Sunday Morning Riffles – 4/07/2024

A Walk Down Memory Lane

This is Anthony Naples here. Michael Agneta does such a great job with these Sunday Morning Riffles, I wanted to give him the week off. I’m usually guilty of being out of touch with the online tenkaraverse – I’m not quite up on the current events – as I spend way too much time watching videos about guitars and all things guitar related instead.

With the arrival of Tenkara USA back in 2009 tenkara became widely known outside of Japan and some of us were around in those early days. But I know that many new or younger tenkara anglers missed that era. I’m often nostalgic for those early days, so I thought it would be fun to share a few videos & articles from back in the day that some of you may have missed at the time.

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Tenkara in The Land of Little Rivers

Back in 2009 a rather amazing coincidence occurred, Tenkara USA was being launched and The Catskill Fly Fishing Museum was featuring Japanese fly fishing and tenkara luminary Dr. Hisao Ishigaki was there.

Tenkara USA created a really cool document of that event presenting some of the history and the techniques of tenkara. It’s a fascinating time capsule of a special moment in time. I don’t want to give you any spoilers, but most of you will probably recognize a few faces. Watch the 2-part video below…

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Honryu Tenkara Primer

I suspect most readers of Tenkara Angler will be familiar with Discover Tenkara. If not you should be. It would be difficult to overstate the magnitude of the contribution that John Pearson and Paul Gaskell have made to tenkara education and awareness outside of Japan. If they have a fault it’s that they created so much content that I couldn’t possibly digest it all in a single lifetime. If you have never. you need to head on over to their website and YouTube channel and dive down the rabbit hole.

The bit of Discover Tenkara content that I recently re-read was an article called Honryu Tenkara: Big Rivers & Powerful Flows from June 2019. I’d seen it a while back but Tom Davis’ recent review of the Shimano BG Tenkara 48NV Rod got me thinking about this kind of fishing again.

Anyway, check that article out it’s got loads of good info and it may get you excited to try some bigger water…

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What’s up with that “net”?

Here’s another bit of tenkara nostalgia that I want to share. Though his YouTube channel has been dormant for a while I used to really love watching the tenkara fishing videos posted by Tatsurou Okaniwa 岡庭 達朗 (@tenkaraman ) on Youtube).

The thing that fascinated me then and still fascinates me now is that crazy “net” and fish release system. It bends my brain a little. And it’s wild how the fish are mostly very compliant and lie still on that net. Rather than me trying to explain it, just watch the video. I still need to make one of those nets…

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Ever Heard of All Fishing Buy?

Back in the day, purchasing tenkara rods was hard. You could shop with Tenkara USA, but that was pretty much it. This was before TenkaraBum started selling rods, and well before companies such as Tenkara Rod Co. started popping up. One of the only other sources of tenkara rods was AllFishingBuy.com who sold a lot of different types of fixed line rods, from tenkara to hera to carp.

They’re still in operation today (even though the site still looks like it’s from the early 2000s) and sell a mix of Japanese and private label tenkara rods…

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So Who is This “TenkaraBum” Guy?

Even though it’s impossible for us ol’ timers to imagine, the reality is that many newcomers to tenkara and fixed line fly fishing might not know “TenkaraBum” Chris Stewart. Chris was the first person I recall studying the flex of rods for comparison’s sake (before he sold rods, he reviewed them) and then eventually gave us anglers options by importing and selling Japanese-made tenkara rods for the very first time at scale. He was also a champion of other styles of fixed line and multi-species fishing.

While the pandemic took a toll on Chris’ offerings, his website is still a wealth of information. Here’s a wonderful short produced by Roamads that introduces us to Chris…

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Learn Tenkara – An Unsolved Mystery

Shortly after Tenkara USA got up and going, Brian Flemming set up a company called “Learn Tenkara” that was going to put together high quality instructional and informational videos and articles, somewhat like Discover Tenkara. He and his assistant Ashley Valentine spent a lot of time recording with Daniel Galhardo, and even produced a kebari tying video, “Tying Tenkara Flies DVD Volume 1” starring Daniel, Dr. Ishigaki, Chris Stewart, and others.

The rumor was they were in the process of filming a tenkara documentary, but just as soon as they appeared, in 2012 they disappeared without much of a trace. Wonder what happened to them (and all the video footage)? At least the “Wayback Machine” archived some of their website.

A few other random internet breadcrumbs remain, like this Facebook page, Flickr Account, and some references on blogs like this, but perhaps the most famous part of their legacy I still hear referenced today is Ashley’s Punk Rock Sakasa Kebari…

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Tenkara Angler Weekly Article Roundup

Now, back to current day, here are the three entries from Tenkara Angler this past week…. On Monday, we released Episode 15 of the Level Line Podcast featuring Q&A of topics submitted by our listeners and readers. This was a really fun changeup for the pod! On Wednesday, Tom wrote a review and gave his thoughts on the Shimano BG Tenkara 48NV honryu rod, the largest in Shimano’s lineup. And on Friday, Tom came back again and discussed how solid paint markers can enhance the visibility of your level line. If you missed any of them, today’s a great opportunity to catch up…

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Do you have something you think is worth mentioning in the Sunday Morning Riffles?
Pop us a note at staff@tenkaraangler.com using the subject line RIFFLES to let us know.

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