presenting a fly, casting directly upstream when you're in the tail of the pool is going to be different from when you present the fly from the side of the pool, and it's going to be different from when you might present the fly from upstream towards downstream.

21:31So that's one thing that we should take advantage of in a mountain stream. You get to a pool, it looks good, it looks fishy, and typically we're moving upstream. I'm not going to get too much into that. I fish up and downstream just to mention it briefly I think both can be very very effective primarily I like going upstream because I can see the pools a little bit better if the stream is very steep and gradient I can also take advantage of being a little bit more hidden from the fish up above and if there's other people fishing in the water I'm not going to be crossing paths with them kind of destroying different waters and that kind of thing but let's say we're moving upstream just as a standard. You get to the tail end of the pool, you cast upstream, have your fly land on the water, no line. As the fly starts moving towards you, you start angling the rod up back towards you to keep up with the speed of the current.

22:36So that's your presentation number one. And you might do that maybe three times. If there's no fish that came up, the pool looks really good and you kind of really think there's a fish there you can, all of a sudden this pool, doesn't matter how big it is but let's say a 10 foot pool you can fish it from the side and instead of casting completely upstream maybe you're casting a quarter upstream let the fly kind of drift kind of in front of you and downstream and if it still looks really good and you want to try a different technique you know, you can maybe pulsate the fly up and down So all of a sudden you have a third presentation right there in the same pool. If you feel like you haven't spooked whatever is being in the water and you want to try something different, you can move up to the head of the pool, especially in a larger kind of pool, and you can cast downstream towards the tail end of the pool. And maybe there's a fish there hanging in front of a rock, for example, and you can drag the fly on the surface or you can just kind of pause there or you can drag and drift it.

23:42you can do a few different techniques. All of a sudden in one pool, let's imagine a 10 foot by 10 foot pool, we've had maybe six or seven presentations to try to entice the fish that are not there. Of course, that's without, you know, kind of thinking that we didn't scare the fish away and that kind of thing if we approach them carefully. But that's a huge advantage when you're fishing a mountain stream because you have one spot, variety of presentations, and a variety of places where the fish may be as well. So that's a little bit of terms of technique. With that being said, as I talked about moving, one other thing that I like to mention about fishing mountain streams is to move. So when I first started learning under Dr. Ishigaki in Japan, one of my teachers, I would go, you know, we were always fishing mountain streams. That's what we fish when we go to Japan. And I always thought that I moved enough in a stream. But I would get to a stream, fish it for a few minutes, and he would always be on top of my shoulder saying, dun, dun, dun, dun, which literally means gradually.

24:50But it's a way of saying keep moving, moving, moving gradually. So that's kind of what I learned about the importance of moving. Because in a mountain stream, you cast a fly to the pool, if the pool is not particularly large, the fish there's a good chance it's going to grab your fly in the first or second maybe third cast once you've done that yes there's chances of catching fish still after some other presentations but not quite as much so in my opinion a more effective way of or a more efficient way to fly fish a mountain stream is to keep moving not spend much time in one pool and that's in particular if if it's a mountain stream without any traffic you know you have the whole stream you can cover mileage instead of spending time in one pool. There's nobody else around you. You're not trying to, not being concerned. If there's a lot of people, if it's a stream that kind of gets a little bit more pressure, then yes, I think, you know, maybe we want to stay a little bit longer in a pool.

25:52Not very long because it's not going to make a huge difference oftentimes. But we also want to just kind of, don't want to keep moving all the time if there's a lot of people fishing. So that's kind of a very important tip, I think, in terms of fishing a mountain stream because sometimes we're used to fishing slower water, bigger pools, you know, like a larger river where, you know, it might be wider, it might be deeper. You might have a much larger number of places where the fish may be holding, larger depths that you might want to cover. A mountain stream is a little different. You know, it's generally speaking, and I'm making generalizations here, slightly more limited number. Even though we have a huge variety, as I said, you can cover the variety pretty quickly. So, you know, three casts, typically speaking, as a rule of thumb, what I do is if it's a smallish pool, talking about 10 feet by 10 feet roughly or less, I'm going to typically do maybe three or four casts, kind of more generally speaking upstream, maybe three or four casts from a different angle, whether it's side or top.

27:07And then I'll fish the next pocket or next pool up above. So that's how I typically kind of approach that. Now, hopefully I kind of give you enough on the techniques and, you know, strategies, I guess, to break a stream up and kind of fish those. Now let's talk a little bit about the equipment. So a mountain stream can be a variety of things. As I mentioned, small, large. So there's going to be a variety of equipment combinations that you can use as well. But here is where I think Tenkara, I think we've talked a lot about how Tenkara really shines in moving water. Tenkara absolutely kills it on mountain streams. and that largely comes from the fact that we're using longer rods and we're able to cast an incredibly light line and typically speaking just fishing with like tip it and fly or maybe a little bit of the line, tip it and fly in the water depending on the technique. But the long rod is the key here.

28:09Oftentimes when we're thinking about mountain streams we associated them with small. It doesn't matter whether it's small or large. you're going to want to use a rod that's as long as you can get away with. Keep in mind, with a long rod, you always have the option to choke up on the grip, potentially collapse the segment. You have different techniques. You can kneel down a little bit, and then when the pool gets bigger, you still have the reach. With a shorter rod, it fits really well in the places that are very tight. So if you're fishing almost exclusively very small streams, a small rod is definitely the way to go. But, you know, you do lose the reach that's a little harder to make up for. With a long rod, you can make up for some of the shortcomings. With a short rod, it's a little bit harder. So my main recommendation is get the longest rod that you can. For the average kind of water, you're going to be fishing. Longer rod, usually the better. the rod that you're going to find in my hand as I've talked over and over and over again is usually the ito even in a smallish mountain stream because I know I can kind of shorten it I know I can choke up on the grip I can tie you know tie a shorter line to it and that kind of thing still have a lot of flexibility with that being said the sato is probably one of my main recommendations is an all-around rod because you can fish it as a small rod 10 feet 8 on the short end or a fairly long rod, 12 feet 9.

29:39And that's actually the main range of lengths of most popular Tenkara rods out there. So we kind of put all the most popular lengths of a Tenkara rod in one package. So you have fewer decisions to make in that sense. Really good rod for mountain streams, whether you're just beginning or whether you're experienced. The Ito tends to be a slightly better rod if you have a little bit more experience, in my opinion. Still fine for a beginner, but just a little bit better in the hands of an experienced angler. And then the Rhodo is a small mountain stream rod, 8 feet 10 inches. Very, very few, if anything, kind of rods in the market in Japan, for example, are that short. That's an incredibly short length. And we designed that rod, the Rhodo, to be fished in a place that has a lot of canopy. We wanted to give you that sub-9 foot length. If you choke up on the grip and you're holding like at the end of the first section, you're essentially fishing a 7-foot rod, which is really, really short.

30:42But we also wanted to give you that length and the longer length. So 10 feet 6 inches is the long length of the roto. It's not a long rod by any means in Tenkara standards, but it gives you a little bit more reach when you want it. So the adjustable rods that we carry that tend to be my favorite for fishing a mountain stream. And the reason for that is because, kind of like I mentioned a second ago, you know, you have the more effective techniques for fishing a mountain stream is usually going to be to move. Now, here's what a tenkara rod that's adjustable is going to be doing. You're in one pool. Let's say I'm fishing the sato. I'm fishing the small pocket in front of me, you know, 10 feet wide approximately. The next pool up above me is maybe, you know, 12 feet or so up above, and there's some rocks. The sato, I'm going to fish it at 10 feet 8. You know, I'm fishing a smallish kind of mountain stream. Keep it at shorter length to make it feel lighter.

31:45That's kind of like one of the kind of things when you're using an adjustable rod. Shorter length is going to make you feel lighter in the hand because you're bringing the center of gravity down towards your hand. Longer length is going to be a little bit heavier, but it's going to give you much more reach. So which one do you want? So if I'm fishing, maybe a shorter length is good if I'm fishing like an all-day smaller stream. But one thing that we have to be very mindful of is not to spook the fish. So I use the adjustable feature of Tenkara Rods all the time when I'm fishing a mountain stream because I can be in this pool, the 10-foot wide pool, the next pool up above me is 12 feet away. And without moving, I can just turn my body face upstream a little bit more. And I can extend the sections that I want out of the adjustable tenkara rods. And I can fish the next pool up without moving at all. So that's going to reduce the chance of a fish getting spooked tremendously.

32:45and then I kind of fish it from being below and do a few casts from there and then I approach it kind of carefully to fish the farther section of that pool. I can keep the rod extended or shorten it at that point. So some people say that they don't use the adjustable rod features a lot. When I started developing the rods, I did not expect that I would use it a whole lot. I kind of started developing the concept. I knew the rods were around. We didn't create the first adjustable tank-out of rods. But when I started fishing with it, I was using the adjustable features all the time. So I can have the more reach when I want it. And now let's say I move up to the next pull-up, and there's a little bit of extra canopy overhead. There's a little bit more branches hanging up above the stream. I can shorten the rod again and make it shorter. So that's my recommendation there. In terms of lines, the line is going to be matched to the stream.

33:46You know, the line length in particular is going to be matched to the stream that you're fishing. As I mentioned before in previous episodes, I usually like to carry two lines with me, what I'd consider a short line, roughly the same length as the rod, and a longer line. If I'm fishing one little stream, I'm going to fish a shorter one. If I ever get to like a larger tributary or main river, I might switch to the longer one and so forth. But line is going to depend on the type of stream you're fishing. It's going to be mostly a personal preference. Now let's talk a little bit about flies. So this is where the philosophy or the idea of using very few fly patterns really comes in handy and it can be incredibly effective. So some of you might have heard, oftentimes tenkara anglers in Japan, they use one fly pattern. They don't switch very much at all. And they get away with it. They catch a lot of fish. Large part of the reason, I think, is because they're fishing moving water, where the fish are truly just trying to get as much food as they can, and they don't have quite as much time to make the decision to analyze the fly and that kind of thing.

34:56So I think that the one fly kind of system works in a variety of conditions. I fish mountain streams. I fish spring creeks, lakes, canals, all using like the few flies that we sell on our website, essentially one fly pattern. But I feel the most confident of using one fly only when I'm fishing a mountain stream because of that. And I can also present the fly in different ways. I can make the fly behave in different ways and that kind of thing. The only rule of thumb that I kind of follow, you know, if I don't have a fly, so we offer four different flies on our website. Essentially almost the same pattern. Size 12 is the middle, you know, kind of like an average size fly. Size 16 is really small. Size 8 is a larger fly. Only rule of thumb that I typically adopt is that when a stream is running kind of high for that type of water, you can notice that it's running kind of fast, a little bit higher than usual or a little bit murkier, then I like to start off with a large fly, which in my opinion is going to be giving the fish a better chance to see the fly.

36:04And as I mentioned, they just want to maximize the caloric intake, so it's going to give them more of an incentive to kind of grab the fly if the water is running faster and higher. Other than that, I just kind of tie whatever I'm in the mood for, and I've had a lot of success with a variety of flies in mountain streams. This is where I think the flies are not quite as important as a lot of people think. You can use any fly you want. You can use your dry flies. You can use your nymphs and that kind of thing. But the Tenkara flies can work wonders in a mountain stream. In terms of multi-fly rigs, oftentimes people like, they ask me, and they like to use multi-fly rigs, you know, like a dry dropper where you have a dry fly that's tied to the line, and off of that you have like maybe a foot of tippet and another little fly that's designed to sink. Sometimes people use that for mountain streams. Like when I fished with John Girock and Ed Engle, for example, my first visit to Colorado, that's the rig that they wanted to use and I was trying to convince them to use the same kind of flies, but they would have none of it because they were so used to using the dry dropper, like an elk air catas and a little, you know, hares-eared nymph or something like that.

37:16I personally don't think I need to use multiple flies. I don't use multiple flies regardless of situations, but I think in a mountain stream is where you can get away with even less using multi-flies. But here's a very important point that I want to make today, asking you not to use multiple flies in your rig. Somebody shared a post with me on Twitter recently where he saved a bird that was caught in fishing line. And it just happened to be in a state park really close to where I live. He came across this bird, and the bird was tangled up in fishing line, and the bird went out, and it was very clear from how he was tied up to the tree still that the bird saw this nymph dangling, thought it was an insect, went to take it, got caught in the hook, and then the line above it wrapped it. I came across exactly the same situation many years ago in Yellowstone National Park, where I was coming across a bend on the river.

38:24Same exact thing happened. A bird had obviously tried to take an insect, a nymph with a hook, got caught, got wrapped around the line. I saw this thing kind of fluttering. It was the very end of the day. If I hadn't come across that bird right when I did it, the bird would have almost certainly died. so I think after that is when I really became a little bit not a little bit I became kind of adamantly opposed to using multiple flies in my own fishing if you do use multiple flies if you feel like that's necessary and you happen to snag yourself on a tree try, please try as hard as you possibly can to get the fly back at least one of them because that fly is going to be hanging. And these are not the only two accounts. I've heard of multiple other accounts of similar things happening, sometimes dead birds, sometimes live birds. So if you are going to use multiple flies, please try as hard as you can to get those back.

39:26But I think using a single fly, if you get snagged, flies caught on a branch, never ideal. Always try to get a fly back as much as possible because there's going to oftentimes be fishing line anyways. but I think a single fly is a little less dangerous. So that's kind of my soapbox about that. Now let's talk a little bit about dressing up. How do you fish a mountain stream in terms of what you should wear and boots and that kind of thing. So I think that anytime you're kind of going out dedicated to fishing for a few hours, using waders is really nice. It'll keep you more comfortable. It keeps you dry. It keeps you warmer. If you come across a mishap and you get trapped, as I've seen happen, or read about having happen, you get trapped in a rock in the water, you're going to be a little warmer in a better situation. So that's kind of that on that.

40:28But be mindful that waders can be dangerous as well. If you're fishing deeper mountain streams, please learn how to take the air out of your waders. So the way to do that is you're going to put the waders on. Before you put your belt on, you're going to kneel down to squeeze all the air out, and then you're going to tighten your belt around your waist. Be very mindful of that because if you don't do that, you're going to have extra buoyancy. You might lose a footing a little bit more easily. And the dangerous part is that a wader can fill up with water. If you're fishing a more remote, deeper, bigger mountain stream, be very aware of that. If I'm fishing in the winter, definitely I like using waders with warm clothing underneath it. If I'm fishing in the summertime, that's where I kind of think that wet wading can be really good. Even if I'm fishing for several hours, first you're not going to be quite as warm or hot, I should say. But you kind of come in and out of the water really quickly.

41:30You're staying fresh. You can kind of dry off, go back in. So it's kind of a personal preference, to be honest. Generally speaking, I like to use waders into the shoulder seasons or winter. In the summertime, I wet wade. But I do like to use neoprene socks and sometimes even a warm sock inside of that to keep my feet warm. Because even if it's a 100-degree day out there and you're spending a lot of time in the water, your feet can get kind of cold. So you kind of, well, let me go back. If it's 100-degree a day, I'm going to use probably no socks or just some lightweight socks. But if it's a little bit colder, your feet can get cold kind of quickly. So neoprene socks or something like that with wading boots or sandals can be really handy. Now, a mountain stream can be really, really slippery. You might be coming across boulders that are covered in algae, all kinds of things like that. So waiting boots that are sticky can do a really good job at keeping you safe as a waiting staff would.

42:35So I just want to point out the possibilities here, right? Because everything is a matter of personal preference. It's going to vary according to seasons. You have to keep a few things in mind. Some people may like using a waiter to stay warm. Some people may like to not use a waiter so they don't get too hot. Waiting staff, if you have a little bit of trouble with mobility or you're going to a place that is really, really slippery, Waiting staffs are really handy. And the nice thing about Tenkara is that you don't have to use two hands to fish. So you can keep using a waiting staff as you fish with the other hand. So some people like that about that. I typically use boots when I fish, waiting boots specifically. And I usually like to use rubber. There's a whole argument about felt versus rubber. I like rubber sole boots for the simple reason that if I'm stepping on slick boulders outside of water, they're not going to slip as much as something with just pure felt or with cleats. If I'm walking on grass, like dry grass, kind of same thing, or snow.

43:41So I kind of found that rubber boots for me with like very aggressive soles tend to be more effective or more versatile, working a variety of conditions more. Felt tends to be really grippy when it's wet rocks and that kind of thing. So I'm not going to get into the argument, but I wanted to point those things out. One other thing is, you know, how to find and stay found on those mountain streams. I just did an episode recently about exploring home waters, the idea of not getting lost. The nice thing about fishing a mountain stream is that typically you're kind of following it, and if you're moving upstream, you know you can just go back downstream to where you kind of came from. So it's a little harder to get lost, but I do want to point out that I've had situations where you come across a small little fork in a mountain stream, and you kind of think that they're going to join back together and all of a sudden you're in kind of a different drainage.

44:44So just be mindful of that. And actually I haven't done an episode since Gaia got in touch as well, but Gaia GPS, the service that I mentioned on the exploring different waters, got in touch with us and they're offering a 20% off discount for Tenkara anglers who are listeners of this episode. They do give us a small commission, 5%, but I don't really care too much about that. It was just nice that they're giving a discount. You just have to go to gaiegps.com forward slash Tenkara USA if you're interested in getting a map so that you know where the drainages are going to go. And that's kind of where it comes in most handy for me. I look at the drainages before I go fishing more often and see if there's forks that I want to explore and that kind of thing. So looking at a topo map, see if there's going to be a drainage that you could get sucked into is important. Seeing how steep they might be as well is also important so that you know you're not getting into something that's kind of over your head sometimes.

45:50So that's mostly it. Yeah, I think I covered it all. I kind of made a list today. I tend to ramble on, and I got the feedback as well recently. So I'm trying to kind of make notes before I start talking your ears off. But thanks so much for listening to another episode of the Tenkara Cast. I really appreciate all of you who are subscribers to the podcast. If you haven't yet, if you're new to listening to the podcast and you haven't had a chance yet, please leave us a review on your favorite podcast app. But iTunes tends to be the best one. However you find this podcast, if you're able to leave us a review, That would be great. I really appreciate that. It makes people more willing to listen to it. If I have something good to say, if you appreciate it, the information that we share, I really appreciate that. For a little bit more information that I might have referred to this, go to tenkarausa.com forward slash podcast.

46:51And I'm going to try to put a couple of references like the Guide GPS app and waiting boots that I like and that kind of thing I'm going to put on this podcast episode. if you have any tips to share anything that I might have missed just leave a comment on this podcast page people have been good at leaving comments sometimes things that I that they have experience with and so forth that has been really handy for other people as well so if you have anything to say please don't hesitate to contact us or leave a comment on this podcast episode alright thanks again and until next time on the Think Out of Cast And as always, I'd like to specially thank Nick Ogawa Takenobu. You can find his music at takenobumusic.com, as well as our Spotify playlists. In Spotify, just look up Tenkara, and you should find Tenkara tunes with a lot of Takenobu's music.

47:55Find any information referenced to this podcast at tenkarausa.com forward slash podcast. Just find the link to this podcast episode and you'll find any photos, links, or other information referenced, right? This song is called Voyage Across the Sea. Thank you.