The Ito: Daniel's favorite tenkara rod

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 me again for another episode of the Tenkara Cast. It has just dawned on me that it is March 1st. We are now on the third month of the year and 2017 is flying by really, really fast. first of all let me give you a little update about something very exciting that's happening today and tomorrow morning we have finished Tenkara the book yay yes the book is now done and we're gonna be Jeremy and I just we're revising the file and just making sure everything looks really really sharp and we're sending it to the printer tomorrow morning we've gone over it over and over again and it's looking really sharp i'm very excited about this project finally coming to fruition as of march 1st a couple of months behind the deadline that i had self-imposed here but it is going to be done quickly now the timeline that the printer has given me it's about two to three weeks we are getting the book printed here in denver so there's no extra transit time. As soon as it's in our warehouse, we'll ship it out to all of those of you who have participated in the Kickstarter campaign and backed the project. So I'm very excited the book is finally done and it's looking really sharp. I think, you know, I'm going to thank you so much for your patience, but I think you will be very pleased with how it's turned out.

2:08I've got a mock of the book here in my hands, 216 pages of pure goodness. It's looking really sharp. all the QR codes are working all the illustrations are done and now we're just kind of just sitting on it and sending the files to the printer tomorrow morning the paper even has been ordered the recycled paper that we're using has been ordered already and it's going to get there to the printer pretty shortly so that's been very exciting I can't believe two whole months went by for us to finally finish this much more work than I expected. It was like running a marathon over and over again, I think, over the last couple of months. For those of you who are interested in the book, do keep an eye out on our website, social media, and so forth. As soon as it's available for sale, you know, we'll be posting it out there. It will ship sometime in March. March 21st, I would say, it's kind of like the ETA at the moment. It just kind of depends on the printer and that kind of thing but these printers are printers that we've worked with for a lot of our projects and things tend to get done pretty quickly so look out for that and we'll start creating the files for the ebook version and that kind of thing as well so that's about the book now let me get to what I'm going to be talking about today which it is this episode is about my favorite rod the Ito so the reason I decided to talk about the Ito right now and do an episode that is a little bit different from the episodes that I've done so far and in that I'm actually promoting a specific product in our lineup is because of something that I noticed in the last week or so. So it was really interesting. We were pulling a lot of images for the book, a lot of the final images, and I realized that almost all of them, images that have me or friends, we have the Ito in our hands.

4:12You know, that's the rod that is in most photographs that I have taken, it seems like. And at the same time, I had a little project where we had to do some forecasting for the rest of the year. And looking at our numbers, you know, I knew this already, but it's kind of like interesting to see the distinction here. The Ito is not our best-selling rod by far. it's um the ito is just not the one that we sell the most so there's this interesting discrepancy that kind of made me think i should really talk about this um really kind of weird um description discrepancy here in the fact that the ito is my very favorite rod it's the favorite rod of a lot of the more experienced and kind of anglers that i know um but it is not our best selling rod, you know, and I think I know why. At least I can guess a few reasons why the Ito is not the best selling rod. And I can talk about why the Ito is my favorite rod. That's what I'm going to be getting into on this episode here. Let me talk first about why I think the Ito is not the best selling rod that we have. And then I'm going to talk about why it is my favorite and the favorite of a lot of people. So the Ito, for those of you who are not familiar, and I'm going to put a link on our website, tenkarausa.com forward slash podcast, but it's also easily available on the shop page, of course. The Ito is our 13 foot or 14 feet, seven inches rod.

5:46So you can fish it at two different lengths. It's designed to be fished at those two lengths. The Ito is also the longest rod that we have in our lineup at Tenkara USA. So right there, you know, giving you those numbers, I believe that the numbers are scary to a lot of people. You know, 13 foot, 14 feet, 7 inches. If you're coming from a Western fly fishing background and you're used to using a 7.5 to 9 foot rod, you look at those numbers and you're like, oh my gosh, that's like way too long. If you're new to fishing, of course, it's a little bit more intimidating. if you have seen the ito in a store or at fly fishing shows you know indoor kind of shows we extend the rod and some stores you might not even be able to open the entire rod but in the fly fishing shows oftentimes we have this black ceiling above us and it looks like the ito is about to touch the sky so all of those things combined i think make it for a fairly intimidating scary length of rod but I think anybody who has fished with the Ito will tell you that outside and when you're actually fishing it's not nearly it doesn't feel nearly as long as it sounds like you will and that's kind of like one of the interesting paradoxes here that you know we had this rod that sounds really long but when you're outside you have a little bit more space it's an incredible asset and that brings me up to the reason why the Ito is my favorite and why I think it is the favorite of a lot of people that get a chance to experience fishing with the Ito as well. So I've been asked the question of course many times of which one is your favorite rod and for a while I think I was very coy about saying which one was my favorite rod because I kind of thought of the rods as my kids. You know, I thought of them as having feelings and they're going to get hurt, you know, if I say which one is honestly my favorite.

7:48But those of you who know me probably know that the Ito is my favorite rod. And I'm no longer coy. I'm no longer shy about admitting my love for the Ito. It's the rod that I take whatever I can, you know any kind of place where I'm able to take the Ito I will take it and now I realize of course that the other rods are not going to have their hurt feelings or the feelings hurt and if they do I might do an episode about each one of them later but this is the truth the Ito is my favorite rod and I think the reason it is my favorite rod first and foremost it is the long length of the rod the very long reach that he allows me to have. So oftentimes when we're recommending rods to people, we usually recommend get the longest rod you can for the kinds of waters you're going to be fishing. And in this case, the Ito is the longest rod that I can take anywhere pretty much. And the reason we recommend the longest rod that you can take to the streams you're going to be fishing or the waters you're going to be fishing is because a longer rod, I believe, allows you a little bit more versatility, mostly in terms of reach and also the range of lines that you can pair with it.

9:07But the reach, I think, is the main one here. So let's look at the liito a little bit more in detail. On the last episode, I talked about the fishing tight streams, you know, with more like overhead canopy, and I talked about a couple of different techniques that you can use to get in those tight waters. And one of the things that I discussed, or two of the things that I discussed, one of them was that with Tenkara, you don't have a reel telling you where to hold your rod. You can always choke up on the grip. So the Ito, the collapsed length of the Ito is 24 inches or so. And so that's the first segment of the rod. When you're fishing with it, at 13 feet long, which is what length you're going to be using for the most part, if you find yourself in slightly tight waters, you can hold up the rod higher on the handle, which is about 12 inches or so. So that's going to be roughly 12 feet long rod. Or you can choke up on the grip even more and hold the rod at the very end of the first segment. That's instantly going to give you an 11 foot rod right there. So all of a sudden you have this 13 foot rod, again in tighter waters 11 foot rod and if you really want to you also have the option of collapsing a segment again as i mentioned in the last episode on the tight streams something that i haven't really done much in many years of fishing but you have the option if you're holding the rod above the set at the end of the first segment that's going to be 11 feet collapse one of the segments into the rod if you're fishing really tight waters that's going to be two feet shorter nine foot tenkara rod right there but then he opens up or you get into a different river you can pull the rod out to 13 feet or to 14 feet seven inches so the range that you have with the ito is pretty enormous you can fish the rod at a very long very wide range of lengths so that to me i think is like one of the things that makes it a one of my favorite rods as well the versatility The other thing is the reach by itself with the longer lengths.

11:23So I should mention that I do take the Ito when I'm fishing big waters, as well as some of the smaller waters that I fish close to home. Boulder Creek, which I've mentioned many times in this podcast, 25 to maybe 40 feet in some places, but most part it's going to be 25 feet across or so. I can reach on the other side of the stream in almost every part of it really well. even though it does have some trees above in some areas, I find that I can just kind of change my casting angles a little bit so that I can avoid the trees. And the cool thing about the longer rod too, you can minimize the amount of motion that you have to do in order to cast your line out. Because the rod itself is going to be such a long lever that you don't have to move the rod as much to cast the line. So all of a sudden I have this really cool thing. I have that versatility, the wide range of lengths, but then I can fish on this very very difficult pockets that nobody else can reach with the rod which is the ito so very often actually one thing that I like to do when I'm fishing with somebody especially if they have the shorter rods I will take the long rod and and then I know that I can reach pockets that they did not touch you know so if I'm fishing behind somebody and I'm introducing them to the tenkara for the first time maybe I'll give them a 12 foot rod but then I'll fish with the ito and i can get into these little pockets you know that are secondary pockets and still catch fish as well so that range and the ability to cast on the other side of currents the other side of a stream so in many cases is phenomenal uh so if i'm fishing big rivers oftentimes there might be currents as well that are kind of be going to be out of reach i can reach those as well now let me talk a little bit about the line length as well because that kind of gives us a wide range as well they can fit in a lot of different conditions and the E2 I think allows you to pair a lot of different lengths of line really well with the rod so if I'm fishing close to home here I'm using this 13 foot 14 foot 7 inch rod and the stream is 25 feet across in a lot of spots, even less in some areas.

13:42Very often, I will pair a line that is a little bit shorter than a rod, 11, 11 1⁄2 foot line, for example, plus 3 feet of tippet at the end of that. So the line is going to be, total length of line is going to be barely longer than the rod itself. and what that does is it allows me to get the line the fly into the spots that are kind of tight without having to move my rod as much i can also dap with it i can lower the fly into certain areas but i can also cast in other areas too depending on what is above me and behind me and that kind of thing but i can fish in very small kinds of areas pretty effectively with the long rod and a short line. As I mentioned on my other episode too on fishing tight waters I usually like to use longer rods and a shorter line when I'm fishing tight waters because of that. I don't have to move the line as much to get it to cast and if I have a very short rod and I try to use a short line then I'm not going to have the reach that I might need in some places. Then the other thing too like when I'm going to big rivers, the Ito allows me to cast very long lines very well. So whereas the Sato, you know, like which is our next, one of our other rods, which you can fish up to 12 feet, nine inches. With the Sato, I would say most people are going to be comfortable casting up to 18 foot line plus three, four feet of tippet. And that's plenty for a lot of places. But if I'm fishing big rivers like the madison river or you name it i mean just think of something large and i want to reach kind of like in these very difficult seams and keep the line off the water the ito allows me to cast even longer lines if i so desire i mean for the most part i'm probably going to use 18 to 20 foot line as well but i have had instances where i wanted to have even more reach and in that case I paired the Ito used the Ito at 14 feet 7 inches and then I used a line that was probably about 25 feet long plus four feet of tippet and the the reach that that gives me allows me to cast on the other side of multiple currents and in some rivers you know like fairly good size rivers nearby here like the Colorado I can wade in a little bit deeper and then I can cast on these little foam lines that are on the other side on the other shore that nobody really fishes effectively because it's so difficult to do so that's kind of a really cool thing about the ito it just gives you this long range of lines that you can pair with it as well so the ito is a it's an interesting rod because of that and that brings up the next thing that i wanted to talk about which is being very intriguing to me which is my experience when i'm teaching people and i put the ito in their hands so i had like for example my neighbor alan uh he bought a tenkara rod he realized that i was living across the street from him and we went fishing and he had a 12 foot iwana that he bought which is kind of like our main suggestion and we went to a stream that was not particularly large it was actually the same ring uh near lions and although it was a little bit more open, but not particularly large. And he started fishing with the Iwan. He's having fun. He's catching a lot of fish and that's a perfectly adequate rod for that situation. But then I put the Ito in his hand and all of a sudden he was giggling out loud. I mean, he was literally being like, woohoo, this is like really fun. You know, he was cheering because he was able to reach very effectively on the other side of currents with absolutely no line touching the water whatsoever. So right there, you know, he had looked at the 12-foot rod that he bought at the store. He was skeptical even of a 12-foot rod, you know, like, and that kind of indicates the behavior of most of you who are listening to this episode, I think. You know, you might be skeptical of even a 12-foot long rod, but then when you get to try a longer rod or get a little bit of experience with Tenkara under your belt, then it's not as intimidating as it might have sounded.

17:58at a first glance. So the Ito tends to be a favorite second rod for a lot of people, I would say, or it tends to be the most popular second Tenkara rod that we sell to most people because you get used to the length of a rod and then you start fishing with it. You realize that 12 foot is perfectly adequate, but sometimes you wish you had a little bit more reach. Then the Ito is that kind of next step that you can take and get a longer rod to give you more reach. And of course, typically, you know, that's going to be good if you're fishing slightly more open waters. It doesn't have to be big waters, but you do want to have a little bit more room to fish comfortably. So anybody fishing in the western part of the country where, you know, we have these pine trees kind of growing on the sides of the stream and tends to be a little bit more open in the middle, I highly recommend giving the Ito a try if you get a chance. lastly i wanted to talk about fish sizes as well um you know like we haven't quite promoted the ito as our big fish rod we do use the uh the amago you know as uh the rod that we promote for people that are targeting bass and larger fish on a frequent basis but what i have realized is that the ito is the rod that i'm always taking when i'm targeting large fish and all almost all of the fish the larger 20 plus inch fish that I have photos of, I have the Ito in my hand.

19:27So on our website at tenkarausa.com forward slash podcast, where I'm going to be posting this episode, take a look at that episode page and I'm going to put a video using the Ito to catch a couple of large fish and I'm going to put some photographs in there. And it's an interesting rod because it's, while I didn't quite design it to have like a huge amount of backbone and to be our big fish rod it does an incredible job at bringing large fish in quickly and part of that is because of the long length i think you have this kind of long lever that you can play with the fish but i think the long length what it does as well is it kind of forces the head of the fish to go up and catch kind of air and the fish get tired kind of quickly and he had this interesting kind of bungee cord and at the same time because the ito is a softer rod, the fish is not going to be feeling this kind of really stiff pressure. You're kind of coaxing the fish onto your shore as opposed to like having this brutal force that keeps the fish from running.

20:31So there's a few things that I think have happened that allow you to catch fish that are in really good size with the Yito. As a matter of fact, last year, you know, we're doing, I went fishing one day and we're going to fish one of the smaller streams close to home here. That was during the spring. And we got to the water, and the water was murky. It was running really high. It was kind of like a runoff season. And we fished for a few minutes in a smaller kind of stream, and I'm using the Ito. I'm not really catching anything. But then my friend Tim and I decided to just go see if we could go catch some carp and bass. And I've got the same rod, the Ito, and I'm hooked a pretty good-sized bass, maybe about five, six-pound bass, and a few minutes later, hooked a carp, and I actually put the videos on our, I went live on Facebook with Facebook Live videos and landed those fish without a problem.

21:32If I find the videos, I'll try to embed them on this podcast page as well. And that was a hoot, you know. I was intending to fish a smaller stream, catch trout. I only took one rod out, and we decided to change our minds. I didn't have to worry about a second rod. Took the Ito and caught carp and bass as well. So that versatility in terms of fish size is pretty cool. The Ito doesn't feel like a particularly robust rod when you're catching smaller fish, but it does have what it takes to bring a large fish in pretty quickly. In the other place you're going to see the Ito too, and I'll try to find that as well, if you're interested there's two tv show episodes that i did for the show called lipem and or rip and lipem r-i-p and then the apostrophe e-m and then same thing with lipem and there's two episodes that we're catching a lot of 20 inch fish on the eagle river here in colorado and we're using the ito uh i think on almost all of those fish so there you go you know it catches large fish handles them really well very good rod for that so that's kind of like you know i talked a lot it's already 22 minutes mark on my recorder here i i i kind of intended to make this a short episode i just kind of wanted to tell you go buy the ito but i uh i do love it you know it's a great rod it's always my first choice um the only times that i don't take the ito uh as my primary choice i would say is when I'm going fishing very tight streams I have a lot of canopy overhead and sometimes I don't take it if I'm traveling around the country and I have a smaller bag the Ito is a little bit longer 24 inches so it doesn't there's one suitcase that I like to carry with me to most places when I'm traveling for just a couple of days and the Ito doesn't fit on that very well sometimes I'll carry it on uh sometimes I'll take the sato it just kind of depends on how I'm packing but I'd say those are almost the pretty much the only times I don't take the ito if I'm fishing lakes if I'm fishing big rivers medium-sized streams the ito is probably the rod that you'll see in my hands and as well as the hands of a lot of the most experienced anglers in Japan as well there was actually this interesting story too like uh like 2013 i was fishing with mr yuso sebata who i think a lot of you are going to recognize because he's got the straw hat the conical straw hat and so we got a lot of photos of him on our website and so on and one of the days he wanted to fish with my rod so i gave him the ito which i had been using throughout the day and he immediately took a liking for it and he's like he had this beautiful facial expressions that made me feel very proud of the work that I did in designing the Ito and he just kind of started fishing with the Ito for the rest of the evening and had a good time with that one and at the end of the trip I gave him that rod and a few days after I got back from Japan I get an email or a call from one of his students and they wanted to buy several of the Ito for all of his students who are a little bit more experienced as well and so i just got a bunch of those rods shipped to japan and those i would say the ito is probably the most popular tenkara yosei rod in japan as well so that's kind of an interesting side note about the ito as well so if you haven't tried it yet i highly recommend give it a try you know feel free to take us up on our i should mention this i should probably mentioned this in every episode feel free to take us up on our no qualms no problems no uh our return policy you know we do offer a really good return policy at tenkara USA uh give the ride a try for 60 days and we can give you full refund we don't care no questions asked just give it a try like honestly um i put the policy a return policy in place for a reason and that's to encourage people to give Tenkara a try to begin with, but also to encourage you to give a try to the rod that you may want to see if you like or not.

25:56And the Ito is one that I'd highly recommend you take us up on that offer. Fish it for 60 days, fish it heavy, you know, get the rod through its paces. And if you don't like it, return it. The rods that get returned to us, if they have been used, we just put them in our demo fleet and oftentimes we'll take them out with Project Healing Waters and other non-profit programs. So it's not a problem. If you want to give the rod a try, order online, give it a try for 60 days, but I think you'll like it. I guarantee it, as a matter of fact. All right, well, thanks for listening to my long banter about the ETO. I hope you don't mind me promoting a specific product here on this episode, but it is a route that I'd like to see more people trying because I think more people will enjoy Tenkara even more because of it. All right, until the next time on the Tenkara Cast, the book is coming out soon. If you need more information about any of the things that I talked about today, tenkarausa.com forward slash podcast.

27:02And until later. And as always, I'd like to thank our friend Nick Ogawa Takenobu. You can find his music at takenobumusic.com. I'll put a link on our website. This is a song called Fishing. I think very appropriate. It's a song that made me learn about his work and totally fell in love with his music ever since. Thank him for letting us share his music here on the podcast. Take a look. He's got four beautiful albums on his website. So enjoy the rest of the song and listen to it on your next drive when you go fishing.

28:11Thank you.