In somewhat of a personal quest to learn a little more about how anglers have adopted tenkara and fixed-line rods around the world, I recently went deep down a Google Translate “rabbit hole.” I ended up befriending two anglers (hello Vladimir & Vitaly!), and attempted to participate in tenkara discussions in a foreign-language forum or two.
Of all of the sites that I visited, the photography on Vitaly Valasevich‘s website stood out quite a bit from the rest. Vladimir directed me there and I found each fixed-line photo to be beautifully framed, clearly telling a story that transcends any language barriers.
Upon contacting Vitaly on Facebook to see if he would allow me to share some of his photos to the readers of Tenkara Angler, I quickly learned that he is a very successful multi-dimensional angler, catching many different species on several different types of tackle. Fortunately, Vitaly agreed, and included some photos and brief words to share of fixed-line fishing in his home country of Belarus.
The following photos depict two areas of a small stream in Belarus. If you didn’t know better, you might mistake it for a trout stream in the Driftless area of Wisconsin or Minnesota.
There are two types of fish in this water that Vitaly enjoys catching; chub & dace. He doesn’t eat chubs, but instead practices catch & release.
However, the dace are tasty when salted and dried. He enjoys eating them with beer!
These fish were caught by flies that Vitaly ties and sells. In this case, foam bugs and ants. He was using a Tenkara Prim 400 7:3 rod.
Vitaly also has photos on his website of trout and grayling. He seems to really enjoy mixing camping, fishing, and stream side dining into one consolidated tenkara experience.
I hope you enjoyed paging through Vitaly’s photos. If you’d like to see more, I highly encourage visiting his Facebook page, or perhaps stop by his fishing journal blog, where you’ll find far more than just tenkara.
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