Tenkara Guide Blog

Picking a favorite tenkara rod

February 25, 2015 By Tom Sadler

The popularity of tenkara has given anglers an opportunity to chose from a variety of rods. In fact, at last count, there were more than a dozen U.S. based companies selling tenkara rods. Having that many options can make things confusing.

Folks just starting their tenkara journey may find this many choices intimidating and be concerned about the research required in making a sound rod purchasing decision. Those who have taken up tenkara, used to just a few options, now face unfamiliar names and performance characteristics.

I asked a few of my favorite tenkara groups, “If you had to pick your favorite rod -just one- what would it be and most importantly why?” I asked because I wanted to learn what characteristics make a favorite.

Whether you are new to tenkara or an old hand, the myriad choices of rods makes it more likely you will find a rod (or really more likely, rods) that you enjoy fishing with. Here are some things to consider.

FEEL
In describing how a rod performs, “feel” is a common description. Feel is pretty subjective however, so terms like, weight, action and balance are all part of the equation. “Well balanced” trumped weight in many cases and action helped refine the preference. Of note: the line you use can affect feel and some rods feel better casting a specific type of weight of line.

ACTION
Tenkara rods, when compared to other types of fly rods, are extremely slow. That said, how tenkara rods flex throughout the rod varies enough to be notable. Some rods have soft tip sections and stiffer mid and butt sections, others are more full flex with a relatively stiffer tip. Here, looking at what you are fishing for and the flies you will use may lead to a preference. Soft tip rods may feel better with heavier furled or floating lines. More full flexing rods may feel better with level lines or lighter tapered lines.

FIXED LENGTH OR ADJUSTABLE
For some, the ability to adjust the length of a rod is an important consideration. The convenience of multi length rods makes the tenkara experience more enjoyable. A single, adjustable rod can fish more or different water precluding the need to carry multiple rods. The ability to change lengths at will gives you a variety of presentations at your fingertips.

VALUE
The price range of rods available in the U.S. is remarkable, from less then $100 to well over $300. Surprisingly, price did not seem to be a big deal. Durability, warranty, and company reputation were all more important considerations when it came to determining overall value. Finish, fit and quality of workmanship were also cited as attributes for favorite rods.

ONE ROD TO RULE THEM ALL?
The diversity of rod choices, the multitude of fish to chase, the wide variety of water to fish in and the very nature of humans all points to one common conclusion. The “one rod” is not out there. Favorites, sure, but as my friend TJ Ferreira said,

“Bottom line for me is that everyone here and there is fishing Tenkara, no matter the flavor, color, brand or method they use. So my favorite? Every single one.”

In the end the most intriguing part of this look at what makes one rod a favorite was how reminiscent it is to other forms of fly-fishing. You could hear similar discussions in any fly shop in the country. That may explain why tenkara is no longer considered the fad it once was.

Author’s note: This article first appeared in Hatch Magazine.

What’s My Line

January 22, 2015 By Tom Sadler

As the popularity of tenkara grows, tweaks and innovation are becoming the rule rather the exception. One area that has seen a good deal of change is the type of line being used.

If you are new to tenkara, the line is a key component in the setup. Like other forms of fly-fishing the line both loads the rod and delivers the fly but is not stored on a reel. It is a fixed length attached to the rod tip.

When I started with tenkara the line choices were pretty basic. You had a choice of furled lines or level lines. Today there are a variety of line options with more on the horizon. For example small diameter fly lines have recently become popular.
All are readily available and have their proponents, as you will see below.

LEVEL LINES

Level lines are a single diameter of line. Materials are usually nylon, monofilament or fluorocarbon. Level line users pick a diameter to suit the fishing they are doing and the fly they are casting. Benefits include economy, the ability to adjust length easily and delicate presentations. A key component in selecting level lines is visibility. Clear lines are hard to see and regular level line users opt for bright, florescent colors like orange, pink or green.

Rob Worthing of Tenkara Guides LLC offered some important observations about picking level lines. “Level lines that are created specifically with fixed line fly-fishing in mind are 100 percent fluorocarbon, and are formulated to be stiff with little memory. The stiffness is important in holding the line off the water and keeping a direct connection to your fly.”

Because fluorocarbon is dense it has some key advantages according to Worthing.“The density improves casting. The low surface area to weight ratio is also why it excels in sinking flies. It is less apt to get pushed around by varying currents at different depths, allowing you to establish a more direct connection with your fly.”

Fishing with denser level lines also allows you to use a lighter line, which contributes to a key tenkara advantage; the ability to keep line off the water.

Chris Stewart of Tenkara Bum agrees with the advantage of a lighter line. “Even though heavier lines are easier to cast, they are harder to catch fish with. You can’t hold them off the water as well, so you can’t get the same drifts that you can get with lighter lines. Also, lighter lines have less inertia, so they are more sensitive, it takes less to make them twitch.”

FURLED LINES

Often furled lines are the first line new tenkara users try. Furled lines are multiple
strands of material that taper from thick to thin. They are similar to furled leaders used in other forms of fly-fishing but are usually longer. 11 feet to 13 feet are common and longer lengths are available. Most are made with Kevlar to reduce the “stretchiness” that comes from nylon or monofilament.

Customization is quite common in the furled line arena. Do it yourself furling jigs and videos are available for those who want a try building a line and personalize their rig. Kevin Kelleher’s book, Tenkara, Radically Simple, Ultralight Fly Fishing, has a chapter about making your own lines.

Two companies stand out in the furled line market, Moonlit Fly Fishing and Streamside Furled Leaders. Both offer a wide selection of lengths and designs.

Many people, myself included, like the “feel” of a furled line when casting. This often helps people make the transition from rod and reel to tenkara.

FLOATING FLY LINES

The use of very light floating lines has become more popular as tenkara anglers push the innovation envelope. The lines are the same as floating fly lines currently on the market just cut down to suit tenkara style of fly-fishing. They are usually level lines in small diameter, although some folks use lightweight tapered lines. Common sizes range from 0.022 diameter running line to two weight double taper.

The most common reason for using floating fly lines has been “castability.” Much like the tapered furled lines, fly rod and reel anglers picking up a tenkara rod find the feel of casting a floating line similar to what they are used to, helping make the transition to tenkara easier.

Floating lines are becoming more common and Patagonia offers 40 feet of 0.027-inch Cortland floating line made of a small-diameter, hard mono core and a supple PVC coating. Each package includes a seven-foot, six-inch, 3x leader. They retail for $24.95 and are available at Mossy Creek Fly Fishing.

Longer rods, stiffer actions and bigger flies have been some of the reason cited for using these types of line.

Matt Sment of Badger Tenkara is a big proponent of floating line and offered these observations. “Floating line has solidly become my preference. I believe it offers significant advantages, including – high durability, lowest cost over time (you can fish the same line for many seasons), exceptionally resistant to tangles in the first place and easy to untangle if you get one (you wont lose a line to a tangle), superior visibility, functions well below freezing temperatures, well suited to throwing larger/heavier flies, supports a wide variety of tactics (like ‘line as sight indicator,’) does not become waterlogged and change characteristics, and is very easy for beginners to learn on.”

Here in the Shenandoah Valley were I guide for Mossy Creek Fly Fishing, floating lines are my favorite for fishing large terrestrials, big bushy dries and dry-dropper rigs.

The desire to innovate has become a hallmark of tenkara here in the U.S. The range of line options and the ability to easily rig a rod with different lines is just another advantage of tenkara.

As Paul Vertress, head tenkara guide for RIGS Adventure Co., commented, “A couple of extra lines in your pocket weighs very little, and gives you so much more flexibility on different water and conditions. Simplicity + options = success.

Author’s note: A version of this article first appeared in Hatch Magazine.

The Road to Tenkara

December 1, 2014 By Tom Sadler

How does a perfectly good modern trout guide become devoted to an ancient style of fly-fishing? Blame it on an article called “Simple Gifts” that appeared in Fly Rod & Reel’s October 2009 edition. If I hadn’t read that piece I wouldn’t be messing around with tenkara rods today.

But that’s what happened—a quick evolution from fishing trout with standard fly rods and reels to a stick and string, and a whole new approach to the water. In fact, after reading Yvon Chouinard’s article, I called a friend, Craig Mathews, who owns Blue Ribbon Flies in West Yellowstone, Montana, and asked about tenkara. I could hear a grin in his voice as he said, “Oh sure, we’ve been fishing them [tenkara rods] on O’Dell Creek and we are having a blast. They would be fantastic for your [eastern] brook trout streams.”

At the time I was struggling with my own guiding experiences. Too many trips with new or novice anglers were coming up short. They wanted to catch brook trout on dry flies, but their limited casting and presentation skills made success elusive. It was all about managing that fly line, and most of them just couldn’t get the knack. As a good guide I could adjust the rig to help them catch fish by going to streamers and nymphs, but the joy and excitement of the surface take remained a challenge. And I wasn’t the only one noticing this problem—anyone who takes up fly-fishing has an important skill set to acquire. In order to fly-fish with any reasonable chances of success, a person has to be able to cast. This can be frustrating to the novice and is probably the main reason there are so many one-rod owners—people who quit the sport before they really gave it a chance.

And that’s why tenkara caught my attention. I thought to myself, if casting becomes less of a challenge and people can start catching fish sooner than they would on standard gear, that’s a good thing, something to be embraced, right? In my opinion people who get hooked on fly-fishing will buy more rods, gear and accessories as they progress in the sport. But if they give up early because they can’t master the cast, nor catch any fish, and they become frustrated and take up some other sport, that’s not good for anyone’s business. With that thought in mind, I ordered a Tenkara USA 11-foot Iwana rod and gave it a try.

Tenkara is a traditional Japanese method of fly-fishing that has been proven for centuries in Japan’s high-mountain streams. It reduces the necessary gear to three basic elements—a rod, a line and a fly. There’s no reel and there are no line guides. The line is attached to the end of the rod. Traditional tenkara has many devotees here and, as practiced in Japan, it is really more of a wetfly technique. They use a simple reverse-hackle fly, a sakasa kebari, (similar to our soft hackles), and fish it wet.

Tenkara lines are either level fluorocarbon or furled braid. They are very light and easily cast with the very flexible tenkara rod. Because they don’t float, they are best suited to the traditional style of mostly sub-surface tenkara fishing. Many of us dryfly guys are tinkering with traditional fly lines, trying to incorporate them in our tenkara fishing, hoping to turn over larger flies, such as beetle and hopper imitations, with more success. The advantages to using fly line include better energy transfer, tapers that can be varied to suit particular presentations and situations, and a “feel” that many anglers are used to. The rods are relatively stiff at the butt, but they flex significantly, especially at the tip, which protects extremely light tippets. Tenkara rods appear to be delicate, and they are, but they also stand up to the typical rigors of fishing as well as traditional rods.

These rods make teaching the basics of fly-fishing very easy and they allow me to get my clients on the water and fishing much faster than if they were trying to master a traditional rod. With the tenkara rod the angler spends most of his or her time focusing on fishing technique, not line management. And, as I quickly learned, tenkara allows anglers to get incredible drag-free drifts, sometimes three or four times as long as you might achieve with a standard setup. As you probably know, the drag-free drift is one of the most important, if not the most important, elements of dryfly success.

Since buying that original rod I’ve added more Tenkara USA rods to my collection and fished them on a variety of waters. Today, tenkara rods are a good substitute for any of my trout rods from 5-weight on down, and I like the method so much that in 2010 I joined Mossy Creek Fly Fishing, located in Harrisburg, Virginia, as their in-house tenkara guide and ambassador.
Again, what has captured our attention and created excitement for those of us who prefer fishing dry flies, and worship at the altar of the drag-free drift, is how effectively tenkara improves those drifts.

The light lines make high-sticking nearly effortless. The long rods, from nine to 14 feet or more, help keep the line out of pesky currents. Fishing small, light dries or dry/dropper rigs is deadly effective. You only have to try it once to believe it.

I’m not the only one who feels this way, and I’m not the only one who sees great growth potential in tenkara. Mathews, for instance, feels so strongly about tenkara that he signed on with Chouinard and Mauro Mazzo to write a book about tenkara, with hopes of bringing more people into the sport. Mathews says he sees tenkara as a great teaching tool and a great way to get people excited about fly-fishing. And he agrees that a new method is good for business.

“[With tenkara] you get people into the sport,” Mathews told me. “Initially they come in and they get a tenkara in their hand, they catch a few fish, six months later they are buying a Winston rod and a Hatch reel. The sky’s the limit here.”

In the end tenkara is just an effective technique, and fishing in its most basic form. As such, an angler gets to focus on the fishing rather than the gear. For me, tenkara represents simplicity and a return to the basics, and that’s how Chouinard summed it up in his article in this magazine: “I believe the way toward mastery of any endeavor is to work toward simplicity; replace complex technology with knowledge, hard work and skill.”

That notion continues to intrigue me.

Author’s note: This article first appeared as Back To The Basics in the Summer issue of Fly Rod and Reel.

Tenkara Subdivisions

November 1, 2014 By Tom Sadler

The Tenkara Jam last month was loaded with good information and hands-on opportunities. One of the better presentations was by Rob Worthing of Tenkara Guides LLC. Rob’s presentation was a detailed exploration of handling big fish and is now a guest post on Casting Around. If you are interested learning a field tested way of handling big fish you will be hard pressed to find a better resource.

While Rob’s article is educational, helpful and very well illustrated (courtesy of Anthony Naples), what caught my attention was his insights into the Japanese tenkara world. He points out that there are three “subdivisions” of tenkara in Japan. Subdivisions is a good word as the distinctions are geographic:

we’ll refer to these subdivisions as headwater tenkara, mountain stream tenkara, and mainstream tenkara. Rods intended for tight, small headwaters located deep in the mountains are relatively light and usually shorter. Rods intended for mountain stream tenkara are a bit sturdier. Rods intended for mainstream rivers, where casting tends to be more open, are frequently longer, and may be beefier still.”

This then becomes a great way to help tenkara anglers look at the spectrum of fixed line rods that are now available. For quick reference here in the Valley, I would equate these subdivisions to the following local waters; headwater = Rapidan or Skidmore Fork, mountain = Dry River or Mossy Creek and mainstream = South Fork of the Shenandoah.

Mossy Creek Fly Fishing. has rods that work in all these subdivisions and I plan to adopt Rob’s explanation as a way to help my clients and customers understand what rod to use where.

Tenkara Jam!

September 20, 2014 By Tom Sadler

Come and get it!
The registration for the Tenkara Jam is open!!!
Thanks to Jason Sparks and Lance Milks we will have Tenkara in the Appalachians!
Saturday October 11th 11:00AM – 8:00PM
Sunday October 12th 9:00AM – 6:00PM

Just click on this link to the Tenkara Jam Registration page.
The cost per person:
1 day $30.00 this can be for either day for those that cannot attend both days.
2 day $48.00 this is for both days and covers all expenses.
Sessions will be held at Foscoe/ Grandfather Community Center (http://www.foscoecommunitycenter.com/default.php)

And there are a pile of vendors bringing their toys to the party!

Wait there’s more, a Kebari swap too!

More Details from the Tenkara Jam website:

Tenkara Community gathering in Foscoe, NC.
There will be presentations on the tenkara style of fly fishing covering topics such as:
1. Overview: Rods, Lines, Flies
2. Kebari History and current patterns
3. Big Fish Wrangling
4. Small Stream Techniques
and more…

Special Guest presentations by:
Lance Milks
Robert Worthing
Tom Sadler
Al Alborn
Bob Ivins
and more…

Day One: Big screen presentations and live demonstrations inside
Day Two: Casting Clinics, Technique Tutorials, Stream-side Classroom, Small Group Guides

We have set Day One to begin presentations at 12:00pm. This is to accommodate travel for people needing to come in Saturday Morning. We will still have a full day of content going into the evening. The Foscoe Community Center will be holding/ serving (independently) a fund raising breakfast at the Center that morning. For $8 you will get all the country breakfast fixin’s you can stomach.

For those coming in Friday evening I will be providing maps to local waters should you want to get wet that evening. Hit up the breakfast Saturday morning and go back out for a few more hours on Saturday morning. There is plenty of fishing to be had.

There is a campground on site (next door) that has tent pads, RV space and Cabin Rentals

Lodging:
Right next door to our facility is Grandfather Campground
Tents, RV space and Cabin rentals available.
http://www.grandfatherrv.com/grandfathermtn3.htm

STFU it’s just fly fishing…

September 16, 2014 By Tom Sadler

Now and again the tenkara world gets it’s knickers in a twist about what is and is not tenkara and then the fly fishing community chimes in about tenkara in general and everyone gets butt hurt and sulks.

Well, one of my favorite commentators on current events is the very talented Erika Napoletano, a featured speaker at the upcoming AFFTA Dealer Summit.

She recently graced the pages of the ever entertaining Moldy Chum in So you’re bitching about Tenkara. Worth watching, listen and learn but be warned, she is NSFW!

UPDATE: The Moldy Chum link is 404, but you can hear Erika’s awesome wisdom on her blog at For Everyone Bitching About Mike Jeffries of Abercrombie and Fitch