The year is coming to an end, and we’re looking forward to all 2013 will bring. Thought it would be fun to recap the top posts of 2012:
1) “Tenkara is a fad and it won’t last long. – Lefty Kreh“. Said at the beginning of 2012’s fly fishing show season by the main face of TFO, this was by far the most popular post in our blog and we could even say it went a bit viral on the rest of the web.
2) “How to choose the right tenkara rod”. A video and chart we put together to assist people in choosing the best rod for their fishing.
3) Not my our favorite, as it caused a lot of angry discussions but it had to be written, the post on “What is a tenkara rod?” is one of the top 3 most viewed for the year. Lots of other blogs have subsequently written about this.
4) “Orvis to Sell Tenkara Rods” – this was our big announcement of the year. Orvis came to us with a belief that tenkara will last long and they wanted to partner with the best tenkara company out there. Expect to see more in 2013.
5) “How to Fish with One Fly Pattern – Tenkara Techniques” – I’m glad this was one of our most popular posts in 2012 as it does give a good foundation to anyone wanting to learn how to simplify their fly choice.
6) “Yoshida Kebari, using the alula feather” – Yoshida-san showed us how to tie a fly using the rarely used alula feather of the pheasant. This post got lots of hits this year.
7) Jason Klass’ post “Using Contrast in Sakasa Kebari Design” was another very popular post in 2012 with great examples of tenkara flies that use contrast. It has a good number of comments and the number of hits was super close to the Yoshida Kebari post.
8) My wife will probably hate to learn that the video I took of her landing a nice football-size trout on tenkara and then hooking a second larger one and falling when the fish let go of the hook was in the top 10. This is probably my favorite post and one of my favorite memories of the year.
9) I had a post about visiting a fishing store in Japan, that evening we had several comments of people wanting to learn more about the rods found in the shop. The next day I returned to the shop and made this video on the numerous types of telescopic rods found in the store. We receive lots of questions still about the different types of rods and usually refer folks to this post.
10) “Who is Tenkara USA?” got a very good number of views, and I’m happy that many people now know we’re not a huge coorporation. Jason Klass, who became a dad in 2012, had to leave us and focus on raising his daughter, and we added a new team member John Geer.
Happy 2013 everyone! Thank you for reading our posts this year and thank you for the inspiration you have provided so we could create new content.