Five years ago virtually no one had heard the word tenkara. Now, 5 years after we introduced the method outside of Japan it has become a part of the fly-fishing vocabulary. When I was working towards creating Tenkara USA, taking a huge leap of faith in introducing a very foreign concept here, I knew I could write many books and articles but if people didn’t get to experience tenkara on their own the method would never spread. So, I decided to invest my life savings, quit my job and start a company making tenkara rods, lines and flies. The method took hold and has been spreading quickly, because it makes sense, is fun and effective and its simplicity appeals to a large number of people.
Five years later the number of tenkara anglers has grown, and grown, and grown. It has been a dramatic movement with exponential numbers of anglers adopting the method. But, there has been a question we have been asked over and over again: “so, how many tenkara anglers are there.”
I still debate whether it is a number I want to share. But, I am curious, if you were to guess how many anglers there are in the US, how many would you say? I can tell you it is more than 1,000 but less than a million.