Articles

Casting a tenkara rod

The design of a tenkara rod makes casting a simpler and more intuitive process

by Tom Sadler - Thursday, Mar 10th, 2016

Photo: Tenkara USA

Casting demonstrations are a great way to introduce tenkara. For the last couple of years, I have had the good fortune to do tenkara casting demos at The Fly Fishing Shows in Winston-Salem, North Carolina and Lancaster, Pennsylvania and the Virginia Fly Fishing Festival.

Among the myriad benefits of fishing with a tenkara rod is how easy the rod is to cast. While the fundamental casting principles still apply, the simplicity of the outfit; just a rod and a line, make casting a very simple and intuitive process.

Trout Unlimited's American Ninja Lumberjack

Surely there's a typo there somewhere

by Mark Taylor - Wednesday, Mar 9th, 2016

When he was playing college football, Phil Thomas didn’t exactly stand out among his peers, at least size-wise.

“I was 6 feet tall, about 220 pounds,” said Thomas, who was a relative shrimp on the defensive line at Division III Waynesburg University. But at a couple of recent athletic competitions Thomas has felt differently.

The past two seasons Thomas has been invited to the trials for American Ninja Warrior, a popular TV show based on a competition that originated in Japan.

A personal rewilding

Chronicle of a Leopold disciple

by Johnny Carrol Sain - Tuesday, Mar 8th, 2016

Photo: Johnny Carrol Sain

If you don’t know who Aldo Leopold was, please, stop reading and do a Google search. I’m not kidding. If you’re into fish and wildlife and healthy ecosystems and how biological systems — from the formation of proteins on up to the biosphere — hinge on one another to encourage and enable life on this ball of rock and water, you need to know Aldo Leopold.

Record makers

Catch and release records catch on

by Kris Millgate - Monday, Mar 7th, 2016

Photo: Kris Millgate

I’m not a record holder, but I interview record holders on TV. It’s true. I’ve shot stories with Idaho’s brown trout record holder and Idaho’s hybrid rainbow trout record holder. Fine fisherman and woman. I’ve even spent time with the taxidermist turning those trout into art. The common outcome here is harvest. Those trophy trout saw their last hook the day they made the record books.

Tenkara line keeping methods

Ways to manage your tenkara line when on, and along, the water

by Ben Kryzinski - Thursday, Mar 3rd, 2016

Wading into deeper water with line stowed using the traditional tenkara line holder (photo: Tenkara USA).

I don't fish tenkara as much as I probably should. A fair amount of my time spent with a rod in my hand is spent on small, often brush-choked, streams. These are fishing conditions in which tenkara excels in a number of ways not limited to using tenkara rods' long length to keep your line off the water and make a fly first and fly only presentation, allowing you to actively control your fly and not requiring a backcast. But what about when you're not fishing?