Tenkara Q&A Part 2: Tenkara Lines, Tenkara Flies, and more

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. Hi everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Tenkara Cast. My name is Daniel. I'm your host. And in this podcast, I cover everything Tenkara. If you're new to the podcast, please take a look at our previous episodes.

1:00We have covered a lot of good content over the last couple of few years now. And if you haven't done yet, please subscribe to the podcast so you can get a notification on your phone through your favorite podcast app. We are now also available via Spotify if you use that. I know a lot of people use it. So this episode is a part two of our Q&A on Tenkara. Part one, I covered a couple of general questions about Tenkara. A couple of, one of them was like, you know, whether Tenkara is good for beginners, how so, why, and whether Tenkara is good for backpacking. And then I went into most things I could think about in terms of Tenkara rods. If I didn't answer your question on everything that you wanted to know about them, please Don't hesitate to drop us a line at tenkarausa.com forward slash podcast or whatever other means. You can email us. You can send a message through our blog and podcast page and so forth or Facebook. In this episode, I'm going to cover pretty much all the commonly asked questions that we get about tenkara lines and other questions that we thought would be beneficial to have here.

2:12so it's kind of a bigger thing but I'm also going to try to get into tenkara flies and some other questions that we get pretty often so hopefully I answer all your questions if by the end of the episode I haven't please don't hesitate to contact me as well now let's start with what length line should I use with a tenkara rod so that question can be kind of a big one But let me start by saying that whenever I refer to tenkara line, I'm referring to the thick, bright, or visible, very visible line that is going to be the casting line that's going to be moving your fly and so forth. But when I talk about tenkara line, that's what I'm talking about. and then at the end of the tenkara line we use tippet which is the thin clear fishing line that's going to separate your tenkara line from your fly as a rule of thumb i use four feet of tippet you can go between three and five or potentially even a little bit longer but between three and five feet of tippet i use four feet just stay in the middle so that kind of gets that out the way so we can focus on the length of the tenkara line specifically. So a good rule of thumb, and let me tell you first as well, there's no hard and fast rules in tenkara like when it comes to your rigging and a lot of other things. So I'm kind of providing you just some rule of thumb, some kind of places to start your experimentations with tenkara. But a very common place where people start is with a 12 foot tenkara rod, which is the average length of a tenkara rod, and 12 foot line. And as Jason Sparks one time turned me on to what he called the rule of 12s, 12 foot rod, 12 foot line, size 12 hook, you know, your size 12 hook on a tenkara fly.

4:14So that's a really good place to start. I like his rule of thumb, really easy to kind of understand. And it's a good place to start because a 12-foot rod, which is the same length as your Tenkara rod in this case, is going to give you good enough reach, but it's also going to be very manageable in terms of casting and in terms of landing the fish. So it gives you a good place to start learning. And for a lot of situations, for a huge number of situations, that's a perfectly adequate rig, and you probably don't even have to deviate from that that much. but I want to kind of show you some options as well. If you're using a short tenkara rod, a shorter tenkara line will also come in handy. So if you have, for example, our hane, which is a 10-foot, 10-inch rod, 12-foot line is perfectly adequate. But maybe you want to start with a 10-and-a-half, 10-foot line, four feet at the end of it, if you're fishing a smaller to medium-sized stream, something kind of paired with a rod.

5:16If you're using a longer rod, having a longer line will also come in handy. So if you have, for example, the Ito, which goes 13 feet or 14 feet 7 inches, you know, somewhere in between those two lengths is a good place to start. So maybe a 14 foot 6 inch line that we offer, great place to get started. You can have a very easy time learning how to cast, landing fish, and so forth. If you make the line much shorter than the rod when you're getting started, you could, first of all, you're going to miss out on the reach sometimes, but even the landing on a fish, if you go too short, could be a little bit problematic because, you know, you just don't have quite as much to pull it back. Usually we don't see that as being a problem, but just starting with the length of the rod is a good place to start. But then from there, you can go shorter or longer depending on your situation. So in the Tenkara Rods Q&A part here, I talked about my favorite rod, which is the Ito. You can fish the Ito at two different lengths, 13 feet or 14 feet 7 inches.

6:21And that's the rod that you see in my hands most of the time, whether I'm going to smaller stream or a very large river. And the main thing that I change, besides some technique as well, is going to be the length of the line. So when I go somewhere up in the mountains here, tighter kind of streams, I love pairing the Ito with a short line, roughly 11 feet in length and about 3 feet of tippet at the end of that. So the line plus tippet is going to be roughly the same length as the rod or a little bit shorter. I have even done it a little bit shorter, like a line that was roughly 10 feet and 3 feet of tippet. That was really good for like a small stream because then you're avoiding doing much casting. So that's kind of the main thing. And in terms of bringing the fish in, you just have to look for where the openings are.

7:21So that's one example. And at the same time, I have used the yito on many occasions on very large rivers. And in those cases, I combine the rod with a line that is roughly one and a half times the length of the rod. So, and that's, again, a rule of thumb, but that's a good length of line that you can still comfortably manage. You can land the fish without too much problems, but it's not way too long. I have gone longer lines as well, up to twice the length of the rod, but it starts becoming a little harder to manage, a little less easy to use that. But if you start experimenting, I just recommend that you don't go super long right away. You know, build up to it because you're going to have a little bit of a learning curve. So in terms of going the longer way, the shorter way, pretty easy. You don't have too much of a learning curve there as long as you don't go super short because then it becomes unpractical.

8:25But once you start experimenting with longer lines, I recommend adding about 3 feet of line at a time. So let's say you start with the E1, a 12-foot rod. First line is going to be 12 feet roughly, you know, give and take a few inches or a foot. And what I recommend if you start playing with longer lines is add about 3 feet. And when I say add, then we're usually playing with the level lines, you know, which allow you to adjust the length pretty easily. But you add about 3 feet at a time, so your next line might be a 15-foot line. gives you a chance to kind of get used to a little bit of a longer line, plus four feet of tip it at the end, and the one after, maybe 18 feet. And that will probably cover pretty much all the situations you may have in front of you. And if you really want to experiment with longer lines as well, but that's usually where I recommend people stop. So that's kind of the main, the gist for the length of the line.

9:29So I just mentioned level line. So another common question that we get is what type of lines are used with tenkara? So there's two main terms you're going to see relating to tenkara lines, level line or taper line. As the names imply, the taper line is going to just be a line that tapers down from a thicker end, which is going to be tied closer to the tip of the rod, to a thinner end, which is going to be where your tippet is going to connect, and then you fly after that. So tapered line, and then the other one is level line, which is a level diameter, and it comes usually in a spool that resembles more of a lot of people, what people usually know as fishing line. And then there's advantages and disadvantages. So what are the advantages of tapered lines for Tenkara? The main advantages, in my opinion, are going to be the ease of casting. It's going to just be much easier to cast because the taper line has a little bit more mass, and at the thinner end, it's going to stay off the water more easily.

10:36But it just has an easier casting, possibly more accurate when you're getting started. The disadvantage of a taper line typically is going to be that it's a little bit heavier than a level line So it's going to sag under the tip of the rod a little bit more So you may have to just kind of keep the rod a little bit more elevated, be more mindful of that Now what are the advantages of the level line? One of the main ones is related to the length of the line So the level line allows you to adjust the length of the line really easily and make your own line as you wish. So you get a spool of level line. At Tenkara USA, the level line comes in 65-foot spools. You can cut three, four lines out of that, or even five, to whatever length you want. And you can also adjust it on the fly. So if you find that you're fishing with a line that is too long and you really wish you had a shorter line, you can cut off three feet off of it and save it for later.

11:42And later on, you can join them back together with a blood knot or something similar. So that's one of the big advantages. The other one is that the line is much lighter, which allows you to keep the line off the water much more easily. The slight disadvantage to that is that because the line is lighter, it's going to take a little bit more getting used to casting with it. you're going to have to have a little bit more speed on a cast. And if you're just getting started, it may take a little bit longer to kind of get that right for the line to turn over really nicely. So that's kind of the gist of those. Now, another question that we get is, do I need to use a leader with a tenkara line? No. So if you're not familiar, A leader can be made in a variety of ways, but it's usually used in Western fly fishing where you have this very heavy, thick line, and you're trying to separate that line from the fly.

12:47And you're also having something that's going to make a little bit of a better transition. If you were to have your very thick line going straight to the fly, first of all, you want to be able to tie through the hook for the most part. but you wouldn't have a transition, so you'll just have a big splash at the end of it, and there's other things that happen because of it. So you want to have some separation and some transition to the fly. So that's what a leader is. It provides in Western fly fishing. With Tenkara, we are using a line that is way lighter, much, much thinner than a Western fly line. So we don't need to use a leader. The line is essentially the leader. All that we need to do is add some tippet to the end of the line. What length tippet? And I'm going to add to this one. What length and size tippet should I use with Tenkara? So in terms of the length of the tippet, I recommend just doing four feet long.

13:53That's my favorite length. It fits a huge variety of conditions really well. But anywhere between 3 and 5 feet or so is good. The times that I will use a shorter tippet, like 3 feet long, are when I'm fishing in very small stream, and I have more canopy, and I want to try to shorten my rig a little bit. And, you know, I don't need quite as much separation because I'm not moving the line quite as much. I'm also keeping the line off the water almost entirely, so I don't need quite as much separation. and three feet is acceptable then. Or maybe if my tippet gets a little shorter and it's three feet long, I would probably keep fishing with it unless I have a strong reason not to do so. The times that I might use a longer tippet might be when I'm fishing calm, clear water with slightly spookier fish, and I want to try to improve my presentation. And what I mean by presentation is just having the fish, giving the fish less chance of seeing my main line.

14:59So I just kind of want to try to get a little bit more separation. Then I'll use about five feet of tippets, like in a clear spring creek, for example. In terms of the size of the tippet, and what I mean by size in this case is the, in terms of what strength or what breaking strength of tippet. In the U.S., we refer to tippet as an X rating. So 5X is what I recommend. That's roughly the equivalent of five pounds, two and a half kilos. That's my kind of primary one. That's what I carry almost all the times. I feel like it's thin enough that it's not going to create much drag on my fly. It's also not going to be quite as visible to fish. But it's thick enough that it's going to be plenty strong for the majority of fish that I catch. However, if I'm going somewhere that has a lot of large fish, you know, 18-inch trout, or if I'm going somewhere with a decent number of bass or carp and larger fish species in general, then I use 4X tippet.

16:04I never go any thicker than 4X. I just don't find that I have a need for it because the Tenkara rod protects the thinner tippet, like a 4X or 5X, really well because it's going to be flexing. So it does a really good job of protecting the thinner tippet size. But with 4X, I still have the option of using my hand or the rod to break off the tippet. And what I mean by that is like, if I get snagged at the very end of the reach of the rod, I can pull straight in a straight line and I can still break the 4X. 3X material is going to be really hard to break by doing that without potentially damaging the rod. So a 5X tip at 4 feet in length is my rule of thumb, my main recommendation. What's the difference between a Tenkara line and a Western fly line? That's one of the questions, but I think I also get very commonly asked questions is do I need a Tenkara specific line for Tenkara?

17:10And yes, one of the huge advantages of a Tenkara is that you have the ability to cast as light a line as possible, which allows you to keep the line off the water. And when you start using a heavier Western Fly line, you lose that advantage. So the Tenkara lines are designed specifically for Tenkara rods. And yes, you can experiment with it. I have seen people that are marketing Western Fly lines with Tenkara. You can use it. I just really don't recommend it. We don't sell anything that's not Tenkara specific on our website because I've tried them. I never thought that there was much to it. So that's kind of our take on it. That's my take with my experience with Tenkara, you know, over the last 11 years, learning from people in Japan and so forth. Let's see. So I think that's, oh, and I think with, in terms of the lines, what knots do you use for connecting your tenkara line to your rod and then the tippet to line?

18:14So there's two types of lines, as we mentioned. There's the taper lines and the level lines. and the taper lines another advantage of taper lines can also be seen in the fact that they're very simple to set up taper lines they should come with a soft loop material on the thicker end which is going to be used to attach the line to the rod and all you have to do to rig the line is going to be making a girth hitch if you're not familiar with a girth hitch just look it up come to our website and you can see what it looks like but it's incredibly simple. It's not even a knot. It's a hitch, technically, where you just kind of fold it, and you fit it over the tip of the rod. So a very simple setup. If you're using a level line, then we're using a slipknot. If you come to tenkarausa.com forward slash videos, you should be able to find all the videos. Or if you just come to our homepage, actually, and you scroll down a little bit, one of the first videos that you see is the knots used for Tenkara.

19:18So that kind of hopefully shows you exactly what you need to do. But the slip knot that we use is actually technically a fisherman's knot, which ironically is one of the most underutilized knots in fly fishing. But that's what the level line knot to the rod is. And we have the advantages that we use the same knot for tippet to line and then tip it to fly as well. So we have what I've called in the past the Tenkara one knot. And it is a variation of a fisherman's knot where when you go to the tip of the rod, you make the fisherman's knot stand alone. You fit it over the lillian, the red brady material on the tip of the rod. You make the lillian go through that knot twice and you cinch it. On the other end of the level line, you tie a stopper knot and you can tie just about anything that you want there.

20:19I do a figure eight knot just to serve as a stopper, and then I do almost the same thing. I make a standalone fisherman's knot with the tippet, and then I fit it over the line and cinch it tight. I don't have to go through it twice because it's a little thinner, it has a little bit more bite. And then tippet to fly, same thing, except that I go through the eye of the fly first, and then I make the fisherman's knot. But you can see that. It's a visual thing, but you can come to our website and take a look at that. Now let's get into Tenkara fly. So we're at 20 minutes. I can keep covering in the same episode without having to break it up. First question, can I use any fly with Tenkara? Yes, you can use any fly that you want. So essentially what's at the end of the line is up to you. If you have a favorite fly, if you have a favorite dry fly, if you have a favorite nymph, use those.

21:19There's no reason not to. When I started off with Tenkara, I used to use an Alcaricata like a ton. It was like one of my favorite flies. I used that the majority of the time. Eventually, I kind of transitioned to Tenkara flies, and I started seeing advantages on those, and I stuck with those. But any fly will work with Tenkara. What's the difference between a tenkara fly and other flies? Well, so there's a couple ways to look at it. So a tenkara fly is an artificial fly like any other fly. And there's a variety of different patterns of tenkara flies as well. We have on our blog in the past published just a lot of photographs of different styles of tenkara flies that we've come across over the years. you know like most endeavors when we're doing it for fun there's a lot of playing there's a lot of and every angler is going to think that his fly has something a little different and so forth so there's actually not a huge difference between flies and tenkara flies as a whole but I will point out a couple of things in general most experienced tenkara anglers and And I'm kind of taking the approach of traditional tenkara here as a method.

22:38Tenkara is a method. Most tenkara anglers in Japan, they tend to stick with one fly. They're not switching flies very often, if at all. And they're typically using unweighted flies. Because, and the reason for that is that they're also using flies that are not specialized. So when you're looking at dry flies, for example. Well, a dry fly is designed to do one thing really well, which is to float. However, if you kind of see the fish a little deeper, you're kind of forced to switch flies and get something that's going to sink down to the level of the fish. If you're using a nymph, especially a heavier nymph, and you see fish rising, you're going to have to switch flies. In Tenkara, the approach has typically been to not switch flies, use one fly that you can use in a variety of situations. So an unweighted fly that's not designed to float very much or not designed to really sink very fast is the typical choice.

23:41You will see a lot of tenkara flies. All the flies that we sell on our website are what we call sakasa kebari. Sakasa in Japanese means reverse. Kebari is the name for an artificial fly. And the sakasa kebari is not the only type of tenkara fly that exists. but it is very heavily used by most experienced tenkara anglers in Japan. The Sakasa Kebari is the typical fly that has the hackle facing away from the band of the hook. And I like those flies. There's a reason we offer those flies. The main being that you can impart motion to the fly. So if you twitch your rod up and down, the fly is going to pulsate, like open and close. So it's going to have some kind of motion to it, and it's going to retain some profile to it, and it's also going to serve as a nice anchor in the water for some techniques. But that's a very common thing. When people think of Tenkara flies, they often think of the reverse hacklefly.

24:43Not the only type of Tenkara fly out there, but very commonly used. What are the best flies that you sell that will work for my area? That's a very common question. So at Ancariyose, we only have four different fly patterns. Those are the four fly patterns. Essentially, they're basically the same pattern, almost with some small variations. But those are the flies that I personally fill my box with. That's why I started offering them. They're flies that have come about from learning from teachers in Japan, from experience fishing with them. and then one of them is a fly that I created myself called the Oki, O-K-I, which in Japanese just means big. In the philosophy here, the approach is that any fly can work in a huge variety of conditions. So if you look at Tenkara as a method, and you kind of look at that method as a whole, and you absorb that kind of philosophy that any fly can work, you can use those flies in a variety of conditions.

25:51So I have used those four fly patterns all across the United States and several other countries by now in a huge variety of waters. I have used those flies in mountain streams, in spring creeks, in lakes, in just like flat kind of big rivers and so forth. So like a very large variety of waters with a lot of success. And that's because I kind of take that as a method. and I kind of try to use those flies to entice fish. So using different manipulation techniques and so forth. And you can look more at Tenkara techniques in a previous episode of Tenkara Cast, by the way. So that's one approach. The other one would be, you know, if you really still believe that a particular area, you know, fish are going to be keyed in to certain patterns and so forth, the only other thing I can tell you is you can ask friends or you can ask the fly shop near you if they have a fly that they recommend. That's just not the approach that we take at Tenkara USA.

26:52I'm not saying that it's a bad approach. It will work, you know, that there's definitely a reason people do that. It's just that the approach that we have taken is that using these very few patterns and kind of focus on technique works equally well. So we never really have recommendations for what fly is going to work better. Now the question that goes with that as well is how do I choose which fly to use? And if we look at the Tenkara method as a whole, where I just mentioned like we're not placing huge emphasis on flies, the way I choose between those four flies that we offer, and first of all there's three sizes. There's a size 16, which is a very small fly, size 12, which is kind of the middle, size 8 hook, which is the larger fly. Those are the three sizes. And then the size 12, which is kind of the middle, we have two different colors, you know, a light one and a dark one. The Ishigaki is the dark one, the Amano is the light one. The rule of thumbs for me are I start with whatever fly is already tied to my line or to the tippet in this case. And if I don't have one, or if that doesn't work after 15-20 minutes of trying different things, then I'm going to go to size 12.

28:16Or if I don't have one, oftentimes I start with a size 12, or most people do, I should say. Personally, I start with a size 8 because I like to see how aggressive the fish are if they're taking a larger fly. And then I move a little smaller. But if the waters are running kind of murky and kind of high, kind of fast, I do tend to favor the larger fly, giving the fish a better chance to see it. If nothing else is working or if the fish are doing these really kind of subtle takes, I go small fly, size 16. So that's kind of how I usually approach it. Other than that, I don't put a whole lot of thought into the flies. So how do I cast a heavier fly with Tenkara? And along with that, I'm going to pair, how do I avoid rod breakages from using a heavier fly? So there's a couple of things here. When we're talking about heavier flies, the flies can be either really big and bulky or they can be just a heavy kind of beadhead kind of fly.

29:19The main thing in the casting is going to be similar for both of those. So whereas we usually talk about the casting with the Tenkara rod being like an accurate up and down cast and you're kind of making this, it's actually not a very tight loop, but the casting is going to resemble what's going to be a tight loop. You're just making this really kind of accurate pinpoint cast. That doesn't work quite as well with larger or heavy flies. With larger or heavy flies, you want to open up the loop a bunch, so it's going to be more of a lob. You're still doing a similar motion, but you're kind of more throwing it than really doing a particular cast because the fly is going to have so much weight to it that you can do that. But one thing that we see sometimes is when people have experienced rod breakages, and we kind of try to figure out a little bit more of why, oftentimes it has been because of using heavier beadhead flies. And what happens is, in the middle of casting, if the fly nicks the rod, that's going to create a weak spot on the rod.

30:24And that's going to happen with a Tenkara rod as well as a Western rod. If the fly nicks it, carbon fiber is going to have a little micro fracture. It's going to be a weak spot, and that can break down the road. So what you want to do is just change your casting to more of a lob, keeping the fly away from the rod as much as you can. When Thai and Sakasa Kebari-style fly, how do you judge how long the hackle feather should be? Is it based on a hook gap, hook length, or just an educated eyeball? So that's a good question. When people get into tying flies, they're often taught about proportions. You know, like sometimes there's formulas. You know, in Western fly tying anyways, there's formulas. You want to have your hackle be no more than, you know, a time or two times, the gap on the hook and so forth. There's all kinds of little proportion rules. We really don't concern ourselves too much with that in Tenkara. because we think the fish are going to take most things anyways, as long as the fly is presented properly.

31:30However, sometimes when I tie a fly, you know, like, and I have a hackle, all of a sudden it just looks so long, and it's like, eh, it just, like, feels way out of balance. I'm not sure if that's because of my western fly fishing background or it's the normal aesthetic or what it is. if I were to kind of give a general rule of thumb you know maybe the hackle being twice the gap the hook could work okay I think and that's just kind of an educated guess so again to the question it's an educated eyeball really there's no proportion there's no tenkara angler in Japan will ever tell you there's a rule there's a better way to do it that's just not how it works any fly can work well. I'm interested in the one fly philosophy, but more to do with you. Sorry, I'm trying to read a question. I'm interested in the one fly philosophy, but more to do with how other people came to choose their one fly. Can you expand on how the masters came to their one fly? Yes. So there's a couple of ways. I mean, And we all learn Tenkara from somebody or somewhere.

32:49So typically, that's where we're going to start. You have the fly that when you're starting off with Tenkara, you pick up from a friend, you pick up from a teacher, you pick up from Tenkara USA on our videos. And we know that works because somebody else is using it. But with time, we start kind of making some modifications to the flies because either we get bored or we just want to experiment or we just want to try something different or we find that there's something that seems to make sense or that works. There's a couple of ways to think about it. I like to think of Dr. Ishigaki's story with One Fly where he talked about when he started learning Tenkara in the 70s, he kind of started picking up all these different flies because he was the first person in japan that got to know a huge number of tenkara anglers in different parts of japan until then people were not communicating much across the country tenkara anglers didn't really know each other and because he started publishing some stories in a magazine he started getting in touch with all these anglers in japan and he started going around learning from them and he realized that each one of them pretty much stuck with one fly pattern. But at the same time, you know, other patterns that he was observing, they were somewhat similar in size, you know, nothing super large, nothing super small, but they're all different. And he kind of started having this idea, they're all catching fish. They're all using one fly without switching. They're all having success.

34:30so that must mean that just about any fly should work and then in one occasion he was fishing with one of the he went to go fishing with one of the tenkara anglers he was corresponding with the guy gave him this really bright like a white fly that was very large like kind of largely hackled or heavily hackled fly and his thought originally was like there's no way this fly is going to catch a fish. You know, it's like unlike any fly that he had seen from other people. So he just thought he would not catch fish. Yet he and the people that he was fishing with, they both caught fish on that fly. And that was the moment that he kind of started thinking like, man, just about any fly works as long as it's presented properly and it's of, you know, reasonable size and possibly reasonable shape and colors. So that's kind of how he kind of, you know, discovered that one fly could work. And because any fly could work, he decided to go for the simplest fly that he had learned from all these people, which is just this black sewing thread, some cheap brown hackle. And that's not the only fly that's in his box, because he says it gets bored a tiny exact same fly, but that's the fly that he uses primarily if he's trying to fill up his box, that's what he's going to tie. So that's how he came about that fly.

35:55As for myself personally, you know, I've learned primarily from Dr. Ishigaki. The Ishigaki fly was the fly that I was trying to use the most when I was learning kind of how to use one fly all the time and building the confidence to use one fly most of the time. But there was something as I learned Tenkara a little bit more and I learned from different teachers, there was something, in my opinion, that was missing on the fly that he used, where he used a kind of a stiffer rooster hackle. And when I was fishing with Mr. Amano, who uses this pulsating technique very often, his fly, which he uses a pheasant hackle, you can also use a partridge, something softer, his flies had a lot of motion to it. They still retained a nice reverse hackle, but they had more motion. So I kind of started liking the softer hackle. And I also really started liking larger flies because it kind of oftentimes gave me a chance to see how aggressive the fish were.

37:01And in my opinion, too, like a fish is trying to maximize how much food it's going to take. So a larger fly started making sense to me. So my favorite fly became a size 8, larger than Dr. Ishigaki's or Mr. Amano's, combining elements of both. So it's got a soft tackle, black body, and so forth. So that's kind of how I came to my favorite fly. I am not an exclusively one fly guy. My fly, as I mentioned, my fly box has usually four patterns because I do like having a little bit of variation in size primarily. And if I find a fly on a tree, on a branch, or if somebody gives me a fly, they go into my box and I'll use them. either because I, why not? You know, so if I'm in the middle of fishing and I'm not catching many fish, I'm bored, I want to experiment, I haven't used this fly in a long time, just because, just for the sake of it, I'm going to tie whatever else is in my box. So if you ever see my box, it's not a particularly pretty box.

38:06I use the four flies primarily that we sell on our website, but I also use things that I find or people give me on occasion. And then in general, you know, people just might have theories that one thing may work better than another. So Dr. Ishigaki chose the simplest fly that he could. Mr. Hirata in Japan, for example, I've written about him where he uses snake skin for the body of the fly. He gets little strips of a snake that he catches, a mamushi, and M-A-M-U-S-H-I. And he thinks that the reflection of a snake skin is going to be more tantalizing to a fish. So that's his theory. That's the fly that he uses. So that's kind of the gist of it. You can have a theory. You can play with it. And sometimes that gets reinforced. So when you have a fly and you had this theory and it happened to be a particularly good day of fishing, you think that there's something to that. So that's why you start using.

39:10So that's most of the Tenkara flies kind of stuff that I wanted to cover. Now let's get into just a few other questions. Somebody asked, where can I find a guide or teacher to help me learn more about Tenkara? First of all, our website is probably a great teacher. There's tons of resources out there. I believe strongly that Tenkara is intuitive and simple enough that you can learn a lot on your own. We provide some guidance so you can kind of tap into the intuition, but learning on your own should not be too difficult. That's a benefit of Tenkara. However, I know for a fact that you can steepen your learning curve anytime you have a teacher close to you. And that's how I've learned a lot about Tenkara. You know, like what I've learned in a couple years would have taken me more than a decade to learn. What I've learned in the last decade probably would have taken me 30 years to learn. So you can definitely learn much quicker if you have somebody who you've learned from.

40:13And to that end, we have put the Tenkara Guide Network together. So if you go to tenkara.ca.com forward slash TGN, and I'll put a link on the podcast page, You can find people in various parts of the country that have been having a lot of experience, a lot of success with tenkara, and you can hire them for a day. You can learn a ton in a day oftentimes, especially if your purpose is to learn rather than just try to catch fish that day. My recommendation is like, yes, definitely try to catch fish. There's definitely no question about that. but I always think that having a guide is an incredible opportunity to learn, and you can use that knowledge other days to catch fish. So like one day of learning, you can have hundreds of days of catching more fish as opposed to one day of taking shortcuts to catch fish where you don't learn quite as much. So that's kind of my main tip for leveraging a day out with a guide.

41:16But you can find guides close to your area. Can I use Tenkara in lakes? Absolutely. Tenkara really shines in places with moving water, no question about it, because you have a long rod, you can keep the line off the water, you do not have to mend, that's one of the huge advantages of Tenkara, no mending necessary. However, tenkara is a fishing tool. And growing up, I used to use a cane pole in a lake all the time. It's no different from using tenkara in a lake. I might say, you know, it's not quite the method. You know, the method of tenkara looks more like tenkara when it's done in a stream or a river. So there's some differences. It's not exactly how tenkara was developed. but you can see Tenkara as a tool and you can use that in a lake with no problem. Anytime I'm backpacking and I end up in a lake, I've caught plenty of fish with a lot of success. Differences in techniques, I recommend you go to tenkarausa.com for slash podcast or through your podcast app.

42:22Look at the lakes techniques podcast that I've done. And along with that, we also get a common question. Can I use Tenkara in salt water? I was actually surprised the other day when I started doing the podcast again a few weeks ago. I went to our podcast host website, and my podcast episode, actually the last podcast episode that I did before I took a long break, was our very most popular episode, and it was about tenkara fishing in saltwater. And again, that's not tenkara the method. I would not really call that tenkara. Not to create a whole argument about what tenkara is, tenkara isn't. It doesn't look like tenkara in most ways. We're using these really heavy flies. We're not quite doing the same kind of casting and so forth. We're also not fishing the same place or the same fish. But you can use tenkara rods as a tool in salt water very successfully.

43:29that episode I also interviewed a very famous rock climber who is a friend of mine Henry Barber where we just sat out in his place after a couple days of fishing or three days of fishing in salt water catching striped bass having a blast with those and he has a lot more experience than I do but there's been an article in our Tenkara magazine which you can find if you go to tenkarausa.com forward slash blog we put out the magazines for free there's an article there about fishing salt So yes, many people have successfully used tenkara in salt water, including myself, as a tool, not as a method. Some differences there. Another one, do I cast with a tenkara rod or do I just dap? And if casting, how do I cast with tenkara? So yes, absolutely, 99% of your tenkara fishing is going to be casting. That's one of the big advantages of tenkara is this really accurate pinpoint casting. Your cast is going to be more of an overhead cast.

44:30If you're very familiar with fly fishing, it looks more like a steeple cast. Steeple cast where you shoot your line up, and to do so, you stop your rod a little earlier. You stop the rod pointed up. Your line goes up. On a fore cast, it kind of goes down diagonally where the fly shoots into the water first. So you're absolutely casting. That's the majority of Tenkara. When people ask about dapping, that just means, it can mean a couple of different things, but what they usually mean is lowering the fly onto the water. And I would say that's one technique you can use with Tenkara, is to dapp. Don't use that very often. Sometimes in a very tight stream, I don't have much room to maneuver. I'm using a short line, and in some places it just makes a little bit more sense to lower the fly onto the water. Sometimes you kind of dip the fly there a few times. Very effective technique, but typically not how you fish with tenkara.

45:33What's the difference between casting with a tenkara rod and a western fly casting? So as I just mentioned, the main one is that you're going to stop the rod sooner on the back cast. Instead of going 10 o'clock, 2 o'clock, you go 12 o'clock to maybe 2 o'clock. And that's going to create more of a steeple cast. But the other huge difference is that instead of shooting the line out in front of you parallel to the water and lowering, letting the line kind of land on the water, you know, lay on the water completely, we are going to typically just be shooting the fly down first and have no line touching the water to begin with. So that's kind of the two main differences. you can also talk about how to hold a tenkara rod typically you're using an index finger on the top which is going to make you naturally stop your back cast at 12 o'clock and you're going to use the wrist a little bit more as well do use the wrist, but I highly recommend take a look at our website, look at the casting videos to make much more sense out of that and lastly, how do I reel in a fish when I have no reel or how do I land a fish with a tenkara rod?

46:51How do I... That one is probably the most common question I get when I'm doing a presentation. How do I reel in a fish when I have no reel? And also how to land a large fish, you know, with tenkara. And that's a very intuitive part of tenkara. Whenever you're trying to land a fish, it's a very intuitive thing because a fish is pulling away from you. First of all, it's not going to be able to take any line because the line is tied to the tip of the rod. That's one benefit because your intuition is just going to tell you, try to bring it back towards you. And to do so, you're just going to angle the rod back. If your line is about the same length as the rod, you're just going to oftentimes just gnat or grab the fish. If the line is a little bit longer, you angle the rod back, grab the line, and then bring the fish in close to you as calmly as you can, and then gnat it or grab it. So that's how you do that, whether it's a small fish or a large fish. The technique is the same.

47:52But again, if you come to our website, look up the video on how to land a large fish with Tenkara. You're going to see how that's done a little bit more clearly. So that's it. Hopefully I cover most of the questions that you've had about Tenkara. If you have other ones, if there's enough, I'll cover another episode. But if you have any specific questions, things that it doesn't matter what kind of question it is, things that you've been curious about. Pretty much everything has been answered either in my book or through various posts and that kind of thing, but don't hesitate to ask me again because I don't mind at all. If you just drop us a note and you have a question, even if it's a super basic question that you're wondering, don't hesitate to come to thinkhideosay.com forward slash podcast, leaving a comment so that I can respond directly to you as well. But thanks so much for listening to another episode of the Tenkara Cast, and until next time. And as always, I'd like to specially thank Nick Ogawa Takenobu.

49:06You can find his music at takenobu-music.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. Find any information referenced in 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 there. This song is called Voyage Across the Sea.