#tenkara

I'm still a beginner. But I'm less a beginner than I was.

I’ve been tenkara fishing on and off for two years. Since my last update I’ve fished a dozen or so times in Southern California, and lately have made a few trips back to the Eastern Sierra. More about that below.

I take a photo of every fish I catch, and another photo showing where I caught it. The photos are all geotagged, so now I have a map with a dot for each fish. Each dot, when clicked, expands to show metadata: date and time of the catch, species and length of fish, what rod I used, and links to the fish and location photos. Seeing the groups of dots, color coded by outing, along the various blue lines I've fished on the map, gives me a deep feeling of satisfaction. I know it's not rational; it's a product of my obsessive nature, the collector's impulse run amuck.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Here's a portion of the map (with redactions so I can be coy about where I was fishing):

Here are the fish and creek photos for that selected dot:

My rod collection has been stable for a while at eight rods. I sold some because I wanted to buy better ones, and selling the old ones made me feel more responsible. But then I decided I actually needed one of the ones I'd sold, so I bought it back new for more than I’d sold it for. (So much for responsibility.)

Here they are in my rod roll:

The three at the bottom are all Japanese rods from the Oni tenkara shop, creations of Masami Sakakibara, who goes by the nickname “tenkara na oni,” or “tenkara demon.” At the bottom is the Oni Coco, named for his wife. It’s a 290 cm (9.5 foot) rod, which makes it fairly short for a tenkara rod. It weighs less than an ounce, casts beautifully, and can handle any fish I’m likely to catch in the creeks near where I live.

Next up are the Itoshiro, a 340 cm (11.3 foot) rod named for the Itoshiro River in Japan, and the Type I, which at 400 cm (13.1 feet) is my longest rod. Both are amazing. Watching video of Masami casting the Type I is a revelation. He can cast a line twice the length of the rod with pinpoint accuracy, settling the fly onto the water with the leader pointing in any direction, using current to present the fly either on the surface or submerged as he chooses.

I… cannot do that. Maybe one day. For now I try to get the fly approximately where I want it without too much fuss and hope the fish will be forgiving.

Here’s a video of Masami fishing for amago on the Itoshiro River:

My remaining five rods are all from American companies: the Foxfire, Mizuchi, Kokoro 360, and Hellbender from Dragontail; and the Suzume from Zen Tenkara. All those except the Kokoro are "zoom" rods that can be fished at multiple lengths. This is in contrast to the Oni rods, all of which can be fished at only one length.

An interesting debate played out recently about zoom tenkara rods. Tristan of Tenkara Addict says you only need two rods: a short zoom rod for creeks, and a longer rod for when you want to fish lakes. The two rods he would choose if he could only have two are the Zen Tenkara Suzume (for the zoom rod) and the Oni Type I (for the long rod).

It is not an accident that I have both those rods.

Keegan of Mostly Tenkara doesn’t like zoom rods. He prefers a single-length rod optimized for the water he's fishing. He cares a lot about the length of the fixed line versus the rod, so when fishing a zoom rod at different lengths he often feels like the line is either too long or too short for the current zoom setting.

Tristan travels throughout the mountain West fishing new-to-him water. He likes exploring the unknown, so for him, the versatility of a zoom rod is a big plus. Keegan mostly fishes locations he's already familiar with, and is, I suspect, a bit of a Japanophile, so for him the high-end Japanese rods are the ticket.

Realistically, my fishing is mostly in familiar places, à la Keegan, as opposed to new-to-me places, à la Tristan. But I'm still figuring things out. My current rod collection lets me have it both ways: zoom rods for maximum flexibility; high-end Japanese rods for when I know exactly what I want. It's fun exploring both approaches. I'll see where I end up.

If you've read this far you deserve to hear about actual fish. Here are some from my latest trip to the Sierra.

For one outing I hiked an hour into the mountains to visit a small, unnamed lake. On a previous visit I fished the small creek that flows into that lake and caught an 8-inch golden trout, my first ever of that species. This time I was hoping to catch goldens from the lake itself.

And I did! A number of trout were cruising the shallows near the lake’s outlet. I waded as stealthily as I could through the flooded grass along the shore and cast with my Type I. A fish approached the fly, grabbed it, and a minute later I had a beautiful 10-inch golden trout in my net.

I caught four more golden trout from that same spot, each one as pretty as the last. Then I hiked to a nearby creek and caught 10 more fish, all brook trout, using the Oni Coco.

There’s one particular creek high in the Sierra, not far from a major road, that I had a great time fishing nearly a year ago and have been trying to get back to ever since. I’d planned a visit last fall, but a last-minute family emergency made me cancel. Then I set a day aside for it on my latest trip, but the night before the outing the forecast called for high winds, so I decided not to fish there.

Instead I visited a place I'd always wanted to try: a tiny creek at lower elevation that trickles down from the Glass Mountains into a sagebrush flat. I'd seen a photo years ago of someone holding a 6-inch Lahontan cutthroat trout taken from it. The forecast was for lighter winds at that spot, at least in the morning hours.

I knew the creek would be small, but when I got there I was surprised at how small; it was only a foot or two across, with lots of overhanging brush.

As I was peering through twigs at a pool the size of a serving dish I saw something move. A fish! The pool was too choked with branches for me to get my fly to it, but that was enough for me to start bushwhacking upstream looking for another pool.

I was fishing with the Foxfire, which is the rod I sold and then bought back again. These were precisely the conditions I wanted it for. At its shortest length the Foxfire is just 202 centimeters, or 6.6 feet. I had a 5-foot line on it with about a foot of tippet, so this was the shortest setup I could achieve. Even so, it was challenging to thread the rod ahead of me as I pushed through the vegetation, trying to find a spot that was deep-enough to hold a fish but also open enough that I could get the fly to it and set the hook.

After 20 minutes I found what looked like a good spot. I approached on my knees, extending the rod slowly and gently lowering the fly into the pool. There was resistance when I raised the rod, and for a moment I had a glimpse of a fish that immediately spat out the hook. I waited a minute and tried again, and this time when the fish bit I was able to lift it from the water and lower it into my net.

It was my first-ever cutthroat trout.

Here's a video I took after I released the fish, showing it back in the pool where I caught it. Knowing that the fish is less than 7 inches long gives a sense of how tiny the creek is.

The day after that the forecast was still calling for high winds in the mountains, but it was the last day of my trip so I decided to give fishing a try. I started early and hiked up a popular wilderness trail that has some lakes and creeks off to one side. A commenter in an online forum had mentioned that the location was good for tenkara. My hope was that by staying below the treeline I'd be protected from the worst of the wind.

What I found was the most perfect tenkara creek I've ever fished.

When you fish a heavily pressured location the fish spook easily and refuse any fly that is drifting unnaturally. That can be a fun challenge, but the victories are few and far between for a beginner like me.

This outing wasn't like that. Hiking just a little off the beaten path is enough to make a huge difference in how trusting the fish are. As I approached the first pool I could see several decent-sized brook trout in it. Staying low and as far back as I could, I used the Oni Coco to cast upstream of one of the fish. It immediately attacked the fly. I moved forward to the edge of the pool and landed the fish, taking time to photograph it and the spot where I'd caught it. Here are those photos:

I assumed that would be it for that pool; the rest of the fish were probably spooked. But then I noticed a fish in the middle of the pool, right in front of me, looking perfectly calm. I carefully reached out with the Coco to dap the fly, and even before the fly reached the water a different fish I hadn't seen rushed in and leapt into the air to grab it.

The rest of the session continued like that. Almost all the catches were brook trout between 7 and 9 inches long, but mixed in were a few unexpected and very pretty rainbows.

By the time I stopped for lunch I'd caught 29 fish. Here's where I ate my sandwich:

After lunch I hiked a little further and fished a small lake where I caught another 15 brook trout.