At the end of September, Amanda flew to California to be part of the Tenkara Tanuki Boot Camp. After the event was over, she made her way north for an in-person Heritage Tenkara Project meeting. This really means we got in a full day of fishing!
Departing from the house a little after 7am, we made our way to the river. After stopping to see a few sites along the way, we finally made it to the first fishing spot of the day.
This section is latent with boulders that break up the water into pools and pockets. It’s not a terribly wide section, you could cast the width in most spots. It holds plenty of smaller rainbow trout, with an 8” fish being about the biggest you would find.
We fished our way up through the boulders, leap-frogging between the different pools. Amanda would fish a section, then I would take on the next stretch above hers. She would then walk around and fish the next set of pools. This was the pattern that would continue on until we spooled up the lines and collapsed the rods.
After fishing here for about 3 hours, we took an extended lunch break to discuss new ideas and plans for Heritage.
Making our way back downstream, we stopped off at another stretch of river that offers a good amount of access along the road. We parked the car at the most upstream point and hiked down to the lowest access of this section. This is where we would start our fishing journey back to the car.
Plenty of fish were caught in this section. And the river was split up by what worked best for our setups. I fished the near half of the river due to having a shorter rod and line selection. Amanda fished the far side of the river from the same bank as I with her 405cm rod and long level line.
The last spot we fished, Amanda took the upstream portion while I fished the lower half. We were lucky enough to share the river with a bunch of October caddis too!
So, in the 7 hours (3 hours before lunch, and 4 hours split between the two spots after lunch) of fishing together, what did we learn from each other?
Amanda Says:
The beginning of the day with Martin consisted of me fishing with the Tanuki Ninja 350 snow in a tighter area of the river. I caught a fish in the first hole of the section that we fished using my version of a red ass monkey sakasa kebari. I was using a micro-tapered nylon line that was 11 feet long and my tippet was about 4 feet long. The fish was a beautiful rainbow, but the temperature in this river valley wasn’t conducive for fishing the rest of the morning as I didn’t bring any fish to net and did some long distance releases on a couple more fish for the next few hours.
In the next section of the river, we fished a much more open area of water and I was able to keep my eyes on Martin more to observe an experienced tenkara angler do his thing. Some takeaways I learned the next few hours until it was too dark to fish were pretty eye opening and will allow me to have more confidence fishing a river of this size in the future. I do not fish many futsu in my days on the water, but I watched Martin and he was catching his fish so easily on this kebari. I do have more interest in fishing futsu in these bigger, faster rivers on the west coast for sure!
Along with futsu kebari, making sure to keep my eyes on all of the river, specifically the close bank to which I am fishing from, is productive and should not be overlooked. I usually do switch banks while traversing a creek or stream, but the water I am used to fishing is maybe 10 feet across, not 20-30 feet. I need to continue to be aware of each bank instead of walking through a section of water that would be holding fish.
Getting to fish with Martin for a day also brought my confidence on the river to pick it apart in a way that I wouldn’t normally. I would have looked at this river and got overwhelmed, but with his assurance that was not a problem. I was able to use his experience with his “Shokuryoshi Experiment” time management system and direct my attention, not to the vastness of the river, but the areas of the river that were within my direct line of access. Previously, I would feel overwhelmed feeling the need to not overlook a place where fish would be, but I was able to slow down (by the end of the day) and take in the closest spots of the river and be very productive in numbers of fish caught.
Overall, it was a great day of fishing and bonding with my friend Martin! I learned several tips for fishing a tenkara rod on larger rivers and how to manage my time better to not feel overwhelmed. I definitely have more confidence fishing now because of this day on the water.
Martin Says:
In our time fishing together, and from observing Amanda fish, along with a question from her, I put together a list of things I learned that day. The order I want to share these points isn’t quite in the order that I learned them, but more so in a way that they all started to click as I thought about the day a little more.
The big takeaway for me was a reminder to fish a spot that’s likely to hold a fish (or multiple fish) from different angles. After fishing one pocket, and moving up to fish the next, Amanda would often place a few more casts into the previous spot in order to present the fly in a different way, from a different angle. This angle was most often downstream. In fact, the first fish she caught that day was on a downstream presentation.
The question that spurred a lot of these thoughts was “Why don’t you fish downstream as much?” This came with a moment of thinking as to why I didn’t. Talking with Amanda after scrambling for an answer brought her to share some of her knowledge. Part of her approach was to present the fly by “skating” it along the surface and back up to the rod tip while fishing downstream.
Watching her use this presentation to catch several more fish throughout the day was both eye-opening, and inspiring. She had so much confidence in the presentation, and for good reason as it got plenty of strikes. On top of that, it didn’t seem to matter which section of the river we were in - it worked in all of them, in all types of water.
It was an honor to share one of my favorite rivers with Amanda, and even though she claims that she would feel “overwhelmed” by the size of the river, she would have fooled me with how confidently and comfortably she tackled the flows and how effectively she covered water and landed fish.
Fishing with friends can be fun, and can also present an opportunity to learn different ideas and approaches to fishing. We’ve mentioned in a previous article that we all develop our style and tactics based on the waters we fish, and how we find success. Oftentimes, two different anglers will choose a different approach when fishing the same water. These could be slight variations of the same idea, or vastly different tactics all together. Observing other anglers, and talking with them about their way of doing things can open up new ideas and opportunities to catch fish in ways we, as individuals, may otherwise overlook.
Such a great article you two! My take away learning from you two is my line preference. I would say I almost never let my fly extend past the butt end of my rod handle. I lose fish when hand lining a lot so I generally keep my line and fly just shy of the rod butt but it looks like Amanda went 4-5' past hers which tells me she was likely hand lining her fish in at the end. Totally rad to imagine that and it makes me want to try it a few more times. In light of Martin, I have one stream that seems to fish better down stream but I fish dry flies a lot so…