Happy Sunday! I’m writing this one still fighting off a little Nikko jet lag, so bear with me if it reads slightly more erratic than usual. Anthony and Matt are still adventuring in Japan, but I’m back after a week fishing the Nikko headwaters with our friends Hiro and Takashi. Meanwhile Amanda, Bill, and Tom were off representing the crew at DRAGONtail’s Wyoming Campout. Between the two trips we basically emptied the office for two weeks, which explains why things got a little quiet here on the site. But that just means there’s a genuinely great backlog of tenkara stuff (especially from MostlyTenkara) to catch you up on.
Anyway, let’s wade into those Riffles…
A Yukon Grayling, Just Because
Tenkara Addict pushed into the Arctic Circle in early September and came home with an 18-minute reminder of why some of us will drive absurd distances for absurd fish. The video documents a journey through remote northern Canada, navigating rugged terrain to reach isolated Yukon Territory streams loaded with arctic grayling. If you needed an excuse to add “Yukon” to the tenkara bucket list, this is it…
Amanda, Owning Cutthroat
Over on r/Tenkara, MostlyTenkara (aka Keegan) posted a clip of “Lady Tenkara Bum” Amanda Hoffner absolutely smoking a big Snake River cutthroat on a Tanuki Kunoichi 360 at the Wyoming Tenkara Campout. The comments spent almost as much time debating where her net magically materialized from as they did admiring the fish (237 upvotes and climbing). The full interview video is apparently dropping in a couple weeks…
Meeting a Legend at Camp
Speaking of that campout, Keegan also sat down there with Tom Davis of Teton Tenkara (and now Tenkara Angler) for a 43-minute Angler Spotlight interview, and it’s a good one. I watched this one on the flight back from Japan. Tom’s rod reviews have quietly steered more purchase decisions than anyone else, and this conversation digs into his roots and his ongoing contributions to tenkara in America. It’s thoughtful, experienced, and worth the full sit…
Keegan’s Not Done With That River Either
Same channel, different outing: MostlyTenkara also dropped a 29-minute video chasing big Snake River cutthroat in surprisingly small water during what he calls an “insane” mayfly hatch. It’s the kind of video where you absorb a presentation lesson every few minutes without quite realizing you’re being taught…
Pumpkin Spice Brookies
Fall-brain arrived early for u/crownvic64 (our friend Victoria), who posted a gorgeous cream-and-orange sakasa kebari from TenkaraNY in the jaws of some brookies, paired with a Zerosum 320 and captioned simply “pumpkin spicy brookies.” The r/Tenkara comment section agreed that colorway might be the most autumn-appropriate fly we’ve seen all year, and honestly, they’re right…
A Reader Tip Worth Passing Along
Longtime reader & contributor Devin McPhillips wrote in with a genuinely good catch: a recent Orvis podcast episode featuring George Daniel, who walks through why he’s largely abandoned multi-fly nymph rigs in favor of a single nymph and a much simpler leader setup. As Devin put it to us, “the approach he describes sounds an awful lot like tenkara/keiryu on a fly rod,” and after listening, we can’t disagree. Thanks for the tip, Devin, this is exactly the kind of cross-pollination we love hearing about…
The Fly Fishing Press Comes Around (Again)
Hatch Magazine published a piece by Craig Mathews making the case that tenkara is the best and easiest way to learn and teach fly fishing, especially for newcomers and kids, and we’re certainly not going to argue with that headline. It’s always nice when the rest of the fly fishing world catches up to something we’ve been saying for over a decade…
A Weekend With the Tenkara Crew, Brevard Style
Facebook turned up a lovely little dispatch from Vickie Ketron, who spent a recent weekend in Brevard, NC we assume at the Women’s Tenkara Gathering getting things ready for, and then fishing alongside, a whole crew of fellow tenkara anglers. The streamside group photos are exactly the kind of thing that makes you want to go start your own local meetup…
Twelve Years of Alaska, Twelve Years of Bent Rods
Tenkara Rod Co. shared photos and stories from their annual friends trip to Alaska, this time adding a couple of Kenai River float days to the usual river-hopping RV formula. Their take on casting distance, that most of the fish you actually want are within twenty feet, or you can just walk to a better angle, is worth bookmarking for the next time someone tries to sell you on needing a bomber cast…
Tenkara Angler Article Roundup
We owe you a bit of an apology, it’s been quiet here on the site the last couple weeks, but for a good reason (see above). Before everyone scattered for Wyoming and Japan, though, we still snuck in a few posts worth catching up on. Steve Allen went deep into the history and process of dyeing fly tying materials with natural dyes… while Bill Robichaud filed a gorgeous trip report from Sardinia, chasing native Mediterranean trout…
Dyeing Fly Tying Materials with Natural Dyes
Article by Steve Allen I was directed down this rabbit hole by Dr. Paul Gaskell via his article published in the Spring 2025…
A Day and a Fish in Sardinia
“But it still reminds me of Malta: lost between Europe and Africa and belonging to nowhere. Belonging to nowhere, never having belonged…
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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