Is Tenkara a Fad?Is tenkara a fad? It seems Lefty Kreh thinks so. To be fair to Lefty, I suppose one should agree that only time will tell. However, a fad is generally considered to be something that is here today and gone tomorrow - an idea or a product that doesn't last very long. Tenkara, or more broadly, fishing with an artificial fly and a line tied to the tip of the rod, which is what I am pretty sure Lefty had in mind, has been around a long, long time. The first written account of that type of fishing was penned by Aelian around 200 AD. It is almost certainly much older than that. To assume that something did not exist before it was first written about is like saying dinosaurs did not exist before the word "dinosaur" was coined in 1841. Illogical to say the least. So, tenkara-style fishing has been around at least 1800 years. Maybe it is a fad. But then, the printing press has only been around 570 years. Perhaps it is a fad as well. How about reels on fly rods? Being generous as to what constitutes a reel, maybe 360 years, if the rudimentary drawing in Thomas Barker's 1650 book "The Art of Angling" can really be considered a reel. (To be fair again, that confusing piece of equipment could have been around for a while before he wrote about it, though.) Maybe reels are a fad. Or at least the double haul, first demonstrated in only 1934. A mere 70-odd years. Surely it's just a fad. The telephone is only 135 years old. It might be a fad. Or light bulbs (133 years), or airplanes (107 years), programmable computers (70 years). How about graphite fly rods (less than 30 years). Pet rocks were a fad. they didn't provide much usefulness to their owners. Tenkara rods, on the other hand, give you a way to fish a smaller stream that just cannot be matched with a shorter rod and a heavier line. People who've used them understand that (at least the ones who used a light enough line to keep it off the water's surface and kept their rod tip high enough to do it effectively). I strongly suspect that long rods and light lines will be around as long as there are small streams and anglers to fish them.
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