For the last several years I made the transition to minimalist running, running in shoes that are barely more than a moccasin and allow one to run more naturally like you were barefoot. This year I’m going to try minimalist fly fishing.
My small stream setup had already become more minimal over the years. I used to carry a rod, reel, vest and net when fishing small streams and the vest was packed full of two fly boxes, leaders, tippet, etc… I then parred down a bit and went to a small chest pack that held one fly box, an extra leader, tippet, nippers and some floatant. Then a few years ago I got even more minimal and went to a lanyard system that has a very small fly box, a few spools of tippet material, a nipper and a bottle of floatant. This works pretty well with the only disadvantage being that when hiking it still takes a while to put together a 4-piece fly rod, attach the reel, string up the line and tie on a fly.
In February when I was attending the Fly Fishing Show I saw a better solution – Tenkara. Tenkara is a Japanese method of fly fishing small streams where all you carry is a rod, line and fly. And yes I mean “fly” as in singular, many Tenkara fishermen use one fly in one size though they may carry a few in case they lose one. There is no reel on a Tenkara rod, the line just attaches to the tip of the rod. The rod is telescoping instead of multi-section so to get ready to fish it is as simple as pulling the plug out of the rod handle, extending the sections and attaching the line which is pre-rigged with a leader and fly. You will have fish in hand before you’d even finish rigging up that 4-7 piece pack rod. This seemed like a very Zen approach to fly fishing to me, understandable that it was created by the Japanese.
After talking to the guys at the Tenkara USA booth and watching the casting demo I was hooked. I went back to the booth to talk about what would be best for our NW small streams and as soon as I got home I had an order in for a rod, line and a few flies to get me started. I’m now the owner of an Iwana 11′ Tenkara rod, a traditional braided line and a couple of Ishigaki and Takayama Kebari (flies). My plan this year is to make Tenkara my method of choice for fishing the mountain streams in the Cascades as well as taking Tenkara gear on our road trips to Utah and Rocky Mountain National Park. I’ll post my progress as the year goes on.