It's a great rod, hang on to it. There is word going around that should you hook into a large fish with a tenkara rod, the best option will be to toss the rod in the water. I am writing this short piece to let you know that, NO! Tossing your tenkara rod in the water is neither recommended nor necessary. Frankly, I could stand to benefit from having you toss your beautiful tenkara rod in the water, and then buy another one from me. But, this advice is based on old lore and old technology, and I do not think it should live on. A few years ago, a fellow who shall remained nameless here, told me a ..read more

By Mark Roberts I’d like to share just a little my insight about the Sasaki Kebari as I have learned to use it in Tenkara. I have been a Single Hand Spey, and Switch fly fisherman for many years and added Tenkara about five years ago for what it has to teach me to become a better fisherman. Simplicity. Learning to do more with what I have, to fish different conditions. The very first time I used my new Tenkara rod and Sasaki Kebari was on a lake. A buddy of mine and I fished the entire shoreline of that lake with our single hand rods and traditional flies and got nothing. I took out my brand n ..read more

By Tim Harris Can tenkara make one a better steelheader? When I moved to the Pacific Northwest over 20 years ago I was thrilled to finally be living in the land of steelhead. The fish was almost mythic growing up in the Midwest and I’d spent a bit of time chasing them in the Pere Marquette to no avail. But now I was in the land where steelheading developed and even the flies got their names - patterns like the Skykomish Sunrise, the Sol Duc, the Umpqua Special, and the Macks Canyon. It took me a long time to catch that first steelhead on the fly and then I “cheated” by getting it on a nymph on ..read more

By Daniel Galhardo DON’T RECAST YOUR FLY UNTIL IT’S HAD A CHANCE. It takes some time to learn how to read water well. But, at least when it comes to fishing mountain streams, the concept is easy to grasp: fish are looking for food and shelter, and don’t want to spend a lot of energy looking for food. Currents bring them food, slow water and breaks in the current gives them shelter. With that in mind we quickly learn that seams where current meets calm water may be the best places to target with our flies. Once we learn this basic piece of information, we all want our fly to land with 100% accu ..read more

By Tim Harris One fly, but many ways to fish it. In a play of words, it is said that "tenkara" means "ten colors” since the kanji is the same - テンカ ラ. This means ten tenkara fishers have ten different styles of fishing. This could be that they use ten different flies or that they fish ten different techniques. Either way, tenkara is more about presentation and confidence in the fly than it is about the actual fly used, sort of like steelhead fishing. Last season, and this season so far, I have used one fly only but have employed different techniques to catch fish in different conditions. I bel ..read more

When I got my first tenkara, I couldn't wait to break it. The prevailing idea seemed, and still seams to be, that tenkara rods are for catching small fish. I took that as a challenge. I met Daniel Galhardo of Tenkara USA for a beer and told him I was going to Alaska to chase big rainbows and I wanted to take a tenkara rod. "What kind of rod are you thinking?" He asked me. "The smallest one you make." That's how my Rhodo and I ended up going to Alaska. My buddy Aleks took a tenkara rod, too. A Sato, and we discovered that, not only can you catch big fish on tenkara rods, but it's a hell of a lo ..read more

by Daniel Galhardo "THE SEA-RUN FORM ASCENDS RIVERS OF JAPAN IN MAY WHEN CHERRY TREES ARE IN BLOOM AND THEREFORE IS KNOWN AS THE SAKURA MASU, OR CHERRY SALMON". As part of my mission of spreading the tenkara story to anglers outside of Japan, I have made a point to visit Japan every year. I'm currently on my 6th "pilgrimage" to the country, meeting with teachers who share with me their techniques, their insights into tenkara, and of course their favorite fishing spots where we search for trout. There are two main types of trout that we target in Japan: the amago and yamame. There is also a cha ..read more