Small Stream Pesca alla ValsesianaBlue Flies and the Sakasa CopperbariSmall stream pesca alla Valsesiana wasn't quite what I expected it to be. It was better - much better. The impression I had gotten of pesca alla Valsesiana, the Italian fly fishing technique similar to tenkara that uses a stiffer rod, longer horsehair line and a cast of four reverse hackled flies very similar to sakasa kebari, was that it was best suited for larger streams. Andrea Scalvini, who grew up in Valsesia, learned the Valsesian technique from his father, and wrote the Pesca alla Valesiana1 page for this site, tells me that the technique is fine for smaller streams - you just use three flies at a time instead of four (on a particularly small stream perhaps only two). Since I had lost all my Valsesian flies to trees very quickly on the first day I tried it on a trout stream, I had mixed feelings about trying on an even smaller stream.
I tried it out on a stream that is small enough I usually fish it with my 11' Iwana. At the time I had thought it much too small for the Amago that I had previously used for pesca alla Valsesiana. (I have since learned that I can use a much longer rod if I also use a shorter line.) As a compromise, I used my Ebisu and the size 4 TenkaraBum Hi-Vis Fluorocarbon line instead of a heavy horsehair pesca alla Valsesiana line. I also had some new flies. I was as ready to try small stream pesca alla Valsesiana as I was going to be. One of the authentic Valsesian flies that Andrea sent me is tied with a blue thread body. He also mentioned one time that the trout on a recent fishing trip particularly liked the blue fly. I have occassionaly wondered, and there have been several threads in various fly fishing forums asking why there were no blue flies. Well, there are in Valsesia, and what's more, they work.
I had gotten some Royal Blue UNI-Thread to try after Andrea had told me of his success (Pearsall's Gossamer silk thread no longer comes in blue although I have since acquired some and now tie my blue flies with blue silk), but for quite a while I hadn't tied any flies with it. I finally tied two, and fished with one. It wasn't very long at all before I caught a feisty 12" rainbow that just would not stay still long enough to have his picture taken. I wanted to take a picture showing the blue fly in it's jaw, but with one last flip the fish was gone and so was the fly. I held the other in reserve so I could at least take a picture. I don't really know why there aren't blue flies. It can't be just that mayflies aren't blue. After all, the Snipe and Purple is one of the classic North Country soft hackle flies, and mayflies aren't purple either. The sakasa copperbari is also a fly I used as one of my three flies. Sakasa copperbari is a tongue-in-cheek name I gave to a fly that Laurent Marshall had written about in one of the posts on his blog Tenkara Adventurer. Similar in concept to the extremely popular and productive Copper John, it is a sakasa kebari with a copper wire body for a little extra weight and flash for when you want to fish a little deeper or when the water is a bit high and off color. In the deeper pools it proved to be very effective.
Pesca alla Valsesiana isn't tenkara, and I had thought it was a perfect compliment to tenkara for larger streams, but it turns out that small stream pesca alla Valsesiana is both fun and very effective. (And unlike my first attempt at pesca alla Valsesiana in a trout stream, where I lost all my flies in the first 50 yards, on this day I only lost two, and if that rebellious rainbow had relaxed for just a moment, I wouldn't have lost any.)
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