First Time Out

by Clyde L. Olson
(Savannah, GA)

This is not a great story, but a first-time-out story with my Tenkarabum Starter kit equipment which might be of interest to people thinking of making the tenkara plunge. I've fished small streams to speying steelhead waters over the last 20+ years. Besides the usual water fished this past week around Cherokee, NC I concentrated on three different small mountain waters with my Shimotsuke 3.6m rod, 8' of 3-strand self-furled mono leader, 1' 3X mono, 3'6X mono with 1 BB 6" above my #14 nymph. Second cast caught a 14" brown out of an 7' plunge pool---with fish easy under control. Samller trout were caught at other venues and it was all so much fun. The most surprising thing to me was while practice casting drys and nymphs in my driveway before the trip, I felt that line pluse a #16 tungsten BH nymph completely loaded the rod--- but was completely surprised that on the water the above much heavier rig worked just fine essentially Czech(short-line) nymphing. I cast some drys with no fish to report for only a short time since nothing was rising.
Summary thoughts are that the Starter kit will not bankrupt you, is a great value Chris has put together and opens up a whole new area of interest. But as everyone of expertise on various sites has mentioned, one must---as with fly fishing in general---match the equipment/tehcnique to the water. Many locations fished this past week were non-tenkara waters and in those situations was indy nymphing with a 10' rod and a couple of BBs to get me into the zone. Thanks Chris for a perfect way to begin tenkara fishing.

“The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of low price is forgotten” - Benjamin Franklin

"Be sure in casting, that your fly fall first into the water, for if the line fall first, it scares or frightens the fish..." -
Col. Robert Venables 1662

As age slows my pace, I will become more like the heron.

We've all had situations where seriously chewed up flies kept catching fish after fish after fish. It is no sin to tie flies that come off the vise looking seriously chewed up.