Meet Martin

My name is Martin, you may know me by my instagram handle Sageheart Tenkara

I’ve been fishing since I was young. My parents taught me how to fish. When I was little, I remember my dad and I would walk the trail behind our house to a little pond. I don’t remember if there were fish there, but I do remember walking the trail and standing around the pond.

I fished as I got older, mostly for bass, but in my late teens I lost interest. I wanted to spend my free time with friends, and other hobbies had become my focus when I wasn’t with friends.

After a few years, I started to reconnect with nature through hiking. There came a point where I wanted to revisit fishing as a way to further that connection. Part of my goal was to be able to hike to different waters and be able to fish them. With that in mind, I wanted to keep my gear simple and minimal. I had gone out and purchased a spinning rod setup and started fishing the local ponds for anything that would bite. I was having trouble getting back into it. Catching fish was the goal but I couldn’t quite seem to get a fish to bite. I fished throughout the summer, checking out different waters in my area, casting for bass, bluegill, or trout. But I was always reeling in the lure without a fish at the end.

There was a time where I had borrowed a kayak to fish the lake while out camping with family, and I had noticed that there were trout actively feeding on the surface near the banks, but I couldn’t get them to bite anything I threw into the water. Watching for a bit I had realized that they were feeding on bugs. Unfortunately, I was out of luck as I didn’t have anything to try to entice them.

I thought about it more and considered that maybe the solution to the problem I had been faced with was to try out fly fishing. After we had gotten home from camping I started to do research into how to get acquainted with this form of fishing that seemed so foreign to me.

I’m sure at some point I had come across mention of tenkara in my research, but I had written it off as I was focused on learning more about fly fishing with a rod and reel. I wanted to keep the same mindset of minimal gear that would allow me to hike and fish without spending a small fortune. As I did more research, I felt taking up fly fishing was an expensive and daunting task. Between the different weight ratings of the rods, all the different types of flies, and the concept of “match the hatch,” I was feeling overwhelmed and that I wasn’t ready to try to figure it out on my own.

I changed my search to “minimal fly fishing” in hopes that I could find a more clear and simple approach that fit what I had been looking for, and once again tenkara had popped up.

I had then recalled someone I knew mentioning tenkara before, so I reached out to see if they would be able to tell me more or teach me about it. He wasn’t able to meet up to fish, but he did offer to lend me the rod so that I could try it out for myself.

After his brief description on how to cast, I was out on the trail heading towards a small local creek. I don’t recall catching any fish that day, but there was interest in the fly while it was in the water.

Later that weekend, I was at the river with my wife, and I decided to give this simple style of fishing another shot. Dropping the fly into the water didn’t seem to interest any fish at first. I went to recast the fly when I felt a small jolt. The line tightened and my heart started racing. I fumbled with the rod until I was able to reach the line and pull a pikeminnow out of the water! This was my first catch since I was a teenager, and my first catch on a tenkara rod!

After that I was set on catching more fish. I spent time looking at the map for small creeks around town that had public access. I would stop by some of them on my way to or from work. It didn’t take long to fall in love with fishing for trout in those creeks. After my first rainbow caught, the passion grew and grew. I started venturing further out of town in search of trout. In a short period of time, it seemed like almost all the pictures I was posting online were photos of fish or scenery from fishing.

Fishing was consuming most of my free time. When I wasn’t on the water, I was searching for information online. Some of it made sense, some of it wasn’t understood with my scope of reference at the time. But, for the amount of information that was out at the time, there were questions that I couldn’t quite find answers to. Moving into fall of 2020 I had an experience at a creek that inspired me to start an account to document my experiences in nature and on the water. While I wanted to share fish pictures, I also wanted to create something more than just a feed full of trout. I felt that I wanted to create a resource - one that I wish I had available to me when I was first learning.

I created the Sageheart Tenkara account in the spring of 2021, and started small. Sharing pictures of catches and ideas, I was able to connect to other anglers in the community, and in my region. The account started to grow, and I started to take on bigger projects to bring more of what I understood to the community.

Our point of views are built upon our experiences, and sometimes our perspective can be limited by our frame of reference. Talking and fishing with other anglers opens up the opportunity to understand more, and to gain more knowledge of techniques and approaches to solving the puzzles of fishing.

In my experience, the tenkara community has been very welcoming. I’ve been able to connect with great people, and been fortunate enough to fish with some of them as well. I see a strong sense of community through tenkara. And for that reason, I wanted to contribute something that would help the community to grow.

For me, the Heritage Tenkara Project is a way to connect with other anglers in hopes that information can be shared and passed along to whoever may be seeking it. We are fortunate to have access to tenkara. And while traditionally used to fish for trout in high gradient streams, people all over the world use fixed line fishing to pursue many different species of fish in many different types of water.