It was a bright, warm August morning, and the Provo River was low and clear. Masami Sakakibara scrambled down through the willows on the riverbank and paused. Immediately in front of him, the Provo cascaded through a bouldery chute and into a deep run, perhaps twenty feet across and sixty feet long. Small boulders lay scattered along the edges of the current on both sides of the river, creating a tapestry of small pockets and seams. Approaching the water, Masami moved among the rocks as the water itself moves, flowing around them with a grace and speed that belied his 70 years. He stopped a few feet from the main current, settled himself, and stood perfectly still, a slender wading bird searching for its next meal.
With a quick, deft movement, he flicked his long rod, placing the fly along the nearest edge of the current. It drifted just a moment before he flicked it back upstream again and then again, each drift covering just two, three, rarely more than six feet of water. Often the fly sat on the surface with no tippet touching the water. In other places, he animated the fly with tiny pulses of his wrist. Sometimes he cast with extra power, driving the fly through the water’s surface to sink it. As we watched from a bridge, he seemed like nothing so much as a painter, putting small dabs of paint in every spot where a trout might be. Some of those spots were handkerchief-sized slicks and pockets. He projected a calm, contained energy, every movement deliberate and direct. Each time he stopped, he adjusted his footing and settled into the spot before he began to cast. Then he fished everything he could reach, upstream or down, across the current or on his side, covering the water completely. He hooked seven trout in perhaps twenty minutes.
Masami is one of the best-known tenkara anglers in Japan. In thirty years of fishing with a long rod and a fixed line, he has developed a style of casting and an intensity of focus that has earned him the nickname Tenkara no Oni — “Tenkara Demon.” He approaches the water with the fierce concentration of an athlete: calm, balanced, perfectly focused. A compact man of moderate height, Masami has the lithe grace of one who has practiced martial arts for a lifetime. He has a gracious, open face and a warm, earnest smile. His dark eyes sparkle behind his glasses. He speaks softly, but with great animation when he describes his approach to tenkara. He uses only traditional Japanese flies, which look a bit like Western-style soft hackles, but with slightly stiffer hackles that flare forward, like a cone, over the hook eye.
I had come to the Provo River in Utah to learn tenkara from the master at the “Oni School,” a three-day class put on by Tenkara Guides, a Salt Lake City–based team of three anglers who have been fishing and teaching tenkara in central Utah for several years. Until I came to Utah, I had never used a kebari pattern or fished in the Oni style of constant casting.
My own tenkara journey had begun in the spring of 2014 with an invitation to spend a few days at the Nature Conservancy cabin on the McCloud River. The McCloud has always been a magical place for me. The deep canyon, with its ancient forest of pines and firs, holds a river that is classic freestone in nature, but largely spring fed. It flows cold and clear through long pools and among smoothed and variegated volcanic rocks. The trout are deep bodied, brightly colored native McCloud rainbows, so admired by early fish culturists that they became the original brood stock of rainbow trout now found around the world. I’ve fished the McCloud since 1976, and mostly I’ve used a variety of nymphing techniques.
As I considered the tackle I would take, I felt a bit dispirited. Forty years of fishing Northern California rivers has made me a very competent angler. I can present a nymph at any depth in any kind of water with a high expectation of success, but catching fish wasn’t bringing me much joy. It had become more of a familiar ritual that I performed with the expected results. Each outing was an affirmation of competence, less often an occasion for delight. What I needed was a change in style and in perspective, a way to rekindle my enthusiasm. What if I could use the knowledge I had accumulated over those forty years about where fish hold and feed and how the current and the hatches affect their behavior to reinvent the act of angling?
I had been following the online conversation about tenkara tackle and techniques in the West with interest. When I Googled “tenkara,” among the sites that came up was tenkarabum.com, a webite in New York City. Christopher Stewart, the proprietor, has been a student of the art for many years, and he writes with authority about all aspects of Japanese telescoping rod, fixed-line fishing. I learned that the style that we refer to as tenkara in the United States is just one of the many ways anglers fish in fresh water in Japan. With rods ranging in length from 8 to 20 feet and more, Japanese anglers fish for tiny baitfish, for the native trout, for carp — for any fish that swims in their streams and lakes. They most often use bait, less often flies and lures. I found myself overwhelmed by the variety of rods and the styles of fishing, so I e-mailed Chris, describing the McCloud and the Pit and the upper Sacramento and the style of fishing common in Northern California. Our lengthy e-mail conversation about tackle and techniques resolved itself in my purchasing a graphite rod that weighs 3 ounces and telescopes from 2 feet to 12.5 and then extends to 14 feet for a really long reach. It is particularly suited to using weighted nymphs. With a couple of spools of 10-pound and 13-pound test fluorocarbon level line, Chris assured me, I’d be ready to fish successfully.
Those first days on the McCloud with the long rod were a revelation! The familiar river took on an entirely new character as I explored every spot I could reach. I found I could drift my fly with ease and precision. The connection to the fly was direct and intimate. The rod has no cork or foam grip, but I found its smooth, tapered butt section easy to hold and extraordinarily sensitive. I rigged my terminal tackle the way I did in Western nymphing, tying the 5X tippet directly to the end of 18 feet of 10-pound level fluorocarbon casting line that was tied to my rod tip. Two nymphs, a couple of BB split shot, and I was ready.
As I cast this novel rig, I could feel the fly moving along the bottom. Watching the leader for the tiniest hesitation, I caught fish after fish with almost a sorcerer’s touch. I was giddy with my success when I returned to the cabin that evening and shared my experiences with my friends over a glass of whiskey. The McCloud has never been an easy river, but my day had been exceptional. I had caught fish in shallow pockets and in the deep runs. I had used a range of flies from a size 18 Peacock Soft Hackle to a 1/32-ounce black-and-yellow jig-headed Marabou Leech. In every case, the combination of the long rod, the almost dragless fluoro line, and the direct connection to the fly had been hugely productive. It was deadly — and delightful! I was hooked on tenkara.
Tenkara tackle and techniques evolved over several hundred years in the mountains of Japan to catch the small native trout in tumbling mountain streams. Village fishermen perfected the use of long bamboo poles and light horsehair or silk lines tied directly to the tips of these poles to fish for food. In the mid-1900s, these ancient techniques were rediscovered and updated with fiberglass and then graphite rods. The horsehair or silk lines were replaced with monofilament. The original flies were rudimentary, tied without a vise and not designed to match any hatch, but just to attract the fish’s attention. There are several different styles of flies used in Japan today. The one most associated with tenkara in the United States, sakasa kebari, has the hackle tied forward so that it flares over the hook eye. When fished, the hackle can pulse back over the body, causing a lifelike action.
Kebari flies are fished either on the surface or sunk in the top few inches of the water column. Weight is not added to the line to sink the fly, and the fly is rarely allowed to stay in the water very long. Classic tenkara fishing involves casting frequently, holding most or all of the very light line off the water, and often animating the fly to provoke a strike.
It was not until I stood on the bridge and watched Masami fish that I began to appreciate the true nature of tenkara. I had used only Western flies and Western techniques in my tenkara fishing. Fishing Northern California rivers with nymphs is so productive that I had rarely had occasion to cast a dry fly with my tenkara rod. When I began making the repeated casts that Oni’s style of fishing requires, my shoulder quickly began to get sore. My original rod is fine for fishing weighted nymphs, but ill suited for constant casting an unweighted fly. The Tenkara Guide team lent me a demo rod that Oni designed for his style of fishing. Wow! Another revelation! Suddenly, the constant quick casts became not just effortless, but joyful. The 3-ounce, 13-foot rod feels like nothing in the hand and makes precise casts a dream.
With that rod, I approached the Provo with a broader vision than with Western gear. I began to see the whole river. I considered how I might fish to each likely spot as I moved along, whether that meant casting the fly upstream, across stream, even downstream. One of the truly surprising things about using a tenkara rod is discovering just how many fish are in the river in places that as a Western angler, I never considered fishing. And how very large a trout can be in a very small bit of water.
Tenkara fishing, with its fixed line length, means that the angler must move along the stream or river to be able to reach all the fishy water. If I have 20 feet of line from my rod tip to my fly and I’m using a 13-foot rod, I have a theoretical reach of 33 feet. Generally, I want to keep as much line off the water as possible so I stop my rod at about 45 degrees on my forward cast. Thus, my comfortable fishing distance is around 25 feet. As I move upstream, I am looking at all the likely targets within that 25-foot reach. A pocket or seam I couldn’t fish successfully from below might become perfectly fishable from across or above.
Tenkara has also caused me to rethink the fly patterns I carry. I have plenty of conventional nymphs, but now I’m using bugs tied with tungsten bead heads on jig hooks. They sink fast, hang up less, and usually don’t require extra weight on the tippet. The ease of manipulating a fly with a tenkara rod has me using soft hackles much more, as well, to give lifelike movement to my drifts. And I’ve added flymphs to my kit, the fly style, between nymphs and soft hackles, that was popularized by Jim Leisenring and Pete Hidy in the 1970s. They are like nymphs with abundant soft hackles and are designed to be fished with action. The Leisenring Lift provokes a fish to take by swinging the fly up toward the surface like an emerging nymph at the moment when it is the most vulnerable.
My on-stream kit these days consists of a small, well-used flats pack with the usual tools — nippers and hemostat and such — plus a box of nymphs, flymphs, and soft hackles and a box of dries in sizes 10 to 22; spools of 4X and 5X fluoro tippet; similarly sized plastic spools holding lengths of the level fluoro line ranging from 10 to 20 feet; and a small container of the orange strike putty that is my personal preference for drag-free strike detection. I attach my net and the lanyard of my wading staff to the back of my wader belt.
Although my current favorite rod is 13 feet when extended, it’s just 2 feet long when collapsed, and I often tuck it into the front of my waders as I walk to the stream. Telescoping graphite tenkara rods typically are seven equal-length sections and range in length from 9 to 15 feet. With an EVA foam grip and no reel seat, at a vanishingly light 3 ounces, fishing with it is like waving a magic wand in the air and directing the fly to every tiny pocket or seam. The drift can be brief and precise because the virtually weightless line and tippet are easily held off the water by the very long rod, with the fly being danced, skated, twitched, or drifted perfectly naturally on or under the water’s surface. In addition, a tenkara rod’s length and flex make small fish as much fun to catch as large ones. This has allowed me to step out of the numbers game, to set aside the “most fish and the biggest fish” mindset, and simply savor the pleasure of casting, moving through the water, and being surprised at all the places fish are to be found.
Rigging up streamside is straightforward. I decide how long a line I wish to fish on the water. Small streams typically call for short lines, larger ones for a longer line. My current 13-foot rod casts comfortably between 10 and about 20 feet of the level casting line. I select the spool that has the length of line and tie the end that has a Perfection Loop to the “lillian,” the 3-inch length of thin woven nylon cord that is glued to the tip of the rod, using a charmingly simple knot called a Lillian Knot. This knot leaves tag ends that, pulled on simultaneously, allow the knot to come apart and the line to be easily removed from the lillian. At this point, the rod is still collapsed. To the end of the level casting line I have tied a tippet ring. To that tiny ring I tie at least 3 feet of tippet, usually 5X. A nymph or two, a small smear of strike putty above the tippet ring and another a couple of feet above that, and I’m ready to fish. To switch to a dry, I simply take off the sinking flies and the strike putty and tie on a dry fly.
Fly fishers generally agree that when we use a nymph, the trout take and reject our fly many more times than we are able to detect at the surface. The more direct we can make the connection between the fly and our hand and eye, the more of those takes we will detect. Take out the thick fly line in favor of a fixed length of fluoro, with its insignificant water resistance, take out the floating indicator in favor of a colored section of colored mono sighter or bits of strike putty, take the weights off the tippet in favor of weighted flies — now you have a rig with a profoundly enhanced sensitivity.
European nymphers have understood this for years. Less is more. They keep the Western rod, albeit a long one at 10 or 11 feet, as well as the Western reel and fly line, because doing so allows them to fish a greater range of distances in a variety of water. Then they construct very long mono or fluoro leaders — typically around 18 feet — and very simple flies. They frequently fish only the long leader through their rod tips. Tenkara anglers give up some of the ability to cast a long way in favor of delicacy of presentation and sensitivity to the drift.
Some wag has said that “tenkara” in Japanese means “can’t land big fish.” It is certainly true that with a large, determined fish in fast water, the tenkara angler is at a disadvantage in not being able to feed line. However, my experience over these past few years has shown that the very long, slender rod, kept perpendicular to the line and the fish, has truly remarkable shock-absorbing qualities. By keeping the rod perpendicular, the fish must fight the power and resistance of the curve in the graphite, and when that rod is, say, 13 feet long (plus your height and arm length), the whole system becomes enormously powerful and so flexible that I have found it hard for a fish to break off, even a big fish. I’ve have landed trout and steelhead to over four pounds on 4X and 5X tippet.
The most fun you can have with a tenkara rod is with a dry fly. When the trout are looking up, to place a fly precisely and effortlessly on an exact target, to skate it or dance it or animate it in any way you wish to evoke a strike, is sheer magic.
Last November, I was by myself at Trout Camp, the rustic California Trout facility on the upper Sacramento River. The nights were frosty, the days bright and clear. Along the water, the last bits of color were fading as the leaves of the alders and maples drifted down.
About 10 in the morning, I walked down to the river below camp and began nymphing, enjoying modest success. By 11 a.m., the sun had risen over the canyon rim and flooded the canyon with light, and adult October Caddisflies were everywhere in the air and on the water. I’ve never had great success with October Caddis dries, and there were no visible rises, but I looked through my box anyway. My dry caddis selection was an assortment of size 14 and 16 Elk Hairs, none more that half the size of the actual bugs. Then I noticed two big, old-fashioned, light-brown-hackled flies — Neversink Skaters — I’d been given several years ago. I’d read about Edward Ringwood Hewitt and his skaters. He was something of a polymath and a singular figure in American fly fishing in the early 1900s. He invented the felt-soled wading shoe. He invented the original engine that powered Mack trucks. He pioneered the science of stream restoration, and he designed the Neversink Skater, named after the river that he fished on and studied for fifty years in New York’s Catskills.
I had never used a skater. The color and size were the closest thing I had that resembled the insects around me, so I Dry-Shaked one of the flies and tied it on. I was fishing my 13-foot Oni rod, that most remarkably light and refined rod. As I began to cast, I was transported to a transcendent realm of light and water and trout where the water was so perfectly clear that every pebble stood out on the bottom, the trout so perfectly willing to come to the fly, the casting so effortless, the fly so visible, sitting up on its hackle tips and dancing across the water as the big caddisflies did. I lost all sense of time, moving slowly up through pocket water, casting all around me to every fishy spot. It seemed that every fishy spot held a fish! After releasing one particularly lovely trout taken from a seam beneath an overhanging umbrella plant, a train came rumbling by, and I looked at my watch. Two hours had passed as in an instant.
It’s been many years since I’ve had such a powerfully affecting experience astream, and I was still in something of a happy daze when I returned to camp. I was struck by the similarities of fishing the skater to fishing kebari flies with a tenkara rod. The stiff hackles allowed the skater to be manipulated easily, and the ability to cast and control my fly in any direction were very like the techniques Oni demonstrated on the Provo. Fishing the skater as it was originally intended to be fished — in an active, animated manner, with repeated casts and short drifts — promises another way of approaching a stream with a tenkara rod.
“The ten colors of Tenkara” is a popular expression in the tenkara community. It means that among ten tenkara anglers, there can be ten different fishing styles. Tenkara is whatever the angler chooses to make it. Beyond the use of the telescoping rod and the fixed line, any fly or technique can be employed. It’s more about the angler’s experience: the simplicity of the tackle, the pure delight of the effortless casting, the extreme sensitivity of the presentation, and the extraordinary line control. It’s the versatility of being able to fish nymphs, soft hackles, or dry flies simply by changing flies.
ERiK Ostrander of Tenkara Guides suggested to me that the “ten colors” concept is also reflected in the angler’s approach to a particular river. Wherever ERiK fishes, he chooses a rod and line best suited to the water and the fishing conditions. His attitude is that the more perfectly suited the tackle is, the more perfectly realized the fishing experience will be. And after all, the experience is why we are fishing. This was the lesson of my dry-fly morning on the upper Sac. Tackle and technique attuned to the water sets you up for success. Like the surfer choosing the right board or the golfer the right club, having the right tackle helps create a more direct connection between you and the trout you seek, making the experience more artful and more deeply satisfying.
Fly fishing is the angler’s attempt to connect the terrestrial world and the aquatic one on the trout’s terms. In skilled hands, this attempt becomes artful. Mastering the art of fly fishing is a lifetime pursuit. The more we know about that web of life beneath the surface, the more insightfully we can approach the river and the fish. Fishing with tenkara tackle has made the connection simpler and more direct for me. The more years I fish and the more experience I accumulate, the more I have come to appreciate simplicity wherever I find it.
My tenkara journey has reminded me to look at the whole river, to savor the whole experience of casting and wading and reading the water. To take delight in every fish I catch, regardless of its size. To treat each as a blessing, a bright moment of connection to the extraordinary web of life. My fishing has become less focused on the biggest fish and more about discovering the abundance of the whole river. It’s like being a beginner again, before learning to read the water. Or maybe it’s reading the water with an even more discerning eye. In addition to the obvious lies, it’s looking closely for the less obvious ones. It’s thinking like a trout. Each time I fish now, I regard each trout as a teacher who affirms that I have presented my fly appropriately and artfully. The simplicity of tenkara has brought an unexpected joy to my fishing.
Casting a Tenkara Rod
I have found that casting a tenkara rod to be simplicity itself. If you have never fly fished before, you can develop a solid fishable cast in perhaps an hour. If you have fly-casting experience, it might take a bit longer.
Consider that the typical Western fly-fishing rig is a 9-foot 5-weight rod, reel, and line that together weighs 8 to 10 ounces. A typical tenkara rod is 13 feet long and weighs 3 ounces. This light weight, length, and almost weightless casting line mean that the effort required to cast is greatly reduced. That produces two main differences between Western and tenkara casting. First, you use more wrist in tenkara. In many situations, you’ll use only your wrist. Second, you usually don’t wait for the line to turn over fully on your back cast. The mono or fluoro casting line is so light and relatively short — typically two rod lengths will be the maximum — and you are casting such a long rod that every motion at the butt is exaggerated at the tip. This shortens the casting stroke. You stop your rod higher on both the back cast and the forward cast to hold as much line as possible in the air. At the end of the tenkara cast, you do not drop your rod to horizontal, as you do with a Western rod. Stopping your rod high keeps the line off the water, setting you up to do whatever you like with your fly.
The thing that is constant between Western and tenkara casting is that your rod tip must travel in a single plane as it travels back and forth. No buggy whipping allowed! And of course, as a Western angler, you have to figure out what to do with your line hand, because there is no line to manage.
— Dick Galland
For More Information…
Although angling with a rod and fixed-length line has been around for centuries, it only began to gain popularity in the United States after 2008, when Daniel Galhardo, having experienced the pleasures of tenkara in Japan, started Tenkara USA to introduce us to this aspect of fly fishing and its gear. Other manufacturers and retailers have since entered the marketplace; it’s fair to say that there is now a wide range of tenkara tackle available. This tackle, and the tactics associated with it, continue to evolve as anglers in our country and elsewhere adapt tenkara to their particular waters, conditions, and species. There are now even guides who specialize in tenkara.
For beginners ascending the learning curve, here are some resources that I’ve found both useful and interesting.
Online: tenkarausa.com; tenkarabum.com; tenkaratalk.com; discovertenkara.com; discourse.10colorstenkara.com; tenkaraonthefly.net
Books: tenkara — the book, by Daniel Galhardo; Simple Fly Fishing, by Yvon Chouinard, Craig Mathews, and Mauro Mazzo; Tenkara Today, by Morgan Lyle
Magazine: Tenkara Angler (tenkaraangler.com)
— Richard Anderson
The Sakasa Kebari
The emblematic fly pattern for tenkara is the sakasa kebari, which translates as reverse-hackle fly. Traditionally, it is a simple design, using two or three materials and not intended to imitate a specific insect. (Tenkara developed on mountain streams where fish would quickly hit whatever looked edible before the current bore it away.) Tying the hackle in this manner allows the tenkara angler to impart the appearance of life through subtle manipulation of the rod.
— Richard Anderson
