Bamboo Tenkara Line Holder

The other day I was fishing with Jason of Tenkara Talk and as always, we chatted about new tenkara "stuff" while gearing up. Often times, Jason brings some new cool gear he bought or received for review and this time he brought a bamboo tenkara line holder of the Tenkara Fly Shop.

The Tenkara Fly Shop is a pretty new website of Jim Wright in NY State who specializes in "simple tools for the tenkara angler". Jim has constructed some unique rustic tenkara fly boxes, line holders and his signature bamboo fly box (Jason posted reviews here and here). I understand Jim is also working on his own tamo design (sweet looking pictures on the the Tenkara Fly Shops facebook page!) and a bamboo tenkara rod.

Back to the bamboo line holder: I always loved the "old fashioned" line holders and what Jason showed me before hitting the water was just that. In the past, I always thought it would be nice to use this type of line holder but it found most of them too long and not really ideal "on-stream". While I was fishing that day, I just couldn't let go of pondering what attributes a line holder should have to be attractive to me. First, it should be fairly short. I don't worry about line kink since I made it a habit to straighten out every line before rigging it to the lilian. Second, holding two lines is not quite enough. What I was looking for  was a system I could transport 4 or 5 lines, rigged with flies, that would not take as much space as 5 individual spools. Why not design a line holder that holds 4 or 5 lines instead of 2, right? Size matters so I thought that the ideal dimensions should be around 4.5" long and about 3" wide. This size fits any smaller bag like a chest pack or even my shirt pocket. 

I reached out to Jim through the Tenkara Fly Shops facebook sitehttps://www.facebook.com/TenkaraFlyShop and started a conversation about such design. Jim was very open and within a day, he had a prototype developed which I received today in the mail. I have to say, I was blown away by the beauty and simplicity of this new accessory. Simple, easy, effective:

4.5" long, 3" wide, holds 5 lines

hook the fly to one of the cross bars, wedge the end of the line between the line compartments

fully loaded with, from the top, a TUSA Level Line, TUSA Traditional Line, RIGS Nymphing Line, Tenkarabum Level Line and RIGS Floating Line

compact and easy to transport

It is worthwhile to mention that I will be using the bamboo line holder to transport lines I intend or might be using that day. Once on the water, I store the line in use on the rod with a Fuji EZ Keeper system and will put the line back on the bamboo line holder once I am done fishing with the line.

I am very much looking forward using this new accessory on my next outing!!

Thank so much, Jim!!

Tight Lines y'all, -K

Bear Creek March 16 2012

I still had some leftover vacation days from last year and decided to take a half day to go fishing while the nice weather lasts. Sunday's outing to Bear Creek was still on my mind and I thought that fishing would be now even better with since it was nice and warm the entire week. Boy was I right...

I made plans with Jason Klass of Tenkara Talk to meet early afternoon; Jason took the whole day off and started fishing earlier in the morning, having a pretty good day himself. And he caught his first trout of 2012! Congrats, Jason.

Jason changing a fly

He told me all his fish in the morning were caught with a Utah Killer Bug, so I tied one on myself but it didn't quite work out for me. I switched to my standard searching setup, a dry (olive CDC & Elk) & dropper (midge larva at first, then RS2) and things started picking up. All my fish were caught on the dropper, go figure. What I really like about the CDC & Elk in this combination that it floats well and that it is a really sensitive "strike indicator". The slightest hesitation will pull it under.

I fished today with two new pieces of equipment, the Ebisu of Tenkara USA and the new yellow hi-vis level line of Tenkara USA*. These are my fist impressions, I will do more testing for a comprehensive review of both.

The Ebisu is a 12ft rod with a 5:5 action. It has a beautiful glossy black finish with gold letters. The "special" thing about the Ebisu is it's handle - made of pine instead of cork. The rod fishes well, it is definitively much softer than the Iwana 12ft. It feels a bit "top-heavy", similar to the Ito when fully extended. I suspect this has mostly to do with the relatively short pine handle that measures 8" and is rather short compared the other rod handles in Tenkara USA's lineup. You notice the "top-heavyness" at first when switching from the Iwana but you get used to it very quickly - as you do with the different casting stroke with this slower stick (I really start to dig the slower actions). One of the larger fish I caught today put an awesome bend in it but I hope I don't have to wrestle fish larger than, let's say 16" in swift currents; the Ebisu doesn't have the same backbone as the Iwana does. Don't get me wrong though, I really like this rod, in particular how nicely it casts a level line - such as the new Tenkara USA yellow hi-vis line. 

This new line does cast really nicely, I used today solely the 3.5. It performs in the same way as Tenkarabum's orange hi-vis no. 3 line. In fact, I measured both with my caliper and they have the same diameter. Anyhow, the lines perform almost identical, personally my first impression is that the yellow line feels slightly softer than the orange line. I am not sure if that makes any difference how it casts but the yellow seems to have, as advertised, less coil off the spool, although I wasn't able to directly compare this to the orange line since I didn't store it one a spool (figures...). I will make sure to test this later. In terms of visibility, well, I have to do some more testing also. The orange line appears to be more visible overall by having more contrast with various backgrounds. The yellow line is slightly less visible against backgrounds of similar color, i.e. beige, dead grass of Winter and beige/sand colored rock. 

THAT BEING SAID, I was fishing most of the time with a dry and dropper and I didn't have to watch the line for strikes - the dry fly took care of that. I will need to do more back-to-back testing with both lines when I actually would watch the line to indicate strikes.

So, without further delay, I know that you also want to see some fish porn, here are some of today's beauties. I was quite excited having landed 3 rainbows of the total 7 trout landed, rainbows are in the minority on Bear Creek and are purely catch & release whereas you can keep some brown trout (how many does escape my knowledge since I practice 100% catch & release). One of the rainbows put a pretty nice aerial show on, jumping 3 times trying to shake the fly.

gotta love them orange dots!

*) The yellow hi-vis level line of Tenkara USA was provided to me free of charge, the Ebisu was bought by myself (used).

River Statistics:
Weather: nice & sunny, little wind
Air Temp: low 70ies
Water Temp: 44F at 1pm
Flow: 23cfs, clear water with very little discoloration from run-off
Day on the water in 2012: 5
Fish: 14 hooked, landed 7

PS: don't forget the "Your Tenkara Story" contest, submission deadline is March 31st.  

Still Winter... and a new gadget

Yesterday I spent a beautiful day on the South Platte fishing with my tenkara buddies Graham of Tenkara Grasshopper and Jason of Tenkara Talk. The fishing was great, the catching not so much. In fact, we all got only one or two nibbles and neither of us could actually hook-up with a trout. Just another typical day of Winter fishing (for me). However, the company was quite excellent.

It is still Winter here on the Front Range, although yesterday was one of those days that signaled that Spring is just around the corner. The daytime temperature was in the high 50ies but the water was still pretty frigid at around 39-40F.

Graham working some good looking water

Graham still smiling despite no trout

Jason watching the end of line intently

I started out with my adaptation of Pat's Rubberlegs in size 10 (yes, not a tenkara fly) but lost it soon along other flies, such as a what was my try at a brown/golden stonefly sakasa kebari, to the elusive rock bottom trout (it must have been a huge one!).

Pat's Rubberlegs

BH Golden Stone Sakasa Kebari

The wind made things a bit challenging at times, the occasional wind gust tugged at the line lifting the entire rig out of the water. However, the heavy 14ft hand-tied line of Tenkarabum performed quite nicely on the Ito. I also wanted to finally fish with my Tenkara USA Ebisu, but unfortunately I did not remember I had it with me until late in the day when we started wrapping-up things. I am getting old. Maybe next time.

One thing that I got to test was a new line spool I received this week from Japan, Jason has a friend who was kind enough to order and send us a batch of Oni Tenkara line spools. In anticipation of trying the spools I removed my current line management system of choice, the Fuji Hook Keepers. The spool is made of fairly hard foam with a plastic "crown" featuring notches where you can place the fly (although Jason prefers to place his fly in the slit of the foam). In any case, the spool, at 65mm diameter is a valid alternative to the Fuji Hook Keepers, although the Fuji Hook Keeper is still my favorite for immediate line storage while moving around on stream because you can wind your line faster and you can store the rod in the Ebira. But the spool definitively looks much cooler. And it's harder to come by, so it's somewhat special.

I will soon have a giveaway for a few spools, so please stay tuned.

River Statistics:
Weather: sunny, some wind gusts
Air Temp: in the mid/high 50ies
Flow: 285cfs, discoloration of water due to some run-off and increased flow/release from Cheesman Reservoir. 
Day on the water in 2012: 3
Fish: 0

2012 Fly Fishing Show in Denver

While living in the NYC area, I used to go each year to the Somerset/NJ Fly Fishing Show and the Fly Tying Symposium but felt each year that it is pretty much the same show with nothing really new and interesting to me. Once I moved to Denver in 2008, I went twice to the ISE just to realize the same. Actually, the ISE wasn't really my kind of a show since a large part of the ISE is about hunting and other outdoor pursuits than fly fishing that do not really interest me.

Fast forward to 2012: This is the fist time that Tenkara USA is represented at the Fly Fishing Show in Denver through RIGS Fly Fishing and in Somerset/NJ with their own booth, so Jason Klass of Tenkara Talk and I decided to visit the show and provide some support to Daniel Galhardo of Tenkara USA. I was curious how tenkara will be received at the show given some folk's hostility to it on forums and blogs.

Well, let me say that I was pleasantly surprised by the interest visitors showed at the RIGS Fly Fishing booth and Daniel's casting presentation. I counted something around 60-70 folks watching Daniel's presentation at Pond 2 and whenever I walked by the RIGS booth, someone was engaged in a conversation about tenkara and/or actually buying tenkara equipment. It looks like tenkara is starting to be accepted by the "establishment". I hope my observation is true and will continue with Daniel's presence at the Fly Fishing Shows in Massachusetts and New Jersey. 

Other than that, I was surprised by the number of booths and visitors since the Fly Fishing Show was in direct competition with the ISE that was taking place during the same weekend in downtown Denver. I have to say that I actually liked it better than my previous visits back in NJ. Walking the isles, I did not see any new earth shattering developments or products (other than tenkara of course). But I did take advantage of browsing some fly tying supplies and equipment that was to be found at a discount compared to regular retail prices, but at the end of the day I did not find anything that I "needed" to have, so I left the show with  some stickers, business cards and freebies (Allen Fly Fishing was giving out samples of their hooks). 

It was also a very nice opportunity to catch-up with some friends and make new contacts and introductions. Oh, and I finally got to meet a friend of Daniel's, fly fishing author and trout bum John Gierach:

your's truly and John Gierach, photo courtesy of Jason Klass of Tenkara Talk

Did you go to the show or do you plan to visit the upcoming ones?

Tight Lines, -K  

Denver Fly Fishing Show this weekend

I will be at the Denver Fly Fishing Show at the Denver Merchandise Mart this Saturday, Jan. 7th. It would be nice to meet some fellow tenkara anglers there, talk shop and make some new friends while there. Daniel Galhardo of Tenkara USA will be presenting that day at 12.15pm (Pond 2) and at 4.00pm (Destination Theater Room C, the rest of the time he will be sitting at the booth of RIGS Fly Fishing (currently the only Colorado Tenkara USA dealer). Oh, and Jason Klass of Tenkara Talk will be there as well.

Send me a quick email through the "Contact Me" tab if you will be there and want to meet. Otherwise, look-out for someone with a baseball cap with the Tenkara on the Fly logo:



See you there, -K

Tenkara Rod Wall Rack

After seeing a few of my fellow bloggers showing off their new tenkara rod wall racks (well, actually they are billards cue wall racks) I had to get one as well.

After I hung the newly framed picture of Joel DeJong  of A Year on the Fly, I thought I might as well hang the rack. I have to say, I dig both both a lot!

The rack was less than $10 in the sports section at my local Wal Mart. Who would have thought that 10 bucks can look so cool. Let's hope I won't get any more rods!

Thanks to Mike at Troutrageous! and Jason at TenkaraTalk for the inspiration!

What on your wall of your man cave?

Cheesman Tenkara

My most recent trip was to fish the South Platte in Cheesman Canyon with Jason Klass (of Tenkara Talk) and Daniel Galhardo (of Tenkara USA) while Daniel visited Colorado late October (click here).

This trip was special for me on many different levels, starting with finally meeting Daniel Galhardo and share some water with him, observing his techniques and strategies and exchange thoughts. But also by fishing the entire stretch of Cheesman Canyon. Having two cars, we were able to drop one car at the bottom of the canyon and park at the top, allowing us to hike and fish the full 3 miles of water. 

We got to the Deckers area around 8am and it was surprisingly cold - only 22F! However, the hike to the river warmed us up very quickly and the sun, once it crested, made it a very pleasant day to fish. The hike in was long and steep, the main reason why I don't hike to the river from the top - the return trip after a full day's fishing is just brutal (I did it once, pre-tenkara, during Summer when it was in the high 80ies, with my waders on and a fully loaded fishing vest).

Just below the dam of Cheesman Reservoir

Daniel in action

That's the hole I hooked with my first fish, after Daniel fished through it

Once we reached the water, Daniel was quick to start fishing and got a big brown trout to turn but unfortunately she did not take the fly. After I rigged-up with my new 14ft hand-tied line for the ITO from Tenkarabum, I got surprisingly quickly into a very nice rainbow, somewhere around 17", but I was not fortunate enough to land her (I really need to look into a tamo or landing net with a long handle!).

Daniel working some pocket water

Daniel with the only "landed" fish of the day

What seemed to be a good start proved soon to be pretty tough fishing, with the water level being very low (around 80cfs) and the river having lots of green, whitish and black algae. We were concerned that this would be Didymo, but a biologist of  Denver Water to who I reached out after the trip, confirmed, to our relief, that it's NOT Didymo. Over the course of the day, Daniel hooked two and landed one and I hooked two and lost both of them. I fished almost exclusively tenkara flies and both hook-ups were on a Sakasa Copperbari of Tenkarabum.

We had a great day on the water besides the "not catching many fish" part, the weather was great and the company was even better. Cheesman confirmed it's reputation to be a difficult river, but we were able to fool a few fish with flies that were not quite the "standard" fare for this technical tailwater, which really encouraged me to fish more with traditional tenkara flies.

new friends, tired but happy

Tight Lines, -K

The RC Sakasa Kebari

Lately, I haven't been able to get out as much as I would like to or was used to during the last few months, so I started focusing on Tenkara "indoor" activity such as making lines (i.e. the horsehair line from the previous post) or tying flies.

I have been playing around with a few ideas for flies and one of them made it to the current Tenkara USA Swap V, this swap is themed Western Fly Tenkara Variants. After a lot of back and forth I decided to take shot at the Royal Coachman.

I tied a few prototypes before settling on the final design, my biggest challenges were how to incorporate the white wing and what material to use. I never tried to tie a wing to a sakasa kebari, and between wrapping the body with red silk, peacock herl collar and hackle it wasn't until a few flies later that I had the best tying sequence figured out (with help of my buddy Jason of Tenkara Talk).

For the wing, I tried calf tail (looks crappy), goose biots (even worse), traditional wet fly wing (meh) and antron (yeah, that's it). I realized that the key for tying in the wing is the ability to finish the fly under the wing, so I used a trick that I learned when tying the mercury RS2 with an antron wing: Tie tie a good length (i.e. 2"-3") of the wing material and fold it back over the hook eye and out of the way, when the fly is finished trim the wing to length.

May I introduce, the RC Sakasa Kebari:

What is your favorite Western fly and would you tie it Tenkara style?

Rocky Mountain National Park - Meadow Creeks in the Fall

Last Sunday I headed up to RMNP with my friend Jason Klass of Tenkara Talk to Rocky Mountain National Park for some Fall fishing. The Summer. and maybe even Fall, is gone; because today, only a week later, I am sitting in my office and looking at the first snow in our front yard. Temperatures have dropped from mid 70ies this week to 30ies  last night and it's still snowing, I can't even see the mountains from our house.

Back to last Sunday. Jason celebrated his birthday the week prior and instead of having a party, he decided to head up to RMNP for some fishing. His intentions were to squeeze one more day of hopper fishing into the season. The idea sounded good, so we got on our way around 6am and reached Estes Park just before 8am for some breakfast before hitting the water.

The first stream we fished was the Big Thompson in Moraine Park. The river in this section is a meandering meadow stream with slow water, glassy pools and undercut banks. A river unlike the other streams I am used to fish in the park which are high gradient creeks with lots of boulders and pocket water.

We were not the only fisherman to fish the Big T that day and we were glad that we got a head-start before the crowds arrived. The fairly low and slow water made fish very spooky, you had only a few chances to catch fish in each spot. I typically like to fish spots right after another fisherman and pick-up trout he wasn't able to entice, but that was out of the question this day. We had to hop pools, giving each other the opportunity to fish a stretch first to get a shot at the fish.

The fish were not overly selective, they took our hoppers and other attractors (such as my CDC & Elk of course), but the fishing was far from hot. Since it was Elk season in the valley, we decided to retreat after a bull Elk came a bit too close for comfort and find a new spot on the river.

What we did not anticipate were the masses of people in the park, drawn by both the Elk Festival in Estes Park and the Aspens being in full color. The roads in the park were jammed and traffic was very slow. Wherever there were Elks, folks decided to stop in the middle of the road and take pictures. We wanted to fish the Big T further upstream, but every single parking lot and spot was taken, so we decided to head over to Horseshoe and fish the Fall River. We parked just off 34 and hit the Fall River making our way upstream. But the fish were mostly hunkering down, being put down by other fisherman and hikers, so we decided to walk along the road to the Alluvial Fan area and to fish downstream. Well, let me just say that we might have just continued upstream, there fishing was no different.

However, it was a very beautiful day to be out in the park; the wildlife was out, the Fall colors amazing and we caught a few trout, too (although we hoped to have a bit more action).

Next time I will head to the park though, I will make sure to check the event calendar and pick more remote streams.

Looking out the window now and seeing the first season's snow, I wonder how much Winter fishing I will get done this year - given the fishing success of the last few Winters I probably will spend more time behind the vise tying flies. And I might consider taking up skiing again.

Tight Lines, -K

Tenkara Write-Ups

As you know, I do not often re-post other bloggers posts, but in this case I would like to highlight two very well written posts at Casting Around by Anthony Naples and at Troutrageous by guest blogger and close friend Jason Klass of Tenkara Talk.

Enjoy the read!