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Fly Tying
ben bell

is tenkara catching on?

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Yes but I don't think it will grow as much as fly fishing simply because it is pretty much limited to small trout and other fish like that. You simply can't catch just about any saltwater species like a bonefish on tenkara because without drag something will break.

 

I think it will grow, but definitely not to the point where fly fishing is now

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I started seeing Tenkara rods and lines/leaders in some of my local fly shops maybe a year or two ago. In that time I've seen exactly one guy actually using the gear on the river, but I seldom fish the smaller water that most guys use it on. Next time I'm in one of my local shops I'll have to ask if they're still selling any of the gear.

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Nope it sure isn't. In fact I would say its just about dead. I've seen one and only one guy fishing tenkara and that was a few years ago. Haven't seen another since and I have yet to see tenkara anything in any fly shop I've been in. I generally just pull my fly out of the water and flip it back out tenkara style but I have the reel for flexibility. Personally I don't get why anybody would want to fish without the reel.

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If one went by forum traffic alone then most aspects of life are slowing ...other forms of social media are drawing traffic away from forums.

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I enjoy Euro nymphing to a point.The first words out of my wife's mouth would be then why the hell did we buy all these reels

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I dabbled with it a few years ago. After watching a customer at the fly shop I frequent demonstrate how to rig and "cast" the tenkara rod he had brought back from Japan for the owner. Who handed over $300 for it. I was interested but not at that price. The brand name on the tenkara rod was familiar. I thought about the cane poles the locals used to ply the cypress knees on Reelfoot Lake for crappie and bull bream. I also remembered they had been replaced in many places by telescoping fiberglass poles and then graphite poles. Checked out my Cabela's catalog and found myself an 11 foot one for $21 made by the manufacturer of the Tenkara rod. Ordered one and when I got it took it out to the shop and compared the two rods not much difference except the price. I never could get up the nerve to use it locally but did take it back to Tennessee for a reunion and the place where we were partying was on a river and I managed to catch a couple of crappie and a bream with it.

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Tenkara is simply a fancy new name for fishing with a pole and line (no reel.) Since that is the way we ALL fished up until the fishing reel was introduced about 150 or 175 years ago, is not new. I would say regardless of the lack of web traffic on some sites, it is growing. There are many more dealers now than there was a few years ago.

 

I first saw one of these fancy ultra light telescopic rods 30 years ago. It needed a new tip whipped on the end to loop the line to. The customer had picked it up in Japan. At that time, the name had not been applied to it (at least not by that person.) I whipped on a piece of fly line backing and applied a light coat of Flex Coat to the wraps, and he went on his was. Now there are thousands of them out there, and for what they are, the price is pretty ridiculous.

 

If you really want to try it, just cut a fly line down to about 10 or 12 feet. You would want to use one 3 line sizes heavier than your rod, and tie it to the tip of your rod. Or watch one of the hundreds of survivalist videos on YouTube and make your own stick and string.

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i,ve been using a cabela,s 10' panfishpole..great fun on farm ponds..i can,t get it back from my brother, he liked it so much..so i just got a "real" tenkara rod to build from a blank..i just slipped on a contoured EVA grip and i,m in business, all for only $50 including shipping...they are fun on farm ponds.

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If one went by forum traffic alone then most aspects of life are slowing ...other forms of social media are drawing traffic away from forums.

I know it's morphing the thread but his is something I don't understand. Maybe I'm old (I am) and got all my early networking time on forums like this one. I cannot understand why people like Facebook or all those other fast in and fast out "social media" out there today. I'd have to see the forum type of internet traffic fall. I've already experienced the demise of a couple of good motorcycle boards that went to Facebook and though I check in once in a while it's no where near as enjoyable TO ME as the old board was.

 

As for Tenkara, I am old enough to remember 12-16' canepoles and spinning the heavy line to wrap around the poles before you bundled them all up and tied them to the roof rack with the boat. And ben bell...building a tenkara rod from a blank??? C'mon, just wrap some hockey stick tape to bottom and you're done. :-)

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