Tenkara in Salt? A Conversation with Henry Barber + The River Network

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. Hello everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Tenkara Cast. Thanks so much for joining me. My name is Daniel, I'm your host, and I'm very late. My apologies, but hopefully better late than never. But my apologies for not publishing this episode earlier.

1:05I've been trying to be very consistent with a monthly podcast, and I should probably establish a date when the monthly podcast episode is going to drop. But it's been a little over a month now, and this particular episode has been on my to-do list, on my published list, for a few weeks, actually. and I'm just not being able to get around to it. Just the short story behind it, we've had a couple of moves. We moved to one larger warehouse facility. I was excited to get there but realized it was not going to work and pretty quickly within a month we had to move, or a little over a month we had to move a second time. So that was a little bit of a bummer, but we wanted to make sure that we get in the right facility to help fulfill orders, especially ahead of the holidays. So we're now all set. We just finished integrating to the new systems and totally got our product received, and everything is running smoothly.

2:07So I'm very happy about that. Very quickly, I'm going to give you a little preview of the episode that we have here today, and I'm going to give you a couple of updates as well on my end. but today I'm going to have an episode where I talk to Henry Barber about using tenkara rods in salt water. You know, kind of give a little bit more introduction to that topic in a second. But Henry Barber, if you're a climber, you might have heard his name. Very, very famous climber from the 1970s, done a lot of free solo, absolutely stunning free solo ascents. and he is a very dedicated fly angler. When I visited his house, probably as many photos, there were as many photos of climbing as there were fishing. And he's been using our rods for a number of years out on the coast of New England, catching little stripers and some big stripers with our rods.

3:08So I went there, visited him, sat down, and we talked about it. And then the second part of the episode is highlighting some of the work of nonprofits that we are excited about. Mostly I've been covering Trout Unlimited, but I decided there will be time to talk to some of the other nonprofits that we support. And I'm very excited about the conversation that I had with Nicole Silk of the River Network. The River Network is an organization that I recently found out about. and I really wish I had known more about them years ago. I'm very excited about the work that they're doing just in terms of leadership in the river space, river conservation space. They do beautiful work and Nicole and I sat down to talk about what they do. But before I kind of get into the particulars of those two conversations, a couple little updates. So first of all, we have talking about consistency and trying to kind of have a cadence to something.

4:15We do have a new publication that we're pushing out every single month. We just started on October 10th. We have a written or an e-zine that we're going to be publishing. And I'm very excited about it because it's a beautiful publication and it's called Mountain. It's spelled M-O-U-N-T-E-N. And you can find that on our blog, tenkarausa.com forward slash blog. Or if you go to this podcast page, I'm definitely going to be putting a link to it. But what mountain is, as the name implies, it kind of has a little bit of a mountain feel to it. That's where tenkarausa.com comes from, even though different things might be covered. But that's the spirit that we want to capture there. And what it is, it's going to be 10 spreads. It's a free publication, by the way, free, easy, that you can download. You can read on your laptop, on your iPad, and so forth. But it's going to be 10 beautiful spreads, typically about five stories. Beautifully illustrated by our very own artist, Jeremy Shellhorn.

5:20He's already done some terrific work for upcoming issues. and part of the purpose behind Mountain is to bring some of the best content that we've had over the last 10 years to the forefront. There is going to be some new content as well, but partly in the first few issues, we're kind of focused on bringing some of the content that maybe has been under your radar or maybe, you know, it's been 10 years that you've read about something that we've written. We've covered a ton of stuff in the last 10 years and we want to bring some of the best stories, some of the best information out to the forefront in this new format. Mountain 10 spreads. It's going to come out on the 10th day of every month. So the first one came out October 10th. The next one is about to drop in a few days on November 10th. And the very last page, kind of, you know, as a lot of people, you know, enjoy with certain publications, we do have our very own comic series that we are developing.

6:23and that's actually called Optenkata Creek. It's a black and white page where you can download and color. So if you have kids or if you enjoy coloring pages yourself, you can download that, print it out, color it to your liking. We'd love to see that, by the way, if you or your little ones do color in the lines or outside the lines. We'd like to see that. and the uptencada creek of course a little play on a famous phrase up upshade creek you know it's not going to be something that is taking super seriously but part of the purpose of that is to kind of share some of the cool little facets of tenkara in just a really fun beautiful way so definitely check out mountain very exciting publication the first one we had all kinds of cool stories. There is a little piece about TJ, you know, about eating trout, which it doesn't really do. There is the uptangata creek just kind of talks about the where does the worktangata come from and that kind of thing. So check it out and look for the next issue about to drop in a few days on the 10th. In terms of other updates, just a little heads up, as has been customary in our company, we do not do sales. I mean, we really try to keep our prices as good as we can year-round, with one exception. We have our, what in the past we've been calling opt-out side sale, and that's the only sale that we do every year. So that's something that some of you might be expecting. Some of you may be not aware of it. And if you're hearing little clicks, click clacks, that's my dog that just walked into the room. But in any case, we're going to have our sale coming up and it's a week long sale. So we don't want to make you sit at home, you know, on a Black Friday. We would like to actually give you an opportunity to get some very good discounts on Tenkara rods that you can actually use on your Thanksgiving weekend if you can. So the sale is going to start on November 19th and that's on Monday. So if you order that in a lot of parts of the country, you can get it within a couple of days. If you, of course, expedite shipping, you can get it before the Thanksgiving holiday. And it's going to run from November 19th through November 26th, which is Cyber Monday. So definitely keep an eye out for a set for our sale it's going to start on the 19th of November and a little bit differently from previous years we actually gonna have a discounted price on all of the rods the prices are a surprise you're gonna have to wait until the sale kind of drops it's they're really good pricing on the Tenkara rods that we produce at Tenkara USA and that includes every single rod like the Sato, the Rhodo, the Ito, the Hane, the Amago, and the Iwana. So they're all going to be on sale this year. And I'm also throwing my book in the sale for half off. So the book is something I just want to make sure anybody getting a Tenkara rod, if you're getting one for a friend of yours, get a book as well because that's just a good resource for you or somebody else to have with them. And I don't want to have the rods out there without good information. I want to make sure any information gets there so i'm putting my book on sale this time as well and of course our dealers um are going to be you know um they have the choice of course to match the sale but um yeah a lot of them in previous years have participated as well so you can check out our retailers close to you if you go to tenkarausa.com forward slash dealer you can find out where they are and go visit them see the rods for yourself if you don't have one already. So I think that's mostly what I wanted to cover. That's all the notes that I made, things that I wanted to touch on. So I'm going to introduce the next couple of topics really quick and talk a little bit about my experience, especially on the first topic. So the first part of the episode today, I'm going to be talking to Harry Barber about fly fishing with tenkara rods in salt water. So Harry, I've known Harry for a few years. He is a somebody that is kind of an idol of mine. He's a big name in rock climbing.

10:51He's put up some of the boldest climbs in the world actually. He used to travel a ton. He can find a lot of information about Harry and his climbing if that's something of interest to you. and I got to meet him through a mutual friend, Malcolm Daly, as he also mentions. And one of the things that intrigued me was that Henry was using our rods, our tenkara rods, to catch fish in salt water, specifically striped bass. And he spends his time between Maine and New Hampshire. He sent me a couple of photos over the last few years of catching striped bass on our rods, some pretty good sized ones including and you know every year he was like oh yeah you should come up you know there's like you have to come on this particular tides you know that's when the fishing is going to be good so I ran into Harry a few months ago at a outdoor retailer here in Denver and here's how much of a fly angler he is you know devoted to fly angler he is like he pulls up his notebook and he has all the good tides that he wants to fish at for the year so he actually told me when I met with him that he plans the tides a year in advance so that he is not going to go away from Maine during those weeks. Usually it's a week long, you know, when you have a full or new moon and that kind of thing. He does not leave the state. He wants to stay there for the good fishing. So I ran into him. He's like, you know, if you want to come fish and try to, you know, like your hand on saltwater tenkara, you should come on this day. I was like, oh, you know, when else am I going to have a chance to fish and potentially climb with Henry Barber?

12:33So I booked myself some flights. I almost canceled on that because of the move that I was mentioning. But I went there, you know, brought some climbing gear along, brought my fishing gear along. We ended up not doing any climbing because of the rain, but we had a great time fishing for striped bass. And before I get any farther, I know some of you might kind of get in, you know, saying that's not the encounter and why not. and Harry and I actually talk about that in our conversation. But I want to kind of mention a little bit of where I'm coming from and a little bit of my thoughts on that. I've done, I think, a couple of episodes where I talk about what is Tenkara, what is not Tenkara. So Tenkara, of course, started in the mountains of Japan. It's this traditional Japanese method of fly fishing, primarily targeting trout in the mountain streams. But as I mentioned in the conversation with Harry, in the end these are fishing rods and you know we call them a tenkara rod because that's what they are and you can use them in a variety of ways just like what i always tell people whatever you put at the end of your line is completely up to you we typically promote more of a mountain stream fly fishing i think a lot of you who look at our website can see very clearly where we're coming from we do have a lot of mountain streams we've i believe we have been very clear both in my book as well as throughout years of writing about Tenkara, where I'm coming from, in terms of like, yeah, Tenkara is a method of fly fishing that has its origins in Japan, and it is traditional, and Tenkara has a specific look and feel to it.

14:13But on the other hand, it's just a rod. So in any case, our customers are using our rods in a variety of different ways. I wanted to learn how Tenkara could be used in salt water. and I learned a ton. A lot of times it didn't feel very different to be honest. I mean I was using very heavy flies like some mineral clouser kind of heavy flies that will go down which I don't do with tenkara but we were keeping it pretty simple. We're not changing flies very often. The fish were a hoot. I actually caught three striped bats one on the surf. We were fishing early morning one day on the surf, and that was one of the strongest fights I've ever had in my life. It was not a super large fish, and I'll share some of the photos on this podcast page. And not a particularly large striped bass, probably in the 17, 18-inch range, but holy cow, that was a strong fight. I've caught a fish on the river, you know, right by the coast.

15:14that was a really fun one and I've caught a fish in the rocks as well so I had a really good range of experiences not a ton of fish Henry's expecting a little bit more for whatever reason you know we were usually a few of us fishing like three of us or so but we were not having a whole lot of luck enough you know I caught one in each location learn a ton from it so that's a conversation that I'm going to have with Henry and then the second part is going to be with Nicole Silk where I talk about the river network. Oh, you know, I do have one more thing I want to mention to you. Sorry about that. I mentioned mountain, and I think I kind of dropped a little thing in there about we want to bring the best riding of the last 10 years to the forefront. So a little something I want to share with you. It's not what I consider to be the super official anniversary for Tenkara USA, but I went to my files and I wanted to look up, because I knew it was around this time, I wanted to look up the actual date for what the date was that I registered my business when I was creating a business, Tancata USA.

16:24And lo and behold, it's actually next week. That's going to be our 10th anniversary of starting the company. So November 11th is when I went to the City Hall in San Francisco. So that's where I lived at the time. And I picked a name, Tenkara USA, and registered it and had to do a few other things. Got the business up and legit. You know, that's November 11th. So 10 years. Yay. The actual official anniversary that I usually consider is actually April 12th because that's when I launched the company. We made a sale that first day and that kind of thing. So that was pretty exciting. but it has been 10 years since I started working on this business and that's part of the reason Mountain is coming to existence there's a lot of cool things that I'm planning for next year next year we're going to have our 10th anniversary and that's when we're going to have the Tenkara Summit on July 27th it's not quite on our anniversary date but Tenkara Summit July 27th of 2019 here in Boulder, Colorado, and we're planning some really fun stuff.

17:36So stay tuned for more information on that, but save the date. That's going to be a big one, 10th anniversary party. All right, without further ado, let's get the conversation started with Henry Barber, where he's going to share some things about using tenkara rods in salt water. And then we move on to the conversation with River Network. And as always, if you have any comments, any feedback, love to hear it either through the podcast page on our website, tenkarausa.com forward slash podcast. Or if you can, let me make this appeal to you. If you haven't done so, can you please, please, please leave me a review in iTunes? Those reviews help a ton. I've actually heard of people finding out about the podcast because it came up in some feed because of the review. So if you get just a quick minute, if you enjoy it, give me a little review and I'll be so happy for that.

18:37And I'm going to make a pledge to you after this episode. I'm going to get a cadence where I'm going to drop these episodes of the Tenkara Cast once a month. I'm going to pick a date, maybe November 20th or the 20th of the month. But whatever date I determine, you're going to see an episode on that day every single month without fail. that's going to be my promise for you going forward all right let's get the conversation started with henry barber so wd-40 is the secret i don't got any wd-40 on my flies that's for sure all right trying to be pure not tenkara pure though so so henry i want to talk to you about tenkara in salt water so tenkara is this method of fishing that was developed in the mountain streams of Japan. And by definition, you know, most people think of it as a mountain stream kind of fly fishing where you're fishing for trout. Some of the Japanese masters, they'll define Tenkara as fishing in a mountain stream with a Tenkara rod and catching trout. So, and I kind of feel like I kind of feel the same way, you know, Tenkara is a mountain stream kind of fishing but at the in the end of it all tenkara is also a rod it's a tenkara rod and what i've been doing with you the last couple of days is fishing with a tenkara rod for stripers and salt water so i want to talk to you a little bit about that because and i flew over here to you know to maine you know new hampshire because i don't know how long it's been now but several years ago you told me about the kind of fishing that you're doing which for stripers on the coast of Maine.

20:23And that really intrigued me. And then he sent me a photo of a small striper. And I was like, oh, that's really cool. You know, it's like, it's just one way that our customers are using the rods. So how did you get introduced to Tenkara? Probably the ultimate ambassador of the sport, Malcolm Daly. Yeah, he really is. Yeah, yeah, he's great. He's enthusiastic. So, but I'd like to ask a question first. What does Tenkara mean? So, we don't know exactly what Tenkara means because the way Tenkara is written in Japanese, they use the katakana syllabary, which is usually used to describe foreign words or words that even the Japanese don't exactly know the meaning or onomatopoeias and that kind of thing. so the way it's written tenkara in katakana we don't know the actual meaning of it but there's a bunch of different theories for what tenkara actually means and there's one my favorite story is that in japan there's a guy fishing a mountain stream and he's catching fish after fish and a passerby goes by he's like how could you be catching fish after fish without ever having to stop to change your bait. And this mountain stream angler responds, it's like, well, you see, at the end of my line here, I have this fly. I used it, you know, it's an imitation of a fly, and I used it, some thread and feathers, and I wrapped them around a hook, and I tied a fly. And I cast it, and the fish sees the fly coming from heaven, and he takes it. So So in Japanese, from heaven is tenkara.

22:12Ten means heaven, kara means from. So my favorite story goes that, you know, this guy casts, the fish sees the fly coming from heaven, and the fish takes it. But we don't know exactly what it means. Once in a while, you'll see a restaurant called tenkara in Japan because the food is from heaven. But, yeah, it's as much as we know about that. Well, that fits perfectly with what I have to say, because I feel like when I put that fly out there, I'm from heaven. I'm not trying to be funny, but it's not that much about that. It's more about putting these bits of feathers and fur on a hook and knowing where to go to catch. And that's the thing about saltwater fishing. The thing about saltwater fishing is that the ocean is a lot bigger than a stream. And so you need to hunt and you need to have a lot of experience over time to figure out what it is that will make the fish respond.

23:19And that's what I like about it. And I can't do it in a boat. I have to do it walking. I've always done it walking. I fish from about 10% of the time in the tropics or in the cold water. And ultimately, when you're walking, you have to get close to a fish. And if you're 70 feet away, which is generous, most fly fishers would say this massive 60, 70-foot cast. well that's generous but where do the fish track it and the fish track it somewhere out there 30 or 40 feet and they strike it somewhere out there around 20 to 30 feet and the thing that interested me about Tenkara is that I'm a minimalist as a climber which you can fill in later but I like to get close to the fish I like to wet wade I like to swim to the right edge of a trough or a seam and you use a lot of the same ideas you do in trout fishing trying to get a seam and an eddy and figuring out where the fish are holding and where they're going to rise these fish don't hold and arise like a trout but they they come there to ambush and so you need to figure out where they're going to be at a certain time in the tide because that water is always changing It's not like a river at a constant pace.

25:17You know, it's more like a dam that releases, tailwaters that release water at different stages. And you have to figure out what kind of fly you're going to put on and where you're going to fish in the river. I like that analogy at Tenkara you say about the feathers on the fly. sent from heaven because you're like thinking I'm thinking excuse me about where I need to go to get close enough to the fish and there's nothing better than being close enough to the fish so that's kind of why I started to think about catching stripers on a fly and I've only caught a 20 inch striper I've caught a number of stripers on a fly but I've only caught a maximum 20 21 inch fish so far I think so I'm tenkara so now it's time to figure out what the rod what kind of rod you need to catch the fish but it's not going to be a longer cast and a bigger reel with a bigger drag it's gonna be like where can I catch the fish that I normally catch, one that I like to catch. I like to catch big stripers but it happens once in a while so if I break a rod that's fine. But I know in June I'm gonna catch mackerel, I'm gonna catch shad, I'm gonna catch brown trout, saltwater, and I'm gonna catch stripers. And I might catch an early run of small snapper bluefish. I know I can catch those on Tenkara so So it's more a matter of taking everything I've learned from a long rod, fly fishing, to how can I go to the right places?

27:14And fortunately, most of the right places are close. Close casting places. Unfortunately, some of those close casting places are big fish places. Well, so we'll have to see what happens. We'll have to see what happens. but I like the fact that and I should disclose here that I'm not a salt water guy at all I grew up close to the coast in Brazil and my dad used to do a lot of surf fishing a lot of salt water fishing and I used to go surfing so I never really learned the nuances of fly fishing in salt water and I've been learning a ton from you in the last couple of days so I want to disclose that because this episode of the podcast is also about me learning more about how to fish with tenkara in salt water but but i should mention that i appreciate the fact that you didn't dismiss tenkara because a lot of people if they're fishing salt water if they're catching larger fish species they will immediately look at the limitations of tenkara and it doesn't seem to me like you focused on the limitations it seemed to me like you focused on maybe the fun of it or the new challenge so what why is it that you didn't dismiss it as something that's not ideal for for what you do because you how long have you been fly fishing now with uh with a fly rod here on the coast of maine and uh over 30 years i've been fishing over 30 years with a fly rod um but I like to fish the rod that's appropriate with the season so I fish a six weight in June I fish an eight weight most of the year and then I fish a nine weight um when we're fishing the surf and the rocks later in the season either when the waves are bigger the fish might be bigger and I don't know I fish more and more just a 7 or an 8 weight but mainly an 8 weight that's what I it's easiest to do but what's really interesting is that when I got into Tenkara a couple years ago I worried about how big a fish I'd catch and And now I'm really more worried about, not worried, excuse me, now I'm more interested in how the rod performs like a reel.

29:48Because the rod bends so much that the rod fights the fish instead of the reel. And people put so much emphasis on the reel and the drag and all these different things. I caught a couple fish on Tenkara and then I went back to a six weight I had with a reel with no drag a loop reel with no drag actually and I had to palm the reel to catch the fish and I realized that somewhere in there I have to trust the rod more to do the work than the reel and that made it really this happened because this was three years ago that's the first time I caught two years ago the first time I caught stripers on a tenkara was two years ago and it occurred to me that we hear about the rod we hear about the reel and we hear about all this stuff but really simply the rod is doing some really interesting things and fighting the fish. So I start thinking about it differently and now I'm not so worried about how big the fish is. I'm more interested in the type of water I catch the fish in and if I catch the fish in foam on big rocks I have a chance of landing it. I have to be more cunning with the waves. If I catch the fish in a stream, I have to catch it in a place where I can be close to it, but I need to back it out. I have to use the current to my advantage, not the fish's advantage. It's a completely different way of thinking. It's so interesting. And the way I know I can catch a big fish in Tenkara, I'm positive. Big, like 30, 40 inches. He's in a float to and that's the place I'm really interested in pursuing and the problem the only problem with it is is that I can only do it in June and where I live in Maine mainly because boat traffic and because the fish are on the surface they're hitting cinder worms they're hitting different kinds of eels and things like that they're on the surface they're not down deep the water's cold they're up top as the season goes on water gets warmer the fish go deeper and you need you know you need to get deeper to them and uh it's a june thing but i'm positive you can get your big striper so let's uh let's backtrack a little bit let's talk about if you can can you paint a picture for our listeners what kinds of waters have we fished the last couple of days because I you know like of course like when we talk about salt water people might be wondering okay what kind of salt surf or what is it can you describe a little bit of a picture of what kinds of waters we fish because we fish a lot of a big variety of waters in my opinion you know kind of ran the gamut really? Oh we fish three we have four main types of water we have rivers where you read seams and rips and eddies we have surf we have to read the beach contour and surf and how the current is coming out or flowing on the waves breaking maybe from a stream we fish rocks which is a completely different dynamic in a number of ways because of where the fish hold is in really horrible water i mean if you think you're going to die the fish love it yes i can attest it but it has a lot of foam and the take is different um the flies are different everything's different and then we fish the one area we didn't fish is in the flats and flats is like your classic bone fishing type situation and we were hoping to fish that but we're not going to get to because we we don't we had a bad storm move in and we had bad light for the last two days of our trip but in the flats fishing it's on the one hand it's perfect for tenkara because if you can see a fish 70 feet away, it's going to take between 30 and 45 feet.

34:36So if you can cast it 30 feet, you just have to wait for them to get there and twitch it. And it's not a strip strip. It's a twitch because it's the puff of sand that tantalizes the fish. It's a baby flounder. It's a crab burrowing in. it's a sand lance like I showed you the other day burying themselves into the sand so it's the puff puff it's perfect twitch and it's exciting and one thing that's kind of exciting about it is that to me is that if you see a bigger fish with tenkara you would draw the rod to the side and they're like bowling pins. Fish come at you like bowling pins. So if you draw that rod to the side, you might get the second or third largest fish back two or three rows.

35:41So I'm sorry we didn't get to do that, but it's very exciting. And the most exciting thing for me is whether we're going to have a catastrophic event because when those fish are in 8 to 14, 18, 20 inches of water, they fight a lot harder than they do when they're in 6 to 8 feet of water. So it's going to be interesting how I've caught a fish in all the things, all the examples I explained, but not on the flats and not in the float tube. and that's the flow tube is what I'm going to be most excited about next year so why you know since you have so much experience using what I'll call a western fly rod with a reel why would you at this point be so willing to fish with ankhara as well instead of just sticking with a rod and reel do you see some advantages do you uh what do you like about it why why is it appealing to you and hearing is lighting a cigar again cigar went off so uh just a little play-by-play yeah description here well i think the thing that's most exciting is is that what i do well is i get close to the fish so when i'm on the rocks i could be like six or eight feet from the fish doing a simple roll cast in one minute here's one strip rod tip up kind of nymphing letting the rod tip go out paying out line letting the fly pull with the current and strip strip like streamer. So that motion with a nine-foot eight-weight fly rod is like classic what you might do the 10 to 14 foot Tenkara rod. And unfortunately or fortunately the hits are different. The hits are radically different. It could be a soft touch on a big fish to a bang on a short on a small fish or a shorter fish and you have to translate that to tenkara which isn't my my interest actually but it it's radically different so it's very interesting and it tells me I should maybe switch to from a small bait fish like a like a bunker we call them peanut bunker in the fall or sand eel to a crab because a crab swims more like a tenkara sweep of the rod than a strip strip strip which you can't do with a tenkara rod you're twitching it aside so it's kind of learning something new and that's what's really interesting but what's more interesting even is that when you're closer to the fish, you might see it.

38:57When you're with a long rod, I mean, if I cast 60 or 70 feet, which is not bragging, it's just you're off, you're up higher on rocks or you take a favorable position on sandbar, you're searching with the rod. And when you're with Tenkara, you're searching with your eyes to get closer to that place. And that's what I've been doing all along, but the intimacy is more important because you need to be closer because you're not going to make a 70-foot cast with a 10 car or have to retrieve the rod, have to retrieve the line. It's very interesting to... It's not minimalist about equipment. it's more discipline about honing your skills to what you already know.

39:58That's what's really cool about it. Have you found the limitations of Tenkara? I mean, these are self-imposed limitations. You know, you can't all of a sudden cast 60 feet when you're out, or you can't pay out line when you catch a fish. have you found those limitations to be very limiting? Or have you found to be at a big disadvantage when you use your Tinkaterani self-water? Well, I find two things. I find, number one, there's certain places that I'm not going to go fish because I've known them for 20 or 30 years and I don't think I can reach where I want to go. And I know I don't have to change my attitude about that because I know where the fish are going to be. But the converse is really cool is when you're in the surf and you're in rock situations, you've got to get close to them.

41:06and it's full metal jacket. You are in it. You are completely enveloped with water. I mean, the other day I got pasted a number of times and you got to gauge your timing with the waves and everything else. But I see guys out there with spay rods doing the same things. They're getting blasted, putting the line out there 100 feet and the fish are 15 to 18 feet from them. They're not that far away. But people like that. I like that. I like, you know, it's like, it's like I don't wade with waders. I wade with shorts. And I can wade until October as long as the air temp and the wind isn't too high. But the water's fine. It's worse in May and June. So I like getting close to the fish. That's the whole thing. I mean, if you were a hunter and you were going after a specific species of animal with a bow, you would get close to the animal and you'd do everything you could.

42:14So that's kind of really appealing. And you don't nymph. You don't nymph. People catch a lot of fish nymphing. You don't nymph from 70 feet away. You nymph in a range from your body, out four feet maybe to you know 12 or 18 or 20 feet away and you catch big fish you catch a nice 20 inch trout in fast water and it's pretty exciting these fish are maybe not even as exciting as those fish but they're it's how you can connect with them it's not like connecting it's not like wanting to have a relationship with them I just want to connect that means the hook gets hooked and you want to feel the tug and i want to feel the tug yeah and i should describe my experience so the last couple of days we we have fished uh we started off in a river uh that was right in the mouth of a of a river going into the ocean and that was kind of slow like you were using a reel um your friend larry was also using a rod and reel i was using tenkara we kind of had the same fly none of us had any luck on the river so we decided to move down to the to the surf where the river met the ocean and over there we saw a couple of bait balls and you hooked into one fish I was the one I was next to you I didn't hook into any fish there but then from there the next day we uh oh actually from there we moved to the rocks and in the rocks you also had your rod and rio so the larry and i think each one of each one of us caught one fish so that was my first striper ever um i had done a little bit of saltwater fishing before visiting my family in brazil um and you just it showed me this hole where the waves would kind of come in over the rocks and as soon as the water came in he told me to cast the water the fly into where the water's coming in and over the rocks.

44:24Let the fly sink with the current. Drive the wave, drive the fly down. And foam, by the way. And I need to correct you. I did not catch a fish. And for that, you owe me dinner. Oh, you didn't catch a fish? I showed you where to catch the fish. Oh, yeah. I caught the fish in the surf at the mouth, which is much harder, by the way. But I did not catch a fish in that hole. In the rocks, yeah. And that might cost you, you know, maybe a bottle of Dom Perignon or a really good cigar. Oh, damn. I don't know if I signed to that contract earlier. I'll get you a shot of whiskey tomorrow. But, you know, what I noticed that was interesting in that first day was that even though you guys had your run in Rio when I had Tenkara, we were all fishing the same way. I don't think I ever saw you casting more than probably 30 feet.

45:27Maybe one or two casts in the river. But we really fished in a very similar way. And then I hooked into my fish, and it was a great fight. It was a very, very strong fish. And the next day, we started at 5 a.m., we fished the surf to begin with. And you had your rod in Rio, but you were fishing kind of like Tenkara. and then you hooked into a fish and you kind of showed me where to cast my fly and i immediately hooked into one so we were double hooked i actually had to get past your line i don't know if you remember that but uh you were fighting your fish and i had to i was into the waves farther up up into the ocean from you and i had to kind of walk past but and then we i think we hooked another fish a little bit later uh oh and you know into another river but you always felt like we were fishing the same way you never felt like i was watching you fishing with a running reel i um did you feel kind of the same way that you could have been doing what you were doing with a with the Tenkara Rod, essentially.

46:33Not exactly. I felt where I hooked the fish was in the same zone as the Tenkara Rod, for sure. But at the mouth of the one river, the first place you talked about, I felt like I could see fish out there bait fish bait balls and I was casting I was searching with the rod so now the difference is there was two other guys in the water there trying to cast with spinning sand eels like 8 inches long and they weren't catching anything but I could see fish. The thing is, is you gotta connect with the environment and that's what Tenkara does. And where I hooked the fish was in Tenkara range, but I don't know where, I don't know where the fish was. That's what's interesting to me now. What's interesting to me is since I know so much about the range between 60 and 40 or 70 and 40 or 60 and 30 feet, where does the fish hit the fly? And I know they, I know they hit it. They don't hit it seven. I mean, the number of times they hit it at your maximum cast is less than three or four or five percent whether it's 50 60 70 feet doesn't matter where they hit it is really interesting and i agree with you for sure that the plot the fish hit in tenkara range but then it's a matter of how how fast does the fly get down to the where they are and what do you do that's going to make a difference.

48:36And the other day on the rocks, I caught one fish on a fly rod. I lost a fish on a fly rod, and I caught three fish on Tenkara. Bing, bang, boom. And those fish, the way they were hooked, led me to new ideas about the kind of fly I would use. I'd use more of a crab pattern coming up the face of this edge, this buttress or this rock groin that's what's interesting to me is those fish have been there forever I've fished 20 and 30 and 40 feet past those fish forever for 30 years I know where they are now because I know now I know where I hooked them I hooked them always with 4 feet of fly line outside my 9 foot rod and a nine-foot rod shorter than tenkara. So it's really interesting how your perspective changes.

49:37Now it's a matter of how does your retrieve change because I'm going to get it out there. I'm going to let the water sweep the line. You can't, thing you can't do, it doesn't matter if it's tenkara or anything else, you can't sweep bait fish against the pull of the surge. you can't because the fish that's not how they swim that's not how they swim so let your tenkara presentation sweep the way that it would the same way the same way as you might mend your line or position your body with a fly line to make the dry fly drift without dragging on the current and causing a wake you have to do the same thing in vicious water because that crab or that bait fish that's stunned is being pulled by the surge of the wave and let the let the current do the work and how you hold your rod connect with the fish make that a solid connection and and uh I'm not really actually sure what will happen but I am sure that I'll learn a lot more about fishing from fishing tenkara because I learned a lot more about fishing conventional fly rod like a nymph in surges of waves against rocks and in holes I showed you the other day we went back, I pulled you back to the river and we watched the sand lances dive into the sand.

51:24I said, that's what those fish are keying into. And we watched hundreds of them. And you guys couldn't see them at first because they were like mirages. Oh, totally. It was like so weird to have these things. You'd see like 12 or 20 or 30 and all of a sudden they would disappear. What do you call them again? Sand eels? Sand eels and sand lances, yeah. But that's about the fly. So what are you going to do? What are you going to do with the rod and a fly? Should you have a light fly on? Is the hook going to go down and dig the sand? Or should I have a clouser on and have that thing dive into the sand and really puff it when you pull it? and what do you do with a strip on a fly rod versus a twitch or a pull with a tenkara that's really compelling to the fish and I believe that if you do I believe that if you do anything besides chunk bait or spin cast you're going to learn a lot more about the fish because the fit I can show you how the fishers react.

52:41And the reason I can show you that is because I can't see out 70 feet, but I can see out 20, 25 feet. Tell me about the flies. Of course, we're using completely different flies. And by the way, I'm going to post some photos of the flies on tenkarausa.com on the page for this episode. but your approach to the fly selection struck me as a not being too far from the tenkara approach as i'll call it because you don't seem to be obsessing over a ton of patterns you know you seem to have some few go-to maybe a couple of colors tell me about the flies that you use with your tenkara rod or with your right and your which are the same flies by the way but tell me about the flies how did you arrive at those flies and what kind of flies are you I didn't want to change my I didn't want to change my fly selection with Tenkara because I trust my flies and my flies are different than what you buy in a store and it's taken a long time to translate the flies that you buy in the store to what you actually see and experience in the fishing conditions.

54:08And fortunately, the rod that I use, the Yamame, casts this same weighted clouser fly, the same as a fly rod does. it's fine. I don't end up with a messy cast. It just goes out straight. Works fine. So what's really important again is trying to get close to the fish. And I want to do some certain things with the fish that people don't really maybe think about as much. I mean the only place that people have really obsessed about it is with permit bonefish and tarpon and they have a million different colors and it's mainly the gotcha that catches bonefish and some unique patterns here or there and permit with crabs and etc.

55:13But what's really interesting about the flies is that you have to think about. I think about the fly more with Tencaro because I know black works a lot in white water and foam. And you don't see a lot of black striper flies in fly shops. And I've been using them for years. I use black and purple and black and green and black black with gold crystal flash in it. And what's interesting about that, I think with Tenkara is I've been catching fish on these things for a long time, and people are always amazed when I put them on. But the reason they work is because they're a silhouette in white foam. And the thing about Tenkara is that in order to cause movement with the fly, you can't strip straight to the fly, which is how we hook up on a fly rod.

56:22And we let that fly swing in the current. With Tenkara, you move the fly rod back and twitch it, back and forth and twitch it, back and forth and twitch it. So it's swinging with the current to the eddy line or the dead point of new current. And when you're doing that, that fly is kind of rising because you don't have an intermediate or a fast sync line like you would with a fly rod. And so it's seeing that silhouette. It's very interesting. I think it's seeing that silhouette. It's tracking that silhouette. Especially when it comes up. I caught three fish the other day with them. I saw them all six to 12 inches in the wall. And they were all coming up. And they thought that, those fish thought that they were going to miss that black fly. And they struck it really hard. Yeah, almost in the same place every time. So it's very interesting to observe something new that you knew worked for a long time, but you didn't really know why it worked.

57:28And again, it's just getting closer to the... To me, it's just getting closer to the, you know, thing that you want to catch. Tell me about your rig. what is your tell me about your rod, your line and your leader whatever you're using can you describe that? I don't know I have the biggest idea well why don't you tell me you got the idea what's that orange stuff I have on here so Harry is using a 12 foot yamame so that's his rod and he's using a few feet of the level line the orange level line uh which is what i was actually using entirely as my line but like what was that like maybe seven feet of the orange line you're right yeah i would guess seven or eight feet seven or eight feet and then what like five four feet of the intermediate sink four feet of intermediate sinking line and what kind of line is that like is it a fly line like a intermediate sinking fly line yeah like you would use for an eight weight rod and then did you have some kind of like leader material put leader on there five or six feet so I'm trying to make a lead a line a foot or two longer than recommended for the rod length or then the rod lines because I recommend longer lines by the way yeah and uh longer than the longer than the rod And I'll describe what I used.

59:04Well, it's certainly longer than the rod line. Definitely, yeah, which I think is the way to go, too. So I used, you know, and this being not my first time, but almost my first time fly fishing salt, I decided to bring my Ito, you know, which is the 13 to 14 feet 7-inch rod. It's a softer rod. And at the end of that, I had roughly 18 feet of 4.5 level line. and then at the end of that i use four feet of did you give me a 12 pound test leader material yeah so 12 pound test leader because there's rocks there's a lot of abrasion and then my fly so of course i did not want to use very thin tippet at the end and uh so that was the setups that we are both using by the way um so it kind of goes to show you that there's different approaches and we caught similar numbers of fish. You caught a little bit more fish than I did, but I'll attribute that to your 30 years of saltwater experience.

1:00:07Well, they haven't caught more fish than you on this trip on Tenkara. No, that's true. No, no, no. Similar numbers of fish overall. So that's kind of like the setup. I think people sometimes get really caught up on what kind of setup to use and what kind of rig. My recommendation would just be go for a very long run. So I'm trying to convince Henry to give the Amago a shot. So I brought him an Amago that maybe tomorrow he'll use. I think there'll be a good rod, 13 and a half feet. But of course, you know, he's getting very close to the fish. So that's... We're going to be very close to the fish tomorrow. Perfect. You're going to be frightened, I hope. I'm still hoping to frighten you. All right, so now I have to ask this, Henry. so with you being a famous rock climber do you see parallels between your climbing maybe your style of climbing particularly which is very unique and Tenkara yeah but I don't see parallels between most people's climbing style and Tenkara so I'd like to focus on that first yeah because I think yeah i agree with you most people's climbing style is more let's just say in the 1980s it was all about the beat bmw 320 and 635 633 csi or whatever that and it was about how hard the climb was and now it's about how hard the climb is and it's not really about how you do the climb and you know the thing about climbing is is that it's really about how you do the climb and people don't really understand that these guys that are super alpinists are so confident to climb nine and ten and twelve thousand foot routes on seven thousand meter peaks with super lightweight gear are confident in their fitness are confident in all of their experience they're confident in their equipment you know their their partner's equipment and they go up there and they do these things super fast and they know when they're getting sick and they know when they're maxed and they know when they have to be safe and they don't rely on more equipment ever ever to do those things and my climbing I like to do more with less so I would climb without shoes I never use cams I don't use a harness I have confidence it's not important I don't I think you should wear a harness I think you you should use cams.

1:03:08I just don't. And I found that by limitating myself, I got to climb in a lot more countries around the world because I took what I climb with every day. And when you use your same equipment every day and it fits underneath the seat or in the overhead bin of the plane, you're going to get to go do it. If you go on a business trip, you're going climbing. You're going to carry 50 pounds of shit. you're not going climbing. And that's the big difference. And I enjoy, I've enjoyed my life in climbing. I've enjoyed my life in fishing. But I want to go with the least amount of stuff and accomplish the most. And I'm still catching more fish. And I'm still climbing more places than most people. And I'm not catching the biggest fish. and I'm not catching the most fish all the time and I'm not climbing the hardest things for sure.

1:04:10But it's important to like have a marriage between your lifestyle or simple fun. You know, the more complicated you, I own 10 fricking windsurfers and I haven't windsurfed in 15 years because I gained weight. I never had the right sails. I never had the right skegs. I never had this. I never had that. and things weigh a ton. You stick them up on the top of your car and you soon out face your wife or your girlfriend or whatever because they don't want to deal with all the crap. So now we have kiteboarding. How wonderful is that? Awesome, by the way. Simple. A board and a kite. Not a mast, not a boom, not a skeg, not a daggerboard, not the harness, none, forget it. Simple. And to me, the more I simplified my climbing, the more I did. And in fishing, it's kind of the same.

1:05:15And I'm not a great fisherman, but I do know the environment that I fish in. Well, I think that makes you a great fisherman, by the way. Back to the fur. You're very much in tune with your environment and how to get fish to react to your fly. you're being humble on that side. Well, I'm not a great fishery. I mean, I'm not really a great fishery. But it's... I live a gratifying life. You have fun with it. I think you said simple fun. I'm productive. I'm productive. I'm going to go out. I don't want to go out and just wave a rata around in the air and smoke a cigar and have a glass of really great scotch at the end of an afternoon session of fishing. I want to get up at 4 or 5 a.m., I want to charge, I want to be at work by 8, and I want to have caught fish. Which is almost what we're doing tomorrow. Pretty much every day.

1:06:16Yeah. It's hard. So tell me, or tell us. The problem is that June is earlier, and September is later, so it's nice. Who's this gentleman's fly fishing? 6 a.m. start tomorrow, so that's not too bad. So what advice, what tips would you give somebody who's interested in fishing with a tenkara rod in saltwater? I would pick six flies. You can pick whatever you want and go figure out how to get close to the fish. Simple as that. Whatever you want for flies. Whatever you want for flies. Would you have some suggestions for flies? Yeah, I would. I would have two clousers. No, I would have three clousers. would have a black one I would have a full-bodied white one with some kind of yellow and chartreuse and a black back and I'd have a really really thin skinny like you'd use for redfish or bonefish like inch and a half to two inches two and a half inches long but really sparse. Any particular color for that one? White and chartreuse and brown but something really subtle colors don't go for these big flashy chartreuses. I find that in the color the water if it's bright you need to have I use grays and olives and things I mean, I could go on because it's like eight flies or ten flies or twelve flies, but don't buy, don't just go with what's in the store.

1:08:01Get something that is counterintuitive. So the rule of thumbs that I've gotten from you in the last couple of days have been, or that's just what I got, of course, from my very limited experience. But I've only used two flies. You've given me a few, but I've only used two of those at your suggestion. and when we were fishing the rocks it was a black, mostly black fly when we were fishing the surf but that's predicated on the white water, not the rocks on the white water that were on the rocks okay, god, I didn't get that part earlier so white water over the rocks is a black fly, you know, a little bit of a silhouette although when we were fishing surf primarily like a light color white, whitish fly but big surf, a lot of white water black fly. Okay. I use a lot of olive and gray with some glints of green or gold crystal flash, but I try not to make the fly white and chartreuse because the fish miss it in the white water. So the pattern and the size were the same.

1:09:09What kind of size hook was that? Ones and twos. Okay. But it's easier to cast a one with a with the tenkara. And generally, if I'm wanting to catch a 30 or 40 inch fish, I'm going to fish a 3-4-0 hook. But I don't think we're going to catch fish on tenkara. I'm not going after those. But I didn't finish the other three flies, so the other three flies are like a deceiver. The one that worked the other day was a white deceiver with a blue back. this mimics at this time of year it mimics a peanut bunker but at different times of year blue and black back is the silhouette against the foam and I actually don't think it's a good idea to match the hatch because when we have when you're casting to hatch and trout, you're having one and two and 40 and 60 and 100 flies emerging to the surface and floating on the surface and the trout pick them off.

1:10:30When you're casting to peanut bunker and sand eel swarms, you're casting to hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of bait fish. So if you use something that's slightly larger, like imagine a mackerel in amongst a bunch of sand eels or a mackerel in amongst a bunch of peanut bunker the bigger fish will key up into that so don't think about it as matching the hatch think about it as being just a teeny bit larger which is actually how i approach my fly fishing with tenkara too it's uh yeah a lot of people i have a funny story by the way so one time i had just moved to colorado and my neighbor alan had hired a fly fishing guide, a very famous fly fishing guide, and we went to the Colorado River. And we get there, and my neighbor told the guide that I was going to be using Tenkara. He was very scat to begin with, and he was like, I'm not sure if that's going to work here. So we get to the water, I set up my line, and my rule of thumb is actually just start using whatever fly you have at the end of your line. That's my first rule. You know, I don't want to spend time switching flies in the beginning of the day because i'm not sure if that fly is going to work or not so it's might as well start with what i have well i hope you took off that griffith's net before you went triper fishing uh yeah i did actually i set up a new line because that was my salt water setup so yeah i broke my rule of thumb it's a rule of thumb because you know it's thumbs are meant to be broken so um so but we get to the water set up my line i pulled the line out and I showed a guide this fly that I have at the end of the line. It's a very large fly, size 8 hook, you know, Tenkara style fly, reverse hackle fly. And, you know, I asked the guide, do you think this fly is going to work okay here? And he looks at me and he's very quizzical and he's like, you know, I don't know. I mean, I don't know much about Tenkara, but this is a small fly fishery. We're usually using size 18s or 22s. I was like, okay, you know, but I'll just start with this and see how it goes. So I go a little bit upstream and the guide of my neighbor is setting up their rod and reel and I give three casts and I catch my first fish. 16 inch brown trout. I show it to them and I look at them. They're still setting up their rod and reel.

1:12:54Release the fish. I go a little bit upstream from there, just a few feet. Catch my second fish and I look back. They're still setting up their rod and reel and kind of show it to them really quickly but release it a little bit later when they're done sitting up the running wheel. My neighbor came to me. He told me that the guy turned to him as soon as I walked upstream. He's like, that poor guy. He's not going to catch a single fish today because this fly is the size of a hummingbird. So, you know, it kind of, but my theory is always that, you know, the fish are always looking for something a little bit bigger. I mean, if you're trying to find a lot of food, you don't want to get just a bunch of little things. You just want to get a little bit bigger piece of meat. So I think that rule kind of applies well here. Well, first of all, you're fishing to train fish, oftentimes in a trout stream. And that's why I like the salt, because the fish are moving around all the time. They're not trained, except in the places that we don't go, because you haven't seen anybody fishing. That's true.

1:13:55we have to go to places that they're not thrashing the water with these huge plugs and you know cut bait dead mackerel and stuff like that but I think fish do want to see something slightly different and if there's a lot of them they're competing if they see something compelling you see it when you look at bonefish and you cast to a bonefish fish, 70 feet away, you cast to a bonefish, 60 feet, bonefish are 70 feet away, gentle cast, and you puff that fly, that gotcha, whatever, you can see them accelerate. And you better be real clear that if you can cast to the side a little bit with that bigger bonefisher in the back, you might have a chance at it. But if you're in the point of that bowling ball formation, the bowling pin formation, those little guys are going to get it every time.

1:15:04You've got to do something different. We've got too much of this matching the hatch business in size 8 and 10 and 12 and 14 and 16 flies. it's different in the salt it's absolutely different there's no question so maybe one last question for you so in tenkara you know like over the last eight years i carry essentially one pattern there's three different sizes that i carry size eight uh 18 a size 12 and a size eight most of the time i'm using a size eight actually kind of a large hook um but it's almost one fly i mean a couple of different colors maybe i only have four flies in my box that I fill my box with. Seven Japanese Tenkara fishermen, and this is mountain streams, completely different environment. They're using one fly pattern regardless. Same color, same size, same shape. Do you think you could successfully catch enough fish to keep you happy in salt water with one fly?

1:16:12Stripers? Yeah. I think if you had one fly in June, and one fly in July and one fly in August and one fly in September or two or two two in June and two in July and two in August and two in September would that be dark and light? no because in June I would fish very skinny flies very sparse very thin but mainly white and chartreuse with olive or something and it would depend on where I was fishing and I definitely would want a black fly for the rocks so but I want to catch mackerel, shad, stripers snapper blues and brown trout same fly same fly and then when I go on the rocks or whitewater.

1:17:15I want that much darker fly. And I wouldn't have to be black. But definitely dark olive and gray. And then in July, I want that to be a little bit bigger. But definitely in August and September, I want them to be bigger. I want them to be four and six inches. I want them to be fuller bodied. And I want to have that same sand eel, something black in that bait fish. I mean, I'll just give you an example. This spring, when I was coming out of this one river, I saw a fish I haven't seen before. It was a herring, but it was really scrawny. It was about five to six inches long, which I was really surprised because it was mid-June. And it was white, little, little lavendery, pinky, greeny, blue-black.

1:18:19And I tied up a bunch of flies that I've never tied before. They were four and a half to five inches long, clousers. And we never changed the fly for the next three weeks. Never. not there not 100 miles away in up in the Sheep's Cut and the Kennebec rivers and I've never used that combination of colors before but it seemed to satisfy to answer your question it seemed to satisfy the black side and the light white side so if I had to now if I had to change I will have gone all the way from June to August using the same fly all the time and to your point that would have been my one fly and I caught more fish consistently for three tides June, July and August nice yeah and I should answer I'm assuming some of the listeners are kind of asking a couple of questions um one of them will be how do you cast you know those heavy flies and i'll answer that with tenkara i had no problem i'm using the ito and i'm actually doing pretty much a Tenkara Cast you know just overhead and the only difference is that i'm making sure that my back cast is i'm really feeling the rod loading on the back cast so the fly stretches out behind me and then i the rod essentially slings the fly forward maybe a little bit more open but it was really not a very different cast because I you know sometimes like when I was fishing a surf I would let the waves kind of carry the fly behind me a little bit and then water load my rod and then just sling it forward and that worked really well but for the most part just a regular cast and the other question I'm assuming listeners are asking right now is about landing you know some of those larger fish I think the fish that I caught have been between the 16 to 18 inch range um the fights were spectacular it was really really strong fish you know i would kind of compare it to a 22 inch trout a strong hot rainbow trout but the one that i caught on the surf it might have been a 16 or so inch fish 16 17 that was a very strong fish I thought it was going to be way bigger than he was.

1:20:58The rod handled it fine, but it took me a little while to bring it in because what I was doing, I was just using the little swells and the waves to kind of help me bring the fish closer to shallower water. So that's a couple of my observations there. I think you can catch the fish faster by bringing the rod sideways. I think the cast, first of all, with a heavier fly. you really have to make sure your arc up is to 12 or 1 o'clock and your forward cast doesn't go past 10. Don't reach going forward. Because when you reach going forward, the heavier flies dump. And that's when you really need to let the current pull it out. But when the current pulls it out, you miss 8 or 10 feet. Now, you're not doing that. I'm not saying you're doing that, but you can do that if you don't cast that forward cast correctly.

1:22:05And the second thing is on the fight, there's a fine line, I think, and I don't know what it is because I'm not an expert at Tenkara, But there's a fine line between letting this fish have its way with you in its environment. And its environment is seaweed, which is going to tangle the line, barnacles, which is going to cut it off, and raging surf. So one minute, the fish is in the foam, and you rule the fish because you can lift it with all the power of the rod. And the next minute, you got like 10 tons or 100,000 gallons of water pulling out. And it's like pulling out a lot faster than a four or five or six knot current. And you have to be prepared, not only about the fish, but to get pulled off your feet. Yeah.

1:23:05and so at that point in time you you want to be really subtle about fight about catching the fish in the white water and letting getting the rod tip up and down like nymph fishing and then you're letting it out but once you have it you want to pull it into the foam if you can get if you see foam get the fish into the foam but don't let it get into the surge going out because one minute you got a four pound fish on in the next minute you got a 10 pound fish on absolutely and it's like intense oh very much yeah and you're only concentrating on the next set of waves coming in and you're going to get hosed so you're going to so you probably know the the saying in trout fishing foam is home you know because foam is where you know the food is going to be and you want to cast so i think the same can be said to salt water fishing foam is home because that's where you want to bring the fish to yeah very true yeah it's yeah it's really tricky that part of it's the trickiest part about tenkara because the place that the place that you're going to have the most excitement and the most maybe productivity will be close in on the rocks but it couldn't be it could be the most dangerous and most alluring and the harder to land the fish and the hookup isn't anywhere near the beginning no no the beginning is like the beginning is when you're holding it up taking a picture of it because the rest even getting rid of it is going to be so that's true yeah that's fun that's the funnest part yeah now i had a blast so thanks so much harry for talking to us about salt water fishing with Tenkara Rods.

1:24:56That's completely new to me. I've been having a blast learning from you. And just an honor to have been invited to come and join you for some fishing here in Maine and New Hampshire. So thanks for your time. Well, you only have one thing left to do and that's to come back. I am looking forward to it. Actually, I'm looking forward to tomorrow first of all because we have a day and a half of fishing left. Yep, a day and a half left and then you'll be enticed to come for June absolutely it's really a June July September thing it's not a it's not like you can catch trout all the time well you just got to know the tides and come and slay them sounds good thank you you're welcome Now a conversation with Nicole Silk from the River Network.

1:25:59And I hope you'll take a minute to check out rivernetwork.org to see what they're doing. And I'm also going to make sure to put a link to their website on tenkarausa.com forward slash podcast. Today I'm excited to have here with me Nicole Silk with the River Network. And this is an organization that I'm really excited about. I started learning more about their mission, how they connect the dots with conservation and stream restoration and all kinds of projects. And we're going to be talking a little bit about what they do. So, Nicole, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and your organization? Great. Well, it's super wonderful to be here. I'm glad to have this conversation with you. and yeah so I've been working in the world of water, river conservation and water advocacy for a long time, probably about 25 years and I've been with River Network for a little bit less than five years now and and part of the reason I was really excited to join the team at River Network was because of its focus on local. We empower folks at the local level to do more for their rivers, to get engaged, to connect with us, and we provide them with resources, we provide them with access to experts. We have a great annual conference called River Rally, and in my career in conservation I've always found that the most sustainable solutions for our rivers are the ones that happen at the local level where there are people there to pay attention to what's going on with the river you know it's in bad shape isn't in good shape they're the ones who sound the alarm when something happens but they're also the ones to really be passionate about taking care of that place and i was really impressed by the the reach that you guys have. I think when I first got introduced to your organization, I thought it was just going to be, you know, when you mentioned local, just like this little Boulder, you know, organization that maybe looks after Boulder Creek. But once I started learning more and I got to meet you, I realized that you guys actually have really very large reach. Tell us a little bit of perhaps a couple of numbers that actually impressed me in terms of how many, you know, what kinds of projects, how many people you guys mobilize and how you kind of bring them all together.

1:28:35Absolutely. So our network is now over 6,000 strong and by 6,000 strong I'm talking about organizations that are working at the local level all across the country. So if you can imagine for those of you listening a map of the United States that's filled with that dendric structure of streams that flow into larger rivers that flow into basins. Across all of those there are non-profit organizations that are at the local level and we connect them. That's part of what we do and what we have done for 30 years. So that's a little bit of the secret of River Network. We've been doing this for 30 years. We were formed at a time where a number of leaders in the conservation community were concerned that there was no national organization that was really there for the grassroots level. And that led to the establishment of River Network 30 years ago. This is our yearly anniversary and it's very exciting for us. And yeah, so over time our work has evolved from helping groups get off the ground to now working with more established groups and helping them expand their work to include engagement with everyone from the boating and the angling community to farmers and ranchers to how do you connect what's going on the headwaters of streams all the way down through the cities and then all the way downstream to the ocean. So tell me about those members in your network because I think some of our listeners will probably recognize some of the names because I thought it was an interesting model you guys are essentially in my view like a leadership organization that kind of helps really connect the dots for a lot of people and organizations. Why don't you tell us a little bit about the kinds of members that you have because I know you work with Trout Unlimited for example. We do we work with Trout Unlimited and their chapters we consider them members of our network and that listing of over 6,000 organizations working at the local level. Same for some of the other national organizations that have local chapters or local presence including the Nature Conservancy in American Rivers.

1:30:58But there are also really thousands of individual tiny organizations. Some of them are friends groups, say Friends of the Poudre River or maybe there's a group in Washington on the Skagit. Those are all entities that are part of our network all the way along the line up to some of the statewide organizations and then some of the larger coalitions that are working to bring those smaller groups together for bigger impact. So one of the things that we're myself personally but also I think kind of USA that we're very interested in is trying to inspire people to take direct action when it comes to you know the places where they're fishing you know if we're extending or opening the doors for people to fly fish we want to make sure that we You know they're gonna start caring for any environment and they you know You kind of want to show the path of how they can do that. So for example Stream cleanups are kind of a big thing that we do So tell our listeners a little bit about how you guys kind of bring in You know the individual to do some direct action work what kinds of projects and how they can get involved perhaps Well, we always figure that the best advocates for our rivers are going to be those people who are passionate about those places, right? So if you have an opportunity to fall in love with the river because you're fishing on it or because you're a boater or because perhaps it's flowing through your backyard, that's great. Not everyone has that privilege, it really is a privilege, but for those of us who do, there's no better place to begin that journey towards deeper engagement than with those people. So we provide a number of opportunities through our larger network for people to get involved and for companies to make a difference too. We support a series of community engagement events across the country where we're providing direct opportunities for people to engage but also some signature programs with companies as diverse as Anheuser-Busch and Coca-Cola and hopefully Tenkara and others who are also thinking about, you know, how do they forge that direct relationship with their consumer base to really have more of an important impact, a sustainable impact on the resources that are so fundamental to their business proposition.

1:33:34So let's talk a little bit about stream cleanups because that was the topic of our conversation when we met last time. You know, we do only, you know, half a dozen cleanups here in Boulder Creek, very local, but we definitely want to extend our reach and kind of start opening the doors so that those people who are using our rods, they're thinking about helping clean up their stream a little bit. You guys told me you helped a lot of people get engaged with river cleanups last year. How many people was it? It was actually, let's see, over 13,000 people were involved in the cleanup events that we sponsored over the last year. That's just over the last year, right? So if you multiply that across numerous years, that's an awful lot of people for a pretty small organization. And I think there are many, many more opportunities to expand that model now that we know how to do it. And we've been deploying that model in partnership with both cities and with different companies in different parts of the country.

1:34:40So whether that's here in Colorado where our headquarters are now or in other parts of the country, we have partners through this national network that we can hook up with companies who care. Excellent. So what is the best way for our listeners to get involved? You know, it seems to me like I'm really excited about the work that you guys do and it seems to me like a lot of People once they find out about the kind of work you're doing they go to your website They're probably gonna get very excited too. So how how can people find your organization? And how can they get involved? That's super easy. You can go to www.rivernetwork.org When you go to the main page on our website you can get to know our network you can also See this national map that I'm talking about you can click through it You can find out who the local organizations are that are near you or are near a stream that you care about So we want to provide that direct relationship Opportunity for you, but you can also support our work, too Excellent. I'll make sure to post the link on this podcast web page. You know, I think how do you say dot com for a slash podcast And one last question, Nicole. So if somebody's going fishing, you know, this weekend or next weekend, what do you think they can do to help with the rivers? It's super easy, I would say.

1:36:05Bring a little bag with you. Just look around the spot where you're casting your line and see if you can pick up a few things. There's always either micro trash or sometimes more macro trash sitting right there next to you. It makes you feel good too. Everyone can make a difference. Thank you so much for listening to another episode of the Tenkara Cast. I hope you enjoyed this longer format podcast and that it got you to your destination through the workday, through to your hike, whatever you're, however you're listening to this podcast. I really enjoyed the fact that you're downloading it and listening. If you get a moment again, please give me a review. I would really enjoy that. and I really appreciate it. And as always, I'd especially like to thank Nick O'Gala Takenobu. You can check out his music, which he lets us use in our videos and his podcast at takenobumusic.com. Till next time on the Takenka-to-Cast.