Tenkara Q&A Part 1: Tenkara Rods

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, this is Daniel at Tenkara USA. Welcome back to another episode of the Tenkara Cast. First of all, I want to thank everyone for joining in on our sale, taking advantage of the really good prices that we have been offering on the Tenkara USA rods, and not postponing your purchase.

1:04It's been incredibly helpful to our team to have that purchase from you coming now as opposed to later, you know, because things are a little uncertain. We had a possibility of the warehouse potentially closing. Luckily, it never did. We were able to keep shipping product throughout the sale. And we are really grateful to have your support at these times. Our team is breathing much easier, and hopefully you have a rod in your hands that you're able to use now as things start opening up and you're able to go fishing in the waters close to you. So thank you so much for making a purchase now as opposed to later. So today I wanted to do something I've been meaning to do for some time, which is to cover the most commonly asked questions about Tenkara and some not-so-commonly asked questions about Tenkara, perhaps. And I'm going to have to split this episode up into at least two parts. So you're going to see the Tenkara Q&A Part 1, which is going to be focused.

2:07It's going to have a couple of questions, kind of general questions about Tenkara, but then I'm going to focus exclusively on questions about Tenkara rods. and that's going to be a fairly long episode, roughly about 40 minutes. And then I'm going to have the Tenkara Q&A part two where I'm going to start getting into Tenkara lines and hopefully also Tenkara flies and other questions. So I'm going to split up this episode. This is going to be part one exclusively focused on Tenkara rods. If you have questions or are interested, look out for Q&A on Tenkara part two focused on the Tenkara lines, Tenkara flies, and other questions about Tenkara. But I just kind of wanted to get us all on the same kind of page and make sure that we try to cover bases and there's not too many misunderstandings about Tenkara. So it's more of a Q&A. These questions are questions that my team, especially TJ and John doing customer support, have shared that they get very often.

3:13but also questions that, you know, if you go to our blog, tenkarausa.com forward slash blog, the first post that you see which is pinned to the top of the page is going to be a Q&A post. And I've left that there for a long time so people can ask questions directly. And so I compiled some of the questions that have been asked over time from there and then some other questions that have come through Facebook and other means over the years. So hopefully this kind of gets us a chance to cover everything. It could be a long episode. I'm not sure. I'm going to try to go through the questions relatively quickly. So some of them may be a little bit superficial as opposed to trying to go super into depth about everything. And if you are left with any questions at the end of this, don't hesitate to reach out either through the podcast page for this Q&A or through that Q&A blog post that I just mentioned. So I'm going to start from the beginning.

4:13I'm going to cover some kind of general questions, and then I'm going to go kind of try to break it up into sections to organize the episode a little bit. So the first one is just going to be a couple of general questions. Then I'm going to try to cover questions that have come to us about Tenkara rods over the years, and then about Tenkara lines, including rigging and that kind of thing. Then I'm going to cover Tenkara flies. And then lastly, I'm going to cover some of the things that have come about, how to learn about Tenkara and that kind of thing, and related to general questions as well. But one of the most common questions we get to begin with is whether Tenkara is good for beginners. And yes, it's great for beginners. So Tenkara is this really simple method of fly fishing, as we always talk about, only rod, line, and fly. A lot of people think that it resembles the good old cane pole fishing that people might have done as kids. And a big part of the reason that a lot of people might have grown up doing that is because there's not a whole lot to it.

5:20So Tenkara kind of takes the advantage of the simplicity of the cane pole, even though he does have to teach you how to fly cast because you're making the line move and that kind of thing. But all around, very, very good for beginners, for kids as well. So Tenkara is a very good method of fishing for kids because it keeps things simple. There's not a whole lot of things to mess up, if you will. And the casting itself doesn't take long. You know, you learn how to cast in a couple of minutes. It's a little bit like picking up a pabble and throwing it. You kind of have a very similar motion. So there's not a ton there. It's a very intuitive way to fish. And then later I'm going to talk about rods. But the entire method of tenkara is really good for beginners. So I want to address that right now. It's not really about the rods. All the rods are good for beginners because the method itself is really good. Next one, is tenkara good for backpackers or for backpacking?

6:21And yes, absolutely. The first thing that's going to come to mind when people look at Tenkara in terms of thinking about backpacking is that the whole setup is very portable, very compact, and there's not a whole lot to it. You have a rod line and fly, the rods telescope down to 20 inches, and you have this little kit bag with you. So it's not a whole lot of space that it's going to take up. You can build a whole kit, a whole Tenkara kit, if you're a very strong minimalist, for about six ounces of gear, roughly, or even potentially less. But six ounces, I think, is a good number to shoot for if you're a super minimalist, where you have the Tenkara rod, about three ounces. You have a keeper with line and tippet and flies in it. That's another probably three ounces. And maybe a little nipper, which is, you know, point something else. So very lightweight. But my favorite thing when it comes to Tenkara for backpacking is not so much the portability as it is the speed of putting things together.

7:27And that's something that sometimes people don't think about. But when you're backpacking, you have to set up with you. If you have a conventional Western fly rod, especially one that is set up for, you know, backpacking for trips, like a seven-piece rod, for example, It takes quite a bit of time to line all the guides in a fly rod. And then you have to not only line the guides up and put all the pieces together, you have to run the line through it, and sometimes the line kind of comes back out. But you run the line through it, and then you have to attach your fly because it's hard to kind of pass it on through the guides and so forth. So that takes a few minutes to get rigged up. Whereas with tenkara, you literally girth hitch a line to the tip of the rod, you unspool it out of the spool, extend the rod, and you can be fishing in about 40 seconds or so. That's how long it takes me to extend the rod with a line. And from there on, you're fishing, you want to put the rod away, another 40 seconds to collapse the rod, wind the line around the spool.

8:29So that's my favorite thing about that. Now moving on to tenkara rods. What is a good tenkara rod for a beginner? And again, all Tenkara rods that we offer at Tenkara USA are excellent for beginners. The method itself is really good for beginners, so I wouldn't get too caught up on thinking of which rod is going to be best for beginners. Mostly you want to look at the features in the rods. There are, I will say, there are two rods that are what I would consider or more general all-around kind of rods that cover a variety of situations really well. And that's if you're unsure what kind of waters you're going to be fishing. You might be going to small streams, bigger waters, and you just want to have something that does it all really easily. Two easy rods for us to recommend are the Iwana, which is a 12-foot rod. 12-foot is the average length of a Tenkara rod, by the way. And the Sato, which is from 10 feet 8 to 12 feet 9.

9:30So those rods cover that average length of 12 foot, which is the average length of a tenkara rod. The other rods are slightly more specialized. The roto being a small stream kind of rod, like if you're fishing very tight waters. The ito being your longest rod. The hane being a really good rod for backpacking, for taking along in your little adventures. But all of them can be used by beginners really easily. So that's kind of the gist of it about tenkara rods. Um, the next question that I would say that we get very often, how big of a fish can I catch on a Tenkara rod? And that's another question that there is not that much of a specific answer to it. So Tenkara is not designed to go after very large fish, fish species. You know, if you're targeting steelhead, if you're targeting pike, if you're targeting, you know just very large species we don't necessarily recommend tenkara for that however we have seen pike up to 29 inches being caught on a Tenkara USA rod i think we have that on our blog definitely have that on my book uh sean lizotti out of south dakota caught that a few years ago sent us this photo of this beautiful pike like huge um so that might have been the largest, possibly the largest fish I have seen caught on a tenkara rod that I've seen a photo of. I have seen also like a couple of fish in about seven pound range. There was a bass I think that was caught in California that I remember and a video of somebody catching, I forget who he was now, but somebody catching a seven pound brown trout in New Zealand. So as long as you're targeting, I would say for pretty much most trout, most panfish, you know, in lakes and ponds, bass, all these kind of average, what I would call average kind of species, you're likely going to be fine.

11:39Even carp, you know, for example, I have caught some carp. If you've seen like a super large fish, you know, maybe, you know, you have to think a little bit about how you're going to handle it, how you're going to land the fish. But if you're fishing for these kind of average size fish species and you happen to hook into a large specimen of those, you're probably fine. So that's kind of the gist of it. For the most part, you know, if you're targeting the 10 to 22, 23-inch trout, you're good. If you're targeting the penfish and you happen to hook a 5-pound bass, you're good. Now the next question that comes along with that is which rod do we recommend for catching a large fish on Tenkara? And at Tenkara USA we have two main rods. All of the rods at Tenkara USA can catch and land a large fish. They're very strong material. They're made of carbon fiber. They're designed to play fish really well. the main difference is going to come in terms of which one is going to make it easiest to bring a large fish in kind of quickly so you're not overtiring the fish and the two main rods that we recommend in our lineup are going to be the Ito that's my favorite rod I've used the Ito for catching carp large carp for catching bass and for catching very large trout and there's videos of pretty much all of those on our website.

13:10And the Amago is another one. It's a 13.5 foot rod with a lot of backbone to it. I personally prefer the Ito because it's got a better, a nicer feel to it. It's a smoother casting rod. It doesn't feel quite as heavy on the hand, and you will handle those large fish really well. You have a lot of leverage. But the Amago is a stouter or heavy rod that does a really good job of bringing the fish a little bit quicker, and it's also a little less expensive. So that's in terms of the large fish. Next question that we get pretty often about tenkara is, I've heard about throwing the rod in the water when you catch a large fish with tenkara. Is that for real? So that's a quote somebody asked me a question. And I always laugh at that question a little bit. I always kind of like to say that maybe somebody's trying to sell you more tenkara rods than we are because no you don't have to throw the rod in the water but I will cover where that comes from so there is a little bit of truth to that primarily that's a historical thing way back in the day when rods were made out of wood in the west you know like in Europe and I should say tenkara and western fly fishing started in a really similar way where you had a long rod fixed length of line tied to the tip of the rod and they look the same except that in Europe you're using wooden rods in Japan you're using bamboo rods but regardless you know back in the day before modern materials and so forth if you happen to hook a very large fish and you're fighting a fish and it really feels like the rod is about to break your last resort is going to be throw the rod in the water because you have a chance to go and retrieve the rod, but it's going to be really, really hard to fix it, replace it, and so forth.

15:05And at the same time, if the rod were to break back in the day, the part of the rod might go with the fish anyway, so might as well throw the rod in the water. But that's old stuff that might come from some historical texts and that kind of thing. Or perhaps it is just the fact that Tenkara USA rods are really strong, and we design them to fight large fish really well. So modern rods are made of carbon fiber. If you happen to hook into a large fish, your first large fish, you're going to swear that the rod is going to break because it's banding so much. But you can rest assured the rod is designed to fight a large fish that way. So at least with Tenkara USA rods, you don't have to throw the rod in the water, so ignore that. Other brands, I'm not sure. Now, another question we get very often is, I can't see the rod tip. It's stuck somewhere in there and I can't see it. Maybe it didn't come with it. So sometimes that happens. If you're not familiar with the Tenkara rod, you remove the plug that keeps every segment inside and you kind of tilt the rod down to expose the segments.

16:12The first thing that should come out is the tip of the rod where you're going to be tying the line. And you can see the Lilian, you know, it's kind of like the flower. The Lilian is the red string material that's on the tip of the rod. and you should be seeing that coming out first. Occasionally, the tip of the rod, the very tip of the rod, may go in, and it kind of gets stuck in there, and you don't see it because, you know, just the way it's working. All you have to do is going to be tilt the rod, expose the tip, the first part that you see, essentially, the thinnest part that you see. You hold that between two fingers as the rod is tilted down, and you shake it very hard. Point it down, you kind of shake it. You make this kind of punching down motion while holding the segment. And usually that force of the shaking down is going to shoot the tip out. If you do not see it, the next thing you can do is just unscrew the cap on the base of the rod and remove the tip segment from the back and then reinsert it back in.

17:20So that's kind of what you can do when you don't see the rod tip. What tenkara rod do I use in a small stream with a lot of trees around? So I mentioned earlier that the average length of a tenkara rod is 12 feet long. It's a very intimidating length for a fly rod in general if you're not used to it. So 12 foot, people look at that and they're like, there's no way I can fish in a small stream, especially if there's trees around me. And the main thing that I will mention is that you get used to the length of the rod really quickly. So don't be too intimidated by that. Don't be too caught up in that. I can say that I fish very small streams with a lot of trees around me with a 12 foot rod on occasion. I go up to Indian Peaks Wilderness, you know, near my home here. very tight streams with a lot of trees around and I use a 12 foot long rod. So first thing is don't be too intimidated by the length of the rod. However if you are almost exclusively or primarily fishing very small streams yes a 12 foot rod is going to feel long. So what you have to do when you're using a long tenkara rod like a 12 foot rod you have to use different techniques. First your casting stroke, you're not going to go as far back as you would with a Western flight rod.

18:52Or even when the terrain is very open, typically your casting stroke with a tenkara rod is going to be your back cast, you move the rod up to 12 o'clock, pointed straight up. Your forecast, you kind of go to three o'clock or so. But when you go up to 12 o'clock, you're shooting the line primarily up and there might be canopy and that kind of thing. So the first thing you do is you modify your casting stroke, either not going as far back as you would otherwise, or casting over the stream, or using different casting techniques, and also making a faster casting stroke. So that's the first thing about technique. But in specifically, which rod would I recommend for fishing a small stream with a lot of trees. The roto is our main rod that we have designed for that. Because yes, you want to have a short rod. In the roto, you can fish that one at 8 feet 10 inches to 10 feet 6 inches. So I will mention the 10 feet 6 inch is already a very short length for a tenkara rod.

19:56It's hard to find. It's not particularly common to even find those in Japan. I mean, they usually kind of come to around 11 feet or so. There are some 10 and a half feet, but that's a short tenkara rod. We kind of took an approach of making it, giving you the choice to fish it even shorter if you really feel like you need to. So that rod, you can fish it at three different lengths, 8 feet 10, 9 feet 9, 10 feet 6. And that covers the basis for all small streams. Now keep in mind that if you do have a longer rod, let's say you have a 12-foot long tenkara rod, you can always choke up on the grip of the rod. So if you hold the rod, let's say you have the Iwana, which is a 12-foot rod, and the rod also collapses to about 20 inches or so. If you just hold your rod at the end of the first segment as opposed to on the handle, you're effectively shortening the rod by a foot and a half roughly, or even two feet if you go a little bit more. So let's say two feet, you know, you're choking up on the grip, all of a sudden you're fishing your rod at 10 feet in length, which is very, very short. Now, if you really want to, you can also collapse one of those segments, even though the rod is not particularly designed to do that, but you have the option to do so.

21:18The main recommendation there, kind of getting a little bit ahead of myself, is maybe try pairing the rod that you have with a shorter length of rod. And it's becoming clear to me that I'm going to have to break this episode into two parts because it looks like I'm going to have to take some more time. So in the future, pretty soon here, look up for another episode on Tenkara lines and the other parts of it as well. But in the Tenkara lines part, I will cover the common rigs and different things that you can do. you know, for managing different situations in terms of rigging your rod. So look out for part two, which I might put out at the same time. We'll see if I can do both of them at the same time, but I'm going to break this up. Now, the next question besides the small stream is the opposite way. Which rod, which Tenkara rod do we recommend for a large river? and that's kind of like when you have a larger river especially a place that is more open you know you don't have quite as many trees around and overhead it's really easy to maneuver a long rod and a long rod gives you huge advantage because you can cast on the other side of many currents you can keep the line off the water you don't have to quite move in as far you can pair it with a longer rod more easily and so forth so just go for the longest tenkara rod you can our longest rod is the ito which you can fish actually two different lengths you can fish it 13 feet long which is already a long tenkara rod or 14 feet 7 inches personally the ito is actually my favorite rod by far you see that in my hands more often than any other rod even in small streams because I know if I go to a bigger water, I have the length that I want.

23:16But if I get into a small stream, I can always do different techniques to have a shorter rod with me as well. So with one rod, I can fish in a variety of conditions. But the Ito is our primary suggestion for large waters. And the Amago, perhaps, at 13 1⁄2 foot, that's a good option as well. Now, we also get asked very commonly, what are the differences between Tenkara USA rods and other manufacturers? What are the differences between Tenkara USA and Tenkara Rod Company and so forth? So first, let me mention this. So there's been a lot of confusion in the marketplace about the name Tenkara Rod Company. It's one of our competitors. Unfortunately, they chose to use a descriptive term to describe their company and really kind of have taken advantage of the confusion that it has generated. And I want to get that out there because I see advertisements on Google and it's making me really upset where they say the original Tenkara Rod Company, which is absolutely super misleading.

24:22They have, of course, used the Tenkara Rod Company as a brand originally, but we were in the market several years before they came on, and they decided to use that confusing term, and you see a lot of advertisements that they put out trying to mislead people, in my opinion. So Tenkara USA, at this point, we have been around for 11 years. We were the first company to take Tenkara outside of Japan. We were also the first company to put all the pieces together under one brand. You know, we make the Tenkara rods. We have designed our own Tenkara rods. We have designed, worked with manufacturers to make our own Tenkara lines as well. And we have made our own Tenkara flies. And we have put all these pieces together as well as a couple of accessories. So specifically in terms of the Tenkara USA rods, those 11 years have given us a lot of chances to improve our rods a lot over the years.

25:22So that's all we do. We just work on Tenkara USA branded product and we improve them over the years. You know, there's this Japanese concept called Kaizen, which is continuous improvement. I'm a strong believer in that. if you have been following Tenkara USA for some time you probably have seen different iterations of our rods being released some of the changes that we have made to some of our rods have been big enough where we felt it warranted a re-release of the rods for example the Iwana we have gone through multiple iterations but some years ago we decided to make the Iwana 2 which is the current one We don't call it the E1-2, but we did mention it at the time because there's enough tweaks there to make it different enough. So the first thing is we have designed our own rods. A lot of the Tenkara manufacturers that are marketing Tenkara here, they take off-the-shelf rods that are in the factory sitting around, put a brand on it, don't do any work.

26:33They just market Tenkara. we have taken the approach from the very beginning to produce design and produce original rods that's the first one and over time we have improved them quite a bit significantly actually a lot of the changes have never been announced because we just do it because we want to um and that's kind of the you know just the way that we do things we want to continuously improve most batches of tenkara rods that we make, we make some improvement on them. And we don't call it out because we just want to make the rod better. The other thing too is sometimes people do say, you know, our rods are a little bit pricier than others. But I will mention that there's a reason for that. The any fly rod, but tenkara rods also, the most important component, which makes the entirety of the rod. It's also one that it's difficult to gauge the quality because it's hard to see what's going on in there, but it's the carbon fiber. And carbon fiber, if you look at a low grade one versus a high grade, and when I talk about low grade and high grade, I'm not talking necessarily about high modulus versus low modulus, which some people refer to. I'm also talking about the weave pattern and the combination of resins that we have to put on with the carbon fiber, the way they're rolled, the cut pattern as well, and so forth.

28:07So there's a lot of differences in carbon fiber. And you can make your rod less expensive by skimping on that. And unfortunately, there's a lot of compromises that start happening where the rod can become more brittle, it can break more easily. you know the rod might feel heavier and there's all these kind of compromises you have to figure out to make a good tank out of rod at a lower price most of our rods are a little bit more expensive because we do spend a lot of money on the carbon fiber it's a huge part of the cost obviously the biggest part of the cost of making the rods and we believe in strongly in keeping the quality of the carbon fiber that we use at a very high level because that's your rod that's what's going to fight the fish, it's going to prevent breakages very easily, and so forth. So that's a second difference in terms of Tenkara USA rods in most other manufacturers. And the other one, I would say, maybe another big one, is the features and designs that we have made.

29:10We have some patents still pending on a couple of our designs, but we do have very well thought out features that make the fishing experience very good with Tenkara USA rods. And so those are, I'd say, kind of the biggest differences. And then, obviously, Tenkara USA rods come with a full lifetime warranty. And that's actually something that sets us apart from every company out there, is our customer service and the warranty that comes with Tenkara USA rods. First of all, there's a couple of things that we do. If you ever break a Tenkara USA rod, you don't have to send anything back to us. we were the first company to just start sending a segment out as needed. Occasionally, we may ask somebody to send a rod back if they really want to keep the rod and there's something that we can work on, but 99.9% of the times this time, you don't have to send anything back to us.

30:10We just send you the replacement parts that you need. And that's for the life of the rod. We've been in business for 11 years now. You can ask anybody who's ever worked with us about our warranty and how we followed through on those. And we're really good about that. I personally have always believed that the way to grow Tenkara is to have people sharing their story with each other. You know, you have a good Tenkara story, you're going to share it. If your rod breaks and you put it in a closet because you can't fix it, you're not going to share Tenkara with others. Or you're going to share some disappointment stories. So from the very beginning, we have had really, really good warranty on the rods. And to make that easy, we have an incredible team doing customer support. So if you can call us at 888-ITENCADA, 888-483-6527. You're going to get somebody on the phone either immediately or they're going to call you back right away. TJ and John do a terrific job of getting back to customers.

31:14You can try it. You know, maybe that's something you want to do. try getting a hold of companies that you want to work with before you buy a rod and see how fast we get back to you so that's the other big difference to support the warranty that we offer so that's enough i think i sometimes i can get really caught up on that but i feel very passionately strong about the service and the quality of the rods that we make at tengario say so i kind of sometimes focus too much on that, but it's true. Now, the other question that comes with that is, what do I do if I break a Tenkara rod? What's the warranty procedure for fixing a Tenkara rod made by Tenkara USA? The other question is, do I need to register my rod with Tenkara USA once I buy it? And that kind of thing. So those are questions that we get in terms of the warranty. and let me just kind of go through our process. First of all, we have the thing that TJ actually put the name on it, but we call it the Tenkara Care Guarantee, which just tells you that if it's a rod made by Tenkara USA, we're going to take care of you.

32:26You don't have to register a rod that you buy. If it's got a Tenkara USA brand on it, we made the parts for it. The parts are typically pretty much never interchangeable with other rods unless just by coincidence one part is. But Tenkara USA parts are made for Tenkara rods. If he has a Tenkara USA brand on edge, we trust that he came from us and that we're working with somebody who bought it from us and we're going to make everything that we can to make it easy to take care of your rod so you can be fishing again pretty soon. So you don't have to register the rod with us. If you break one of the top three segments on the tip, the tip and the two segments below it, All you have to do is you go to tenkarausa.com forward slash rods and we do have the parts section in there where you can order a tip. And when I say order, this is what's going to happen for any part that you need or sometimes multiple parts. We don't actually charge you anything for the actual part.

33:31So the only thing that we charge currently, it's $17. But that's literally our shipping and handling cost. And, you know, we use a fulfillment house. It's, you know, it costs money for them to go pick the part up, put it in a box or tube, package it up, and get it out the door and for storage and so forth. So we have that legitimate cost for the picking and packing of the part. And then there's the shipping cost. So it's $17 out the door. If you look up shipping costs for your location from either Colorado, where actually our fulfillment house now has moved to Dallas, Texas, you're going to see that that's pretty much our cost. Actually, oftentimes, $17 doesn't quite cover it. So we get kind of close. But that's whether you break the tip or any other segments and occasionally even multiple sections. So all you have to do for the tip segments, go to tenkarausa.com forward slash rods.

34:34You get the tip rod for the model that you need. For the other parts, you can also go to the website to essentially order the $17 warranty, but then just send an email to our team with which rod segments that you need. And we want to communicate with you about those because we want to make sure we're sending the right part. But just know that the way we number the parts of Tenkara rods, we go from the handle up. So the handle is segment number one. Segment above it, the second thickest segment is segment number two, three, four, and so forth. Some of them go up to eight. Some of them are seven. And then the top three are just going to be tip sets. So that's all you have to do for dealing with warranties with Tenkara USA. Now, do Tenkara USA rods come with a case and a sock? Or a case and a sleeve, if you want to call it that. And yes, all Tenkara USA rods currently come with a hard case and also a woven cloth bag.

35:40Really nice quality cloth bag. And maybe I'll add to this one, do I need to use a case with a Tenkara rod? And no. So the cases that we sell or that we send out with the Tenkara rods, they're primarily an extra protective, shipping quality kind of case that's going to protect the rod really nicely in rough, very rough conditions. You know, when it's kind of moving around, perhaps if you throw it in the back of your trunk, of your car, and so forth. But typically speaking, you don't need to use the case because the rod itself, the tenkara rod that you have in your hand, is its own case. Rod's made out of carbon fiber. The handle segment is going to serve as a case where everything else is nested inside. Usually, if I'm backpacking, if I'm traveling, all I do, I either wrap my tenkara rod, my own tenkara rods, inside of some cloth or putting between shirts and that kind of thing in a suitcase, or maybe at the most have it inside the woven cloth bag.

36:53If I am throwing my rod in the trunk of my car with a bunch of other stuff and there's a higher chance of it breaking, then I'll use the case. So yes, the rod comes with the cases, comes with the socks, all of them do, but you don't really need to use it if you're trying to save weight. I think that's what I was trying to say. Other question that we get recently, been getting recently, is I see the Sato and the Rhodo coming as a set on the website. Can I buy different Tenkara rod models also as a set? So, yes, absolutely. So the way we have built our website at the moment is that we have, because the Rhodo and the Sato tend to be our most popular rods, and we just wanted to have one option there for just click on one thing and you're going to get all you need to go fishing. So we put the sets on our website for the Rhodo Tenkara USA Rhodo set and the Tenkara USA Rhodo Sato set as well.

37:58And all that does on our current website is when you add that to your cart, it's also going to add the rod and the kit separately. So it just kind of gives you the convenience to go to one place on our website, add it to your cart, but our website is just doing this thing where it adds both products to the website. So it's not like they're packaged as a set currently. And you can do that with the Rhodo and Sato, but the other ones, all you have to do is you add the rod that you want, and you add the kit. We only have one kit that serves really well to all Tenkara USA rods. and you add those two items to your website and you have a set. I am debating right now potentially just redoing a little bit of the Tenkara rod page to have every rod first available as a set, you know, where it's going to add the rod and the kit individually to the cart. So when you're in the checkout process, you're going to see the rod and the kit.

39:00Make sure to leave both of those in there. You know, sometimes we see people, because the cart is going to show you Tenkara rod set, and it's going to show you $0. It's going to show you the rod, and it's going to show you the kit and the rod price, and then a kit for $44. Occasionally, people get confused, and they want to remove one of those items. Please don't. Our website is just adding all of those items for you. If you try to remove one of them, customer service is going to have to contact you to sort out what you want it to do. So I'm kind of debating putting all of those as kits on the website and also having the rods separately as well. So we'll see if that shows up online. I've got to play with it a little bit. So, at 38 minutes right now, that's the most common questions that we get in terms of Tenkara rods that I could think of. If you think of any other questions specific to Tenkara rods, please come to tenkarausa.com forward slash podcast.

40:07and you look up the episode for this page which is going to be Q&A or FAQ Tenkara Rods or FAQ I'm going to probably call it FAQ Tenkara Q&A part one Tenkara Rods right and now I'm going to work on the next part of this episode so I'm going to split this up into two parts. The part two of the Tenkara Q&A is going to be focused on Tenkara lines, and hopefully I can also cover Tenkara flies and other questions that we get very often. So thanks for joining me on this episode. Hopefully I answered most of the questions that you might have had about Tenkara USA and Tenkara rods in general. If you have other ones, let me know. Maybe I'll do another part if there's enough of them, or I'll try to answer in future episodes. All right, so check out the Part two coming up very shortly here. Thank you. And as always, I'd like to specially thank Nick Ogawa Takenobu.

41:31You can find his music at takenobumusic.com, as well as our Spotify playlists. In Spotify, just look up Tenkara, and you should find Tenkara tunes with a lot of Takenobu's music. Find any information referenced in his 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. Thank you.