Ok everyone… the votes are in… the regular season has concluded… Selection Sunday has come and gone… and it’s almost time for the single-elimination 2021 Tenkara Rod Madness!
Before I get to the field of 56 rods, let me go over the rules & schedule of the brackets.
Rules (I Guess?)
- With 56 rods voted for, the top 2 rods in each region receive a first round bye
- Votes will be tallied via Google embed in upcoming posts (see schedule below)
- Voting window will run for 3 Days after going live at roughly 6AM ET
- Have fun… and please share with other tenkara & fixed-line friends!
2021 Schedule
- Round 1: Tuesday, March 16
- Round 2: Friday, March 19
- Sweet Sixteen: Tuesday, March 23
- Great Eight: Friday, March 26
- Final Four: Tuesday, March 30
- Championship: Friday, April 2nd
- Champion Announced Monday, April 5th
The Field of 56!
The voting was brisk, and it was awesome to see so many rods get nominated. We’ve decided to break up the field into four regions – The Auger, Sakakibara, Galhardo, and Stewart – based on the four #1 seeds – the DRAGONtail Mizuchi, Oni Type I, Tenkara USA Sato, & TenkaraBum 40.
Also, receiving first round byes as the four #2 seeds are the DRAGONtail Mutant, DRAGONtail Hellbender, Tenkara USA Rhodo, and NIRVANA 400. DRAGONtail Nation certainly voted loudly!
And for those curious to see tomorrow’s first round match ups, here are “zoom ins” of each region, as well as a downloadable PDF of the complete bracket. There are some really potentially interesting match ups down the road if everything plays out… like the Tenkara USA Sato vs. Tenkara USA Rhodo for a trip to the Final Four… but that’s only if some Cinderellas don’t sneak in and make things interesting!
So there you go. Come back tomorrow, Tuesday March 16th and vote early, vote often (if it lets you… I have no idea how this is actually going to work out), and root on your favorite tenkara and fixed-line rods!
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I’m assuming we should not vote on match ups of rods that we have never fished? Also, assuming that you don’t have the tech to limit voting to once per IP address per match up, so someone (who has a lot more time than me) can vote an unlimited number of times on a match up that they feel strongly about?
You can vote however and as many times you’d like (given the interface allows it). Like a rod because it’s green, perfect… give it a vote. Don’t like it because you can’t pronounce the name. Even better, vote against it. This is a nothing more than a popularity contest, and being done for fun. In the end, we suspect the results will really have little indication of the performance of the rod.
As with everything at Tenkara Angler, we pride ourselves on how poorly we think things out in advance of actually doing them, so this fits in perfectly with that theme. 🙂