Check this out...

When I picked my fly rod for the first time last fall, I never would have thought that there was so much specialization in this sport. The one thing that I've learned is that the more rounded you are, the more consistent in catching fish you are going to be. Tenkara fishing reminds me of when I was a kid fishing in the Allegheny in Pittsburgh. We would find a length of line on the shore, tie it to the tip of a rod (a lot of us didn't have reels) and basically wade out to waists and drift a worm in the current. I can't begin to tell you how many sunnies and little smallmouth we'd catch doing that. Besides the obvious,I guess it wasn't that different from the short line techniques discussed here.

CM - Great posts, as someone that really loves mountain brookie streams this method is very intriguing, however it seems like it could be very limited in streams with heavy canopies. Have you found this to be true? Also, I've been doing a lot of standard fly fishing on small streams here, working on developing my bow cast (developed by Joe Humphries, see below), would a modified form of that cast be possible with one of these rods?

Joe Humphreys

I'd say that type of cast probably wouldn't work because without the flyline, the dynamics of the cast wouldn't allow the leader to turn over at any distance, unless you were to add some weight to it.

I'm not sure in would work with a standard 10 foot mono leader either, but with a furled leader I think it might.

It is in the japanese fishng video rigth at the end almost he does a bow and arrow cast.

Thanks fly fisher, I didn't have the patience to watch it the whole way through the first time

No problem

SaboVT, the bow cast works, but you still have to be able to raise the rod when you hook a fish, as there is no other way to get the fish in. You couldn't fish the stream in the video where he was crawling through the rhododendrons. Where I normally fish there are overhead tree branches, and trees and brush along both banks. I generally wade upstream along the left hand bank so that my backcast stays over midstream. I do occasionally have to wade further into midstream after hooking a fish so that I can keep my rod tip out of the trees, though. The streams I normally fish are not as small as those shown in the Humphries video, but there are few spots on the stream where I could not stand on one bank and fish a bank eddy on the other side. The guy who started Tenkara USA lives in California, and I guess the small streams there are a bit more open than they are here.

If you are a fan of small stream fishing, and decide to get one of his rods, I would suggest the one 11' model rather than any of the 12 footers. That one extra foot does make a difference. Realistically, though, if the "mountain brookie streams" you speak of are the kind you can jump across, these rods are too long (unless you like dapping, in which case a 12' rod may be just the ticket).

cm,

what happens to the guides on the rod when it's packed down? The more I look at the rods the more confused I get lol

I don't think there are any guides. I think the line just comes right off the tip of the rod.