Van life and bass fishing

0:00This is Daniel Galhardo and you're listening to the Tenkara Cast, a podcast about the simple Japanese method of fly-fishing, Tenkara. In the Tenkara Cast we'll be sharing information on techniques, history, philosophy, and Tenkara stories from anglers all over the world. This podcast is brought to you by Tenkara USA, introducing Tenkara outside of Japan since 2009. It's only possible we create content such as this podcast and videos because of your support. So we thank you so very much for purchasing Tenkara USA rods, lines, and flies. I hope you enjoy learning more about the simple method of fly fishing. Hello everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Tenkara Cast. I appreciate you joining me here. Today I'm in a very cool makeshift studio, the Tenkara van. I just put some insulation on the windows and closed all the doors. Hopefully the sound will be okay because I am on the road.

1:02I've been on the road for 11 days now with my wife Margaret, our dog, our husky Shiso, and myself hitting the Pacific Northwest primarily. And this is the 11th early morning. Later today we're going to be heading out into the woods for three days of backpacking with the Adventure Film School where we're collaborating with them, creating a film on Tenkara or multiple films possibly. We'll see what happens and hopefully you'll see something out of that pretty soon. But in any case a lot has happened in 11 days. The main thing is I've been kind of learning how to live out of a van. I've never done that before. This is the first time. Recently I acquired a really cool Eurovan, a 2002 Volkswagen Eurovan and I got the weekender edition, not the full camper, it's just a weekender which has a pop top, so we sleep up on top at night time, and it does have plenty of space for our dog in our back seat, he climbed that seat immediately upon purchasing the van, and then on the back we have, you know, storage space and that kind of thing, and that, you know, I got the van for the business, because I can carry cargo sometimes and when I have to carry multiple passengers like during the summit, the Tenkara Summit, which is coming up September 16th.

2:27Now I'm going to have Dr. Ishigaki from Japan, the staff members of Tenkara Yosei. I can carry seven people in a van, but I can use it for cool things like this, like a road trip, the Tenkara book tour that I'm doing. Right now we are parked outside of Seattle in the National Forest area. we've been camping in this area here for about three i think this is our third night pretty cool area you know we got in here this is half a little under halfway through our trip but i did a presentation with one of the fly shops that we work with in isaacua washington outside of seattle creekside angling the next day we worked with wayward angling or wayward Collective. It's an outdoor kind of store in Bellevue. So I did a couple of clinics here, and then every night after the clinics, we would come back up to the National Forest, and pretty much anywhere with National Forest, you're free to camp. And the interesting thing about this, I've been camping National Forest lands for many, many years. I just love dispersed camping. I don't have to pay for it. I don't really need a lot of amenities. I'm pretty good, pretty self-contained usually when I'm camping. But this stretch here where we are, I've never seen this many campers before in National Forest Land, especially the van life dwellers, you know, the sprinter vans. Almost every pullout along this dirt road that we found close to a river has a person camping. Most of them are sprinter vans, that kind of thing. So that's just something speaking to the popularity of the whole van life dwelling.

4:14And that's the first thing I wanted to talk a little bit about today, the van life thing. And then I want to talk about the fishing that I've done, which has been very, very cool, especially fishing for bass, which will be interesting. But in terms of the van thing, very interesting, definitely not as glamorous as a lot of people think. It's hard living off of a van, especially, you know, two people, a dog, and, you know, it's a fairly small van, which is what I wanted. I want to have something that I can drive in the city without feeling like I'm driving a huge truck. The Eurovan does a great job at that. It's very maneuverable. I can park in any parking spot I want. So that's really cool. But, you know, it does have its challenges. So we're learning things along the way. I finally feel like we're kind of getting the groove of things of living off of a van for a while. um the other day we were trying to figure out like man we got to take a shower i mean yeah we can get a hotel room to shower but that's not very good and we actually do have a very cool shower in the van that i bought by nemo and emo i tried to put a link to the shower product but it's just a pressurized foot pump and it holds about seven gallons of water we've used it two times so far to actually take showers and that has been very handy but when you know if the temperatures are a little cooler not great and we don't use shampoo you know we do use a little bit of biodegradable like dr broners if we're camping and we try to you know take the shower over packed dirt you know like close the road and that kind of thing instead of grass and that kind of so that we don't have an impact essentially on land.

5:56But poor Margaret, you know, doesn't, she can't, I don't let her use shampoo when we take a shower off the car. So we wanted to figure out a place to take a shower. And we finally learned that oftentimes the YMCA, you know, is a good place for a shower. So we hopped in there, took a nice hot shower the other day. Throughout the trip, we've stayed in a friend's house outside of Bend for a couple of nights. and that was very handy. But other than that, and then we took one hotel night after we camped for three days. So we've had three nights indoors, people's, you know, a friend's house or a hotel. The other eight nights we've been camping and that's fine. But it's kind of nice to kind of take our, break things up a little bit because, you know, we're doing clinics, we're actually working. And most of the time it's okay to camp, but a shower is handy. So the YMCA was a good place. We called a truck stop nearby here and they wanted $14 per person to take a shower. We didn't want to pay for that.

7:00So YMCA was free and that was pretty handy and I kind of feel like they redeemed themselves a little bit because they messed up our booking for the Tenkara Summit which forced us to change locations. And I was a little upset at the YMCA. So now I'm pretty happy with them. The other thing that we ran into a little bit of a challenge was filling up our tanks of water. So both the shower, which holds about seven gallons, and we're carrying a four-gallon tank of water. Not a huge amount because we're expecting to be in places that have water. But here in this National Forest area where we are, with the popularity of campers and that kind of thing using the National Forest, the closest campground which is usually you know national forest campground is usually where i'd go look for water uh there was this very threatening kind of sign saying no public use campers only no water access no bathroom access and we drove in there one night you know because we needed to fill up our tank of water we were running pretty pretty low and we could see the camp host just peeking through the blinds in his camper.

8:11He was close to the only water spigot in the campground. So we just drove out of there without water. And then yesterday, I had to stop at a ranger station to get a permit for a backpacking trip. And they had a spigot there. So that was how we finally found some good, clean water. If anybody has advice on how to find good, clean drinking water along the road to fill up tanks, let me know. I'd love to hear from you. and showers as well. This is a learning experience for us. The other challenge that we had was our, we took a stop yesterday to go to a dog park with our dog so he could run a little bit off leash, and he decided to roll on some bear poop. Yeah, the dog park here in the northwest, there's a lot of blackberries all around the dog park, and I kept seeing scat, and I assumed it was bear poop, and he decided to roll on it. So we had to use some of the water that we had left in our shower to wash Shiso.

9:16Don't want to have a dog full of poop inside the van, that's for sure. So we took care of that immediately and then just walked with him a little bit until he dried off and that was that. But definitely challenges living on the road. I kind of feel like we got a good system down. I'm going to try to make a little video before we end the trip. Kind of showing the setup that we have. If any of you listeners are in the Boulder area, the Upslope Brewery and Elevation Outdoors are having the Van Life Rally. August 16th, I believe it is, but double check on that. I don't have the note with me right now. 16th or 17th, but I think it's 16th. Van Life Rally, a lot of van dwellers are kind of showing up and showing the rigs. We are going to be there at Tenkara USA. So come on by and check that one out. It should be pretty fun. And I'm personally very curious, especially after being on the road for a while, to see how people live on the road for more extended periods of time.

10:17In any case, the trip has been very fruitful. I've been capturing a lot of really cool photography and some pretty decent video, I think. It's also, besides all the clinics, we are fishing, not as much as we wish. it is very tiring to be on the road and we've been using the hammocks as much as we have been fishing but we've had a few really awesome days of fishing so far I would say the highlight of my fishing actually we've had a little bit of fishing outside of Bend on the Fall River and then we had to, oh I almost forgot to take out a bug out that was a really fun event put out by Jim Vandegrift in Oak Ridge, Oregon um so we our first stop was banned and then we did the tenkara bug out in oak ridge you know two and a half days almost you know of uh fishing and camping and we did some really good fishing there on the now i'm gonna forget the name in any case really close to oak ridge and forget the name of the north fork of the middle fork of something and it's escaping me Sorry about that.

11:27Crystal clear water, big mountain streams. Very wide, but very much a mountain stream. So we fished there for a couple of days. When we left there, I'd say the highlight of my fishing so far was to connect with the famous author, Dave Hughes, and his wife, Masako, for some tenkara fishing for smallmouth. And that was very cool, a very new experience for me. I've never fished for smallmouth in moving water before. So we went to the John Day River in Oregon, some lower stretch of it that Dave had access to. And I just reached out to him, and it happened that he was available, and he wanted to do a little project there. So we went bass fishing. And we get there, and the John Day, it's very much like a mountain stream or maybe a larger mountain river. it has all the characteristics of a mountain stream it does feel like we're in higher like higher desert elevation there's these beautiful bluffs all around us i was very much felt at home in terms of the kind of habitat that i usually fish but we were targeting bass and i'd never done that before i didn't have any bass flies with me so we started off with the tenkara flies but they were definitely not producing as much as a couple of Dave's Dave Hughes patterns that he had for bass so we borrowed a couple flies from him and then we had a blast we caught tons of fish the bass really kind of wanted the more like terrestrial looking flies like Chernobyl ants and some kind of like large sculpins I don't recall the name of some of the flies But he did send me a photo of the main fly that produced for us that day.

13:20And I'm going to post that at Tancariyose.com forward slash podcast on the podcast link for this particular episode on the van life and smallmouth. So I'll put a photo and the recipe that Dave shot me on that page. So if you want to check it out. but he did say even though we caught a good number of bass uh he did say that he wasn't uh we didn't catch as big bass as usually he does in that stretch and he also thought that the bass were being a little bit pickier than usual so we were getting a lot of uh good drifts a lot of good plays on the fly without getting strikes and he said that sometimes that's usually not the case they tend to be a little bit more aggressive, a little bit less picky. In terms of the gear that we used for that, we all stuck with the Ito. You know, it was a bigger river, so we wanted to use a longer rod. So I set up Ito for all of us. Dave has a Rhodo and an Iwana.

14:20He didn't have the longer rod, so I let him and Masako use that one. And they really enjoyed it. Dave was also using a longer like a fly line in that case that he had set up just to experiment with very very heavy he worked okay on there but I was I was just using the you know typical level line but I did have to go longer like 18 actually almost 20 feet of line four feet of tippet so that I could cast on the other banks usually that's where we're catching most of the fish not all we caught plenty of fish close by but I was using a longer line with a very long rod and a larger fly and the other thing too like the bass you know like we caught plenty of fish on dead drifts but they also did seem to like a little bit of twitching on the fly so just kind of showing the bass that the fly is alive and maybe let it you know drift down a little bit so I'm gonna to create a video soon here. I got some really good footage of Dave fishing for bass and a little bit of him speaking about his rig and that kind of thing. So keep an eye on our blog page on Facebook for Tenkara USA for this video on smallmouth bass fishing in a mountain stream or a mountain river.

15:40And I think you'll enjoy what I post there. So that's when we fish with Dave. And then I've been here in the Issaquah, Bellingham National Forest area for a few days. We've done a little bit of fishing on the Snoqualmie River, which is running really close to where we were. The water is very, very low. So usually when the water is very low like this, we've been targeting just the deepest kind of pools that we find. You know, we're not finding the typical kind of, I mean, there's plenty of them, but not as many of the typical kind of like little runs with breaks in the current. So we're targeting more of the slower waters and catching some beautiful, I think, wild rainbows. And not a huge abundance of them, but to be honest, we have not fished a whole lot yet. As I mentioned a little bit earlier, van life is kind of tiring. So we've done a couple of events, we've had to connect a couple of people, and we've also spent a lot of time, a good chunk of time, setting up hammocks and just taking naps as well.

16:47And that's been a very good thing that I'm very happy that I brought along, is the hammocks. But in any case, that's just a little update, you know, on the living and van life, a little bit on the smallmouth bass fishing. The next, so we're in this area for a few more days, as I mentioned, working on a film with the Adventure Film School. We're going to be backpacking from today through Sunday. And then after this, the next destination that we have is going to be the Fishing, Fly Fishing Fair in Livingston, Montana. And that's going to be August 4th and 5th. And if you're in that area, we'd love to see you there. We are going to spend a couple of days in the Bozeman, Livingston area but Friday August 4th and Saturday August 5th is kind of our next public stop if you will I'd love to have you join us there coming up soon just another announcement I mentioned it already but it's worth mentioning again August 6th oh sorry September 16th we're having our sixth annual Tenkara Summit that's going to be held in Estes Park at the event center if you go to tenkarausa.com forward slash summit you'll find the information about that but it's promising to be a terrific event we are expecting from 150 to 200 people we do have a couple of very exciting speakers this year we have Yvonne Chouinard founder of Patagonia big tankard enthusiast we've invited him to come and speak Dr. Ishigaki again is flying from Japan to participate and he's going to be doing their demonstrations and talking at the summit.

18:34We also have a good cast of speakers, including Adam Tran from Tenkara Fisher. We also have Jason Klass speaking. Matt Sment from Badger Tenkara is coming and speaking as well. So a lot of good speakers. And we also have Steve Schweitzer kind of giving us the lay of the land for fishing around Estes Park and Rocky Mountain National Park. which is, if you're planning to come, pick up his book, Steve Schweitzer's Fly Fishing Guide to Rocky Mountain National Park or to Indian Peaks. He's got two books now where he talks about fishing in that region. In any case, that's it for today. Just a little update on the Tenkara Cast, the van life. Take a look on the podcast page, tenkarausa.com forward slash podcast for more information about some of the stuff that I talked today. and to stay in touch with us definitely visit our facebook page facebook tenkara USA and hopefully we'll connect with you on the road i have been getting a lot of questions of people like whether we're going through this region or that and the one thing that has been amazing to me is that even with three very exhausting weeks with like almost every day having packed stuff we are hitting very few places so you know thank you so much for all of you who have sent questions whether we're going through your town or your area.

19:59This time we're really kind of hitting bend, the Oak Ridge thing that we did, this Seattle kind of area, and then Montana. But we'll try to make more road trips or more events. Take a look at our events page, tenkarausa.com forward slash events to stay up to date on different things that we're doing along the way, and not only on this trip, but in future trips as well. Thanks so much for listening, and I hope you enjoy a great weekend of fishing. Thank you very much for listening to the Tenkara Cast. I'd like to extend a special thank you to Nick Ogawa, also known as Takenobu. Check out his music at takenobumusic.com. We'll be posting links to any references we made in this podcast, such as Takenobu's music, on our website, www.tenkarausa.com forward slash podcast. and until next time on a tank outcast