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I get asked a lot of tenkara-related questions in the comments of my YouTube videos. I’ve decided that in 2021, a lot of the blog posts I write will be answers to these questions. Feel free to leave a comment on this blog post to give your own answer to the question.

Alex asked:

Do you typically feel takes while fishing a kebari, or is it almost always a visual thing with your line? I’ve been trying to fish kebaris more this fall/winter and am unsure if I’m just failing to feel/see takes or if it’s mostly due to lower fish activity or not casting to the right spots. Thanks!

I rarely feel the take. For me, it’s almost entirely a visual thing. I concentrate intensely on the end of the line (the spot where the tippet is tied to the line). If I see that make any kind of motion that I didn’t cause—a sudden stop, a change in direction, a tightening of the line, etc.—I set the hook.

Of course, I’ll often feel a fish on the end of the line when I go to recast, but that’s different.

Leave your own answer in the comments below.

I’ve found that what qualifies as a “small, overgrown stream” often has little to do with the stream itself and more to do with the rod one uses to fish it. What could be considered a small, overgrown stream with a 13-foot (400-cm) rod suddenly becomes quite open and easy to fish with an 8-foot (240-cm rod).

Continue reading “How Stiff Is the Tiny Ten Versus Other Small “Tenkara” Rods?”

You may have seen my most recent Tenkara Addict video, in which I discuss my new online fly tying store, FlyTyingYarn.com. If you haven’t watched that video and browsed the store yet, I invite you to do so. I also started a fly tying YouTube channel and an Instagram account of the same name. I’ll be adding new products and educational articles to the store monthly, new videos to the channel every 2–4 weeks (haven’t ironed out a schedule yet), and new posts to the Instagram account weekly.

If you haven’t browsed the “Learn” page on FlyTyingYarn.com, you might want to head over there and take a look. Among other things, I include descriptions and pictures of some of the flies I use the most:

• Modified Utah Killer Kebari
• Idaho Killer Kebari
• Waldo Kebari
• Old Man Kebari
• Yarn Ishigaki Kebari

The initial response to the store has been beyond my expectations, and I’m really grateful to everyone who has placed an order.

(Also, I realize that I didn’t post to the blog here for November. My goal for 2020 was to post on the first of each month. I was traveling during late October and early November, so it slipped my mind. Sorry! To make it up to you, I’ll be posting again in a couple weeks about a new rod I’m getting and about how it compares to two of my existing rods.)

See you again in a week or two!

I fish with a backpack, and I attach the net to the backpack. I’ve tried attaching the net with carabiners (too fiddly) and magnets (not strong enough; I’d often find myself bushwhacking alongside a stream only to find my net caught by a branch several feet behind me). For the past six months or so, I’ve been using a side lock buckle. This is your standard webbing buckle, the kind that you squeeze on the side to open up. This is the exact buckle (3/4″ size) that I use. I have the net dangling off the bottom of the left shoulder strap. To both attach the buckle to the backpack and attach the net to the other half of the buckle, I’ve used a couple different sizes of zip ties.

This works really well. I can easily clip and unclip the buckle to grab the net, and the buckle never accidentally comes undone.

I got two new tenkara rods in August.

Continue reading “New Rods! Tanuki XL-1 and Nissin Zerosum 360 7:3”

I love my medium Measure Net. It’s the perfect tenkara landing net aside from one thing—it’s not packable. I’m gearing up for a weeklong backpacking and fishing trip in a week or so, and I wanted a net that was not only lighter than by beloved Measure Net but that also could pack down to keep the overall bulk of my backpack to a minimum.

Continue reading “Modifications to My Handy Pak Net”

I’ve found that all of my tenkara fishing can be covered with three rods:

Continue reading “What Size Tenkara Rods (and How Many of Them) Do I Need?”

I like to use these tenkara line cards from DragonTail Tenkara to hold/store my level lines. They’re cheap, light, and take up very little space. They’re sold as holding a single level line (as shown in the pictures at the link above), but I use each one to hold two. I fold down every other one of the little plastic tabs on the card.

Continue reading “Tenkara Line Card Trick (Double the Storage)”

My wife and I just moved from Pocatello, Idaho, to Rexburg, Idaho, for my wife’s schooling. Both cities are in eastern Idaho, and they’re about an hour and fifteen minutes apart. Not a big move, but I thought it would be interesting to talk a little bit about what the move will mean for my tenkara videos and my fishing in general.

Continue reading “We Moved! What It Means for My Tenkara Fishing”

“How do you find these small creeks?” I get that question a lot, and there are several answers.

Continue reading “How I Find Small Creeks to Fish”